Baldwins vision of acceptance
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In My Dungeon Shook Baldwin writes an open letter to his nephew who is named after him. He is writing to explain to James how to handle his fellow Americans and particularly white Americans. He says that these ‘countrymen’ have given James conditions for life that are uncomfortable and unfair. He says, “that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it.” This poetic description of systemic racism is what Baldwin establishes first.
He goes on to describe his own father (his nephew’s grandfather) who was a miserable man, “he was defeated long before he died because, at the bottom of his heart, he really believed what white people said about him.” Baldwin tells this story as a cautionary tale and ties his thought back to systemic racism when he tells James, “You can only be destroyed by believing that you really are what the white world calls a ******.”
Baldwin then reaches the main claim of his letter which is that the goal of integration is to eliminate the danger of systemic racism through acceptance of one another. This letter comes at a time when the civil rights movement is in full effect with integration of black people and elimination of segregation as the goal. Baldwin says that black people, specifically James, must learn to accept white people with love because they are trapped in a world that they do not understand. White people are consumed by their racist world and trapped by a history that they do not understand. Baldwin argues that they must be challenged by radical acceptance in order to break the cycle of fear and hate.
“I said that it was intended that you should perish in the ghetto, perish by never being allowed to go behind the white man's definitions.” Baldwin is telling his nephew that the only way to break free of the dangers of systemic racism and achieve integration is to challenge the preconceived expectations of white people. By accepting them with love, the hate can no longer perpetuate.
White people are trapped because of their own racism, Baldwin argues. Successful integration will allow white people to break free from their own biases and racist ideas that trap them. In this way, white people’s freedom from their own ideas is linked to black people’s freedom from oppression.