Baldwin on white people
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It is extremely important for Baldwin to ingrain into his nephew that he should not spend time striving towards acceptance from white folk: he instead emphasises that James is the one who needs to accept the white folk. Baldwin believes that white Americans are "trapped in a history which they do not understand," which prevents them from seeing their fellow black countrymen as human (22). This reminded me of an idea expressed in "Silencing the Past" by Michel-Rolph Trouillot, a Haitian anthropologist, where he says: "I am not suggesting that [people in the past] should have thought about the fundamental equality of humankind in the same way some of us do today. On the contrary, I am arguing that they could not have done so." In both cases, these writers are arguing that the structure of systemic racism is so ingrained into society that it becomes impossible for white countrymen to open their eyes and see how it manifests itself. This is why Baldwin explains that it is so difficult for white people to escape from this history, since "it is out of the order of [their] nature" (23).
In doing so, Baldwin also presents the idea that white people are not truly free in the way they believe themselves to be, since their entire worldview is predicated on the suffering of black people. He compares the black man to a "fixed star" in the white man's world, upon which white people have built the empire that allows them to have so much power: when the black man moves out of this "assigned" place, their entire foundation comes crumbling down. This again reminds me of Ursula K. Le Guin's short story "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas," in which the entire town's happiness is predicated on the suffering of one small child. In the same way that everyone in the town comes to terms with the violent injustice being carried out on an innocent child, white people have become comfortable with the fact that the privileges and power they hold in the world would not be possible without the subjugation of black people.