The gift of creating un-innocent countrymen
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Baldwin believes that the destiny of white and Black people are very closely tied up in one another. This is, I think, exactly why he stresses the importance of accepting white people, even given their capacity for great brutality. The kind of acceptance he means here is not an uncritical, unthinking "pass" to continue doing what one has been doing, a turning of the other cheek as it were. It is rather a deep acknowledgement of the historical factors that have led whites toward brutality, and an acceptance of their place in that history. It is to say "I accept that you did not choose to be like this, but nonetheless you and the race you inhabit have done things I cannot forgive." It is what Yancy refers to as a "gift," to call out whiteness where it exists and especially where it wants to be unseen. This also gets at the idea of innocence, which is the absence of that gift. The accusing child recounted in Fanon is innocent, his finger is innocent, by virtue of being white; and yes, he knows not what he does, but as Baldwin tells us nothing will change if his countrymen, all the way down to their smallest children, are not made aware of their history. But of course this is not just their (white people's) history, it is a shared history between countrymen, all born into (different parts of) a historico-racial schema which existed before their birth, but which will hopefully be ameliorated through an honest, un-innocent understanding of power relations.