Thinking of James Baldwin

by ©️Leslye Joy Allen

“Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.”—©️James Baldwin

For the record, among the more than 3,000 books I own, I own more books by James Baldwin than any other author. Baldwin’s genius was that once he pulled you in with his analysis you were hooked. He could turn any lie white people told on its head with a truth that not only made you think, but made you question whether you contributed to the madness you saw happening in the world. Baldwin forced you to think whether you wanted to or not.

The terror experienced now by the white Left is a direct result of their own delusions of grandeur, privilege, and pseudo-morality. I wrote about this earlier this year in What the Left Must Remember. Yet, what the white Left, and I do mean white Left, fails to acknowledge is that they are not going to get a free pass this time around.

They can yell at me until their heads falls off. They can scream about how fair they are and how different they are from the other white folks that they know and who they are kin to and it’s not going to mean shit.

All of those excuses they made about their racist uncle Roy, or their hateful bitch of a grandmother Susan will not free them from the reckoning coming their way. They grew up believing that punishment was for Black folks and Brown folks and Gay folks and Red folks. They let themselves think that racism and sexism and homomisia and transmisia and misogyny and misogynoir could not possibly be that bad until all of it was parked at their door; until it was their asses on the line.

(Photo of James Baldwin by Steve Shapiro, 1963 in New Orleans, LA)

So let me raise one question for them to contemplate. After all the Black, Brown, Red, LGBTQIA folks have left you to your own devices; after your children and adolescents rank as some of the dumbest young people in the world, what exactly will you do?

And before one of you says shit like “My Mom and Dad marched with Martin Luther King, Jr.” let me fill you in on something. Your parents wouldn’t have had to march with M.L. if your predecessors had been humane human beings in the first place.

Before you recite that time worn horse manure that your relatives arrived on Ellis Island and your family never owned slaves, well guess what? As Malcolm X stated so eloquently, in less than a day after your family members arrived at Ellis Island, they learned one of their first English words. That word was “N*gg*h.”

Tell the lie that you did not recognize the word even when I blotted out a couple of the letters.

This is what James Baldwin tried to tell all of you well over 40 years ago when he wrote the truth that “the world is not white.” And to some of my Black sisters and brothers, but particularly the brothers, who level all manner of insult to our Black LGBTQIA sisters and brothers; who condone the violence meted out to the Black LGBTQIA community, just know that the little bit of privilege you have is largely due to those Black LGBTQIA sisters and brothers who won those freedoms for you/for us with their intellect, their strategies and their backs. Your reckoning is coming to.

©️Leslye Joy Allen

I am an Independent Historian, Oral Historian and Dramaturge. Please consider supporting my work with a few bucks for Coffee and Eggs via my CashApp.

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