In Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own, Eddie S. Glaude Jr. analyzes Baldwin’s life and writings from the perspective of the fight for civil rights and equality for Black People. He explores America’s past and how it informs and directs the current reality.
Glaude contends that Donald Trump is a symptom. While Trump induces rage, he is not solely responsible for the state of race relations. We have to look to the past and extrapolate from Trump to discover the core issue in America, and that is the lie. This lie is a monumental one, which supported slavery and continues to be a bedrock for white supremacy. This is the lie of race, Whiteness and Blackness, superiority and inferiority.
Trump cannot be cordoned off into a corner with evil, racist demagogues. We make him wholly bad in order to protest our innocence. He is made to bear the burdens of all our sins when he is in fact a clear reflection of who we actually are.
Chapter 6, Begin Again
When we look at history, we can see identify cycles and pick out the patterns that occur again and again. For example, this time is similar to the collapse of the Black Power movement with Reagan’s rise. It should remind us of Nixon, who believed that minorities were undercutting America’s greatness.
The storms keep coming, and we are expected to keep moving and to endure no matter what.
Chapter 5, Begin Again
Right and Wrong
When I read the debate about states of confederate generals and other racists, I’m caught in a spiral. Does removing statues show a lack of appreciation of history? Should we honor swastikas and salutes because Hitler had some effective strategies for his goals? Are there as many Harriet Tubman statues as Robert Lee? I agree that we shouldn’t erase history because how else will we learn from it. However, we should judge those who did wrong with our improved understanding. Treating Black people as inferior, forcing our ancestors into slavery. This was always wrong. This was always a lie. I don’t accept that we can excuse the slaveholders of the past because they were acting of the times. There were people then, White and Black, who opposed slavery, who recognized it was not a natural condition.
“When I look around and I see the iconography of the glory of enslavement and the era of lynching, I say we’re not in a very healthy place.”
Bryan Stevenson in True Justice, quoted in Chapter 7, Begin Again
When you know better you do better. If as a society and as individuals we know better, why are “we” not doing better. America should absolutely make amends for the past. That is the issue. Slavery was always wrong. Beating black people, raping our ancestors, selling them was always wrong. The fact that the behavior was accepted back then doesn’t mean it was a morally right decision back then. So when people like Trump talks about the issue of removing statues, they are the ones with a moral failing. What was done and accepted as normal was in fact wrong. That’s where we start the process of reconciliation. If we recognize the mistakes and failings of the past, that changes the spin we put on history.
… the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us.
Baldwin, as quoted in Chapter 3, Begin Again
The Evolution of Baldwin’s Writing
Baldwin did a lot of his writing outside of the United States, in France, and in Turkey. Glaude also started this book outside the United States, and wonders if his experience mirrors Baldwin’s.
There is a kind of isolation being in a place where you do not know the language. Words do not interrupt your vision. Silence allows you to see differently.
Glaude, Introduction, Begin Again
However, Baldwin never breaks completely with the United States. Again and again, he hears the call to return to the people that he loves:
He wanted the comfort of black American culture — the sounds of the language, the taste of the food, its joys, and pains. He wanted to experience again the elements of black life that danced around in his imagination and made their way into his writing.
Chapter 2, Begin Again
Many critics saw that Baldwin’s writing turned more revolutionary, more aligned with Black Power, and they (his White friends) did not like what they saw. They thought he was not acting as a “serious writer” and instead was too revolutionary. Glaude contends that Baldwin was initially trying to save the soul of White folks but saw they were not changing and tried to redeem himself in their condemnation.
Meanwhile, Cleaver and others in the Black Power movement saw Baldwin as an Uncle Tom. Even as he supported their movement and committed to never betraying the struggle, he was seen as a relic from another time.
The Great Lie
In one poignant section, Glaude explores the civil rights story. He sees conventional tourism as part of the lie, a lie that is countered by the museum and monument in Montgomery, built by Bryan Stevenson. Americans have not overcome. How can they when they haven’t faced the truth? Truth needs come before reconciliation.
Anyone who doesn’t fit the view of America as a white nation or refuses to submit to it is cast as a traitor or as someone who hates America.
Conclusion, Begin Again
Moving Forward
Reparations aren’t about white people versus black people. It’s about history but it’s also about the current times. It’s about atoning for the sins at the very foundations of the country.
In the end, we cannot escape our beginnings: The scars on our backs and the white-knuckled grip of the lash that put them there remain in dim outline across generations in the way we cautiously or not so cautiously move around one another.
Chapter 2, Begin Again
Glaude calls on us to remember:
… categorization refers only to the different conditions under which we live; it doesn’t capture the essence of who we are.
Chapter 4, Begin Again
Glaude challenges the options that we allow and suggests a 3rd way, a transformation that challenges Americans to do better, be better. The goal is not to go back but to move forward, to create a new America.
Final Thoughts on Begin Again
I’ve READ Baldwin before but never STUDIED his writings. As I studied Baldwin’s writings, his perspective, and his vision in Begin Again, I did a lot of highlighting. Seeing African American history, the struggle, the lie, presented in such stark terms, especially right after reading Caste by Isabelle Wilkerson, highlights how much work there is to do. And then there are current events to remind us if we dare forget even for one moment. I am reminded of the rhetoric of both liberals and conservatives.
People can, if they want to, choose to be better. We need only build a world where that choice can be made with relative ease.
Conclusion, Begin Again
I am humbled and overwhelmed by those in the struggle who persist despite the fact that at its heart, the struggle still remains the same. While Glaude presents a way forward, I’m disheartened to see how much of the old structures persist. Wilkerson’s accounts of racist experiences and the fact of the silent, color-blind bystanders of today, attacks on Capitol, blatant racism from “The Leader of the Free World”. I don’t know how we get from there to a world of love, peace, and equality. Right now, the dream and even the route to making it a reality seems elusive. I’m left thinking, wondering, what can I do. What action can I take toward that dream?
I recommend that you read Begin Again and discuss it with others. It is individually and together that we can make change happen.
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