Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own

Baldwin’s views on racism evolved later in his life. A key difference in Baldwin’s early and late writings is his stance on who should solve the country’s racism problem. In his early works, Baldwin saw Black people as partially responsible for ending racism, armed with the redemptive power of suffering and love embodied by King and early civil rights leaders. As Glaude observes, Baldwin’s emphasis on love asked a lot from Black people, who had to “break free from the assumptions about who they were” in order to “lovingly open up space for white people to see themselves otherwise” (107). Baldwin held that this approach was the only way Black and White people could be free.

However, his stance shifted as the promises of the civil rights movement faded. According to Glaude, Baldwin lost faith in White peoples’ ability to change: “He rejected […] the faith that we could convince those who were so deeply invested in being white that they should see themselves otherwise” (107). Embracing the anger of the Black Power movement, Baldwin became suspicious of his White Liberal supporters, seeing them as co-conspirators in maintaining the value gap. Further, he shifted the burden of decreasing racial tensions during the race riots that swept across the nation after King’s murder from Black to White people. If change was going to happen, it had to come from White people, who had to “release themselves from their own captivity” (110).

Baldwin’s changing stance on racism was made possible by his “elsewhere”—Istanbul—a space to rethink his views of America’s race problem in the wake of disappointment and trauma. This recalibration echoes the theme of new beginnings running through Glaude’s book. Baldwin calls Istanbul “A place where I can find out again—where I am—and what I must do. A place where I can stop and do nothing in order to start again.” (129); there, he worked on No Name in the Street—a new start he saw as: “beginning again” (117).

Religious references feature prominently, as Glaude describes Istanbul as a place of intersection—a city that is part of Europe and Asia, and that balances Islam and Christianity. The title of No Name in the Street, alludes to Job 18:16-20, which describes the fate of the wicked; and Glaude compares Baldwin’s suffering to that of the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah, who rebuked the Jews for surrendering to idolatry and depravity. Jeremiah’s prophecies connect inextricably to his individual grief, suffering, and sense of isolation, which resonates with the fact that Baldwin’s social vision also cannot be divorced from his psychic anguish. Indeed, he arrived at social analysis by exploring his personal pain and vulnerabilities, writing freely about his mental collapses. In No Name in the Street, for instance, he writes about his mental breakdown after the deaths of loved ones and the end of civil rights movement, to which he had devoted much of his life.

Glaude ends Chapters 4 and 5 with discussions of the current political climate. Glaude’s aim is not to save or demonize Trump voters. Rather, echoing Baldwin’s call for a New Jerusalem, he urges readers to devote all their energies to building the country anew by telling the truth, remedying generations of racial injustice, and promoting values related to equality. Current conditions in the US resemble those of Baldwin’s era, underscoring the lack of progress in matters of racial equality: Police officers are commonly acquitted of killing unarmed Black people, the federal government enacts cruel policies toward immigrants seeking to escape violence in their home countries, and White people are consumed with debilitating anxiety about the trajectory of the country.

While Fox News exacerbates the anxiety of Trump supporters by repeating lies about immigrants, liberals are told they must alleviate this anxiety. For Glaude, the emphasis on reaching out to Trump supporters is another way of saying White people matter more than non-White people. Living in Trump’s America weighs heavily on people of color, yet Glaude, like Baldwin, remains hopeful for the future: “In our time, with so much hatred and venom in our politics and our culture, we must actively cultivate communities of love that allow us to imagine different ways of being together” (142). Glaude’s use of strong language, however, reveals that the road to change will not be easy. Cultivating an elsewhere is critical to maintaining focus because, without a refuge, “all of this shit can drive you mad” (140).