Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of James Baldwin, one of the most influential figures in American literary life and a prominent public intellectual who was not hesitant to speak harsh truths.
He attacked a persistent myth held by many people, that if only Black people adopted the values and behavior of white people, then their situation would improve. What sticks most in my mind is this passage from The Fire Next Time, where Baldwin captured the absurdity of this expectation.
White Americans find it as difficult as white people elsewhere do to divest themselves of the notion that they are in possession of some intrinsic value that black people need or want. . . . There is certainly little enough in the white man’s public or private life that one should desire to imitate.
Black people are not as impressed with the virtues of whites as whites are, and see little need to emulate them. After all, the whites were the ones who brought Blacks over as slaves and kept them in abject servitude and poverty for generations. Lynchings, beatings, and being set upon by dogs and buffeted by water from fire hoses are all things that are within living memory of Black people. Given this history, to ask blacks to adopt white behavior as role models for virtuousness seems presumptuous, to put it mildly.
That sentiment presumes that Black people naturally and intrinsically have different the values and behavior to white people.
(Basically, racial essentialism)
I don’t have kids, but became a grandfather when my wife’s daughter started having kids. I started thinking about the difference between being a good grandmother and a good grandfather. I concluded it’s important to be a good grandparent. And maybe it’s just important to be a good person, regardless of one’s various identities.
@ 1 Morales
You idiot. It assumes people do not have any intrinsic values and behaviour.
Silentbob,
You realise you’ve just claimed James Baldwin assumed humans have no intrinsic values and behaviour?
Heh.
—
Be aware that your attempted objection does not actually address the claim I made @1.
(Called a fallacy of irrelevance)
Mind you, technically, that’s Mano’s adumbration; the included quotation does not really say that, it being about white’s perceived superiority to Blacks.
I watched most of this video of Baldwin debating William F. Buckley. Baldwin was riveting once he got going. I didn’t last five minutes once Buckley started bloviating. Even seeing him back in the day on Firing Line he always creeped me out, with his sleazy delivery, random side-eye, and his tongue weirdly flickering out like a snake’s at odd times. Did he have some form of Tourette’s or something?
Gotta love it when you attempt to correct me, Silentbob.
You’ve yet to get it right, after Lo! how many years now?
Not once.
(heh)
Am I the only one who finds the parenthetical dates very misleading given this guy died in the 80s? X-D
Morales is here to inform us that Kalahari bushmen are born knowing a gentleman wears a tie, that one must stand when a lady enters the room and pull out her chair at the dining table, and eat with a fork in the left hand and a knife in the right.
Any Black person suggesting otherwise is guilty of “racist essentialism”. Obviously. Harumph.
(Idiot.)
StinkyBooger:
“Morales is here to inform us that Kalahari [blah]”
Of course I am not.
You can’t dispute me, so you just fantasise something or other.
You can’t even quote me, so you just make up claims I have never made nor would ever make.
That is so feeble! And so obvious.
(Your sig is appropriate, but)
Since it was brought up, I’ll share an article I recently read: https://slate.com/culture/2024/07/the-gods-must-be-crazy-movie-streaming-south-africa.html
Anyway. Was a rather interesting article.
I myself loved the movie at the time, a most excellent conceit and pure slapstick.
In some ways, it did not age well.
[oops, bad tag closing there]
[I fixed it -- Mano]