The death of James Baldwin in Paris in December has resulted in much discussion about his life and work and about the black experience in the United States.
Peter Prescott, writing in Newsweek, noted that
"for three decades he had served as our Jeremiah, raging against the abomination of American racism. … He explained that all American institutions, including the church, are inherently racist and meant 'to keep the nigger in his place.' The American system of governance, he said, is designed to destroy American blacks, and the whites have never understood the monstrosity of their situation: their 'innocence' is testimony to their guilt."
Juan Williams, writing in the Washington Post, declared,
"Baldwin's writings became a standard of literary realism. His essays on America evoked place, time and emotions so successfully that they rival the carefully carved worlds of novelists. Given the messy nature of racial hatred, of the half-truths, blasphemies and lies that make up American life, Baldwin's accuracy in reproducing that world stands as a remarkable achievement."
Personal Bitterness
The reality of the life and work of James Baldwin may, however, be far different from many recent assessments. In fact, Baldwin, an extraordinarily talented writer, permitted personal anguish and bitterness to consume both his work and himself. His legacy may not be the alleged "accuracy" of his portrayal of reality; rather, his writings underline the danger of permitting the idea of "race" to destroy individuality and to confuse one's own precarious existence with the larger reality of the world itself.
In many respects, James Baldwin never overcame his own unfortunate childhood. Born illegitimate in Harlem in 1924, he was, he says, an avid reader and an "ugly boy." He endured the repression of his stepfather, a failed preacher who told him that he was "the ugliest boy he had ever seen" and physically abused him.
Taking advantage of his fine speaking voice, Baldwin began to preach as a boy, and then, at nineteen, became a Trotskyite. He turned against Christianity with a vengeance, referring to Jesus as a "ranting sunbaked Hebrew fanatic." In a talk to the World Council of Churches meeting in Uppsala, Sweden, in July 1968, Baldwin declared,
"If you are born under the circumstances in which black people are born, you can see that the destruction of the Christian churches as presently constituted may be not only desirable but also it may be necessary. … My importance in the Christian world is not the importance of a living soul, bare to the sight of God, but as a means of making profit, making money."
Baldwin's finest work appeared at the beginning. In 1953, a book widely regarded as his best and most important novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, appeared. By 1963, he had turned almost completely to polemic. In that year, The Fire Next Time was published. It was an angry book in which he told the world he was determined "never to make my peace with the ghetto
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