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James Baldwin, Here and Elsewhere

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Re: James Baldwin, Here and Elsewhere

#5
Baldwin could see things that ordinary commentators couldn't because he saw the world through other people's eyes, and felt the machinery of their thoughts.

In this 1965 appearance at Cambridge University, he mesmerises the audience by telling them what it's like to grow up black in America not even knowing you're black, until one day, as a young child, you catch yourself in the mirror and realise you aren't the person your culture is built for. You actually don't exist, because there is no space in your culture's stories for you.

What brings the predominantly white male audience at Cambridge Union to their feet for a standing ovation, beyond Baldwin's faultless elocution, is his mastery of white American experience. He speaks about racism from inside out, considering that what has happened to white Americans who have succumbed to the disease of racism is worse than what has happened to black Americans who suffer it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Tek9h3a5wQ

Re: James Baldwin, Here and Elsewhere

#6

> In the wake of recent episodes of police brutality targeting Black people and the growing coalition around Black Lives Matter protests across the United States, What does HN think about Roland Fryer's research on this issue?

Economists, as a rule, shouldn't pretend that they are ethicists.

Re: James Baldwin, Here and Elsewhere

#7
I saw Baldwin on the street in New York many years ago. He was walking around in the area between Union Square and Washington Square Park with his nanny, his kid, his dogs, and his very pregnant wife. He was yelling at his nanny, and getting pretty nasty about it.

Photo Evidence, snuck a creep shot

https://i.imgur.com/4xugALC.jpg

EDIT: Nevermind... Need more coffee.

Re: James Baldwin, Here and Elsewhere

#8
post #7

I saw Baldwin on the street in New York many years ago. He was walking around in the area between Union Square and Washington Square Park with his nanny, his kid, his dogs, and his very pregnant wife. He was yelling at his nanny, and getting pretty nasty about it. Photo Evidence, snuck a creep shot https://i.imgur.com/4xugALC.jpg EDIT: Nevermind... Need more coffee.

Very much the wrong Baldwin.

Re: James Baldwin, Here and Elsewhere

#9

Baldwin could see things that ordinary commentators couldn't because he saw the world through other people's eyes, and felt the machinery of their thoughts. In this 1965 appearance at Cambridge University, he mesmerises the audience by telling them what it's like to grow up black in America not even knowing you're black, until one day, as a young child, you catch yourself in the mirror and realise you aren't the pers…

My sentiments exactly. From "Nobody Knows My Name":

> Now, I talked to many Southern liberals who were doing their best to bring integration about in the South, but met scarcely a single Southerner who did not weep for the passing of the old order. They were perfectly sincere, too, and within their limits, they were right. They pointed out how Negroes and whites in the South had loved each other, they recounted to me tales of devotion and heroism which the old order had produced, and which, now, would never come again. But the old black men I looked at down there – those same black men that the Southern liberal had loved […] they were not weeping.

Re: James Baldwin, Here and Elsewhere

#10
post #7

I saw Baldwin on the street in New York many years ago. He was walking around in the area between Union Square and Washington Square Park with his nanny, his kid, his dogs, and his very pregnant wife. He was yelling at his nanny, and getting pretty nasty about it. Photo Evidence, snuck a creep shot https://i.imgur.com/4xugALC.jpg EDIT: Nevermind... Need more coffee.

Nevermind... Need more coffee.

And also to read the articles.

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