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

“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 stresses the importance of a physical or metaphorical elsewhere in the fight for racial equality. Gesturing to Baldwin’s idea of exile, he describes Europe as a place that allowed him to recharge and reconsider the problem of racism in the US. Elsewhere provides a different perspective, as well as rest before reentering the fray.  

“Revealing the lie at the heart of the American idea, however, occasions an opportunity to tell a different and a better story. It affords us a chance to excavate the past and to examine the ruins to find, or at least glimpse, what made us who we are. Baldwin insisted, until he died, that we reach for a different story. We should tell the truth about ourselves, he maintained, and that would release us into a new possibility.”

Truth and hope are key themes in Glaude’s book. Like Baldwin, Glaude maintains that ending racism is possible, but only by honestly confronting the past. This includes acknowledging the historic impact of the lie on Black people, as well as interrogating its current effects. Change is possible, but not without truthfully confronting racism.

“[W]hite America chose itself over a truly just and multiracial society.” 

The civil rights movement failed because rather than striving to achieve a truly multiracial democracy, White America reinforced the lie, resulting in many of the problems facing Black communities today, such as poverty, police brutality, and mass incarceration. Baldwin charted the nature of this betrayal in his late writings, calling out White people for their cowardice. He also abandoned King’s peaceful approach to racial equality, turning instead to Black militancy.