Quasim, simply and FYI the date on the picture of Baldwin says 1924. I'm not good with numbers, but I'm not that bad with numbers either. Guessing that was his birth date and not a picture from 1924?
Thank you so much for sharing your tribute to James Baldwin. Ever grateful to Dick Cavett for the multiple times he invited Baldwin for conversations, including this classic with a cluelessly agitated Paul Weiss. But Baldwin, O Baldwin: his face, his voice, his words! The photo you shared reminded me of all the stunning images of his face: out of the depths of his thoughts and all the things he has seen and known, the ironies of existence play out, with a challenge. "Yes? You have something to say?"
Thank you, Qasim, for reminding us of the efforts made by James Baldwin.
We can learn from lessons he learned and shared. His sense of human capacity for choosing mutual understanding and cooperation to change everyone's living for the better can be an inexhaustible social resource. It is a matter of personal choice.
Thanks again for making this available for all to see! I really love and appreciate your work! It makes me think critically instead of emotionally. Please continue with the good work!
You’re right on target and how unfortunate to still have to go bring attention to the same freaking issues. Some of what we now have to contend with are too many of those who look like us, giving credence and carrying the banner of the very ones looking to destroy them as well! Geesh!!
God made all humans Equal ??? Some People just like to feel that they are better ??? Some will die & go to hell for their evil attack on other lives, livelihood & humanity ???
But I think it did matter, and does matter, if labor unions, or anyone else, hated Baldwin, and hates African Americans, or Native Americans, or Muslims, or any other group. It matters IF they hate these people, because it matters WHY they hate them. The people who are hated endure consequences for the fact that they are hated, with no reason. That's why Baldwin left. The US is a backward and horribly racist country, and it needs to admit it. Ideally, it should stop being racist, but it won't do that until it admits that it IS racist.
The fact is that race is a meaningless construct. In the past, those who constructed racism used as their excuse that there was something inferior about African Americans, or something dangerous about them, and about Muslims, too. Do many Caucasian Americans hate African Americans, and Muslims, and women, and Central Americans? Yes, they do. And the reason is that they're afraid of them, not because there's anything wrong with them, but because Caucasians know that they don't deserve what they've commandeered, and they don't want to be seen for what they are.
I have wondered if some of that fear is an unexamined acknowledgement of injustice, oppression, and brutality. "That Black man *must* be angry and dangerous, because he *should* be after what's been done to him & everything I have at his expense." And yes, ideally America would stop soaking each new generation in racist abuse, which won't happen without genuine acknowledgement at both the system level and the personal.
Not only that, but some sociologists posit that most or perhaps all anti-drug laws are really racially based, and the underlying basis is the imagined fear that people of other races are somehow more sexually impressive or potent than are Caucasians. That, of course, is different from unconscious guilt, but it suggests other unconscious motivating factors behind racism.
Your comment about "soaking each new generation in racist abuse" is also interesting, because all Americans, except Native Americans, are, or their forebears were, immigrants, and all immigrants to this New World, except the African Americans, came here for precisely the same reason: things were not good in the old country, and some people wanted more freedom and opportunity. That was true of the Pilgrims, and it's true of the people at today's "southern border," Haitians, and everyone else. Interestingly, I receive a five-days-a-week post called delanceyplace.com. (It's free.) A couple of years or so ago, they had an excerpt tracking that every immigrant group -- the Irish, the Germans, the Chinese, and all of them -- go through exactly the same thing: they're all demeaned as lazy, dirty, thieves, and whatever else. Racism in this country is more extensive than aimed at African Americans. The glaring difference is that you can't look at someone and tell if their forebears were Irish. You can look at them and tell if they're African American. So the latter are a much easier target.
But you're certainly right to say that if you mistreat people, you'd be an idiot not to expect them not to like it.
By the way, I also read something, likely also on delanceyplace, that talked about school children, and how African American ones are judged by their teachers as being bigger, OLDER(!), and more dangerous than their classmates, and getting sent to the principal's office more often. Of course, in a case like that, you could wonder if, over the course of a few centuries, people enslaved here for the purpose of doing difficult manual labor are essentially selected (more likely to succeed, and not keel over) for being bigger and stronger. And then, it's held against them, except they disproportionately populate sports teams.
Ms Sadowski, I don't think I'll make an attempt to read "Stamped From the Beginning." I have way too much ahead of it, and it's 600 pages. But I did look it up on ebay, which often has detailed descriptions of the things that are for sale, and it had an excellent description and discussion of "Stamped From the Beginning." I was put in mind of two things. One was someone's comment about the people who say "I don't see race." That part of the review said that a comment like that is an "inexorable alibi for white supremacy." As charming and intended to be generous as a statement like "I don't see race" is, I agree that it "whitewashes" the opposite of what it says. I have a friend who tells me I'm "colorblind." I tell my friend no one is colorblind. I am as aware of the characteristics, including race, gender, or anything else, of people who are not me as is everyone. I just don't let it interfere with how I think of the other person, and certainly not with how I treat them. That someone else has whatever characteristics they have doesn't make them less. It makes them different, or maybe even more, because they have experiences and a view of the world that I don't have. And you know people aren't colorblind when they say "some of my best friends are..." Oh, so you didn't fail to notice.
The other burden for American Caucasians, especially the ones we would recognize as conspicuously racist, is that they struggle with how badly they need the people they denigrate. I'm a psychiatrist, and one of the common enough therapy topics is how people deal with huge needs, especially when those needs don't get met. If Puritans, and the immigrants who came after them, weren't in powerful need of Africans, let's say, for example, to do things the Caucasians didn't want to do or couldn't do, and to do them for free, they would not have enslaved them. The Caucasians would have had the pride and sense of accomplishment to do them themselves. And they continue to feel like failures or inadequate in a way, which is why a proportion of them still argue that they should honor and revere Confederate "heroes." Interestingly, none of these American Caucasians think the Russians should honor Lenin or Stalin, or Germans should honor Hitler, or Iraqis should honor Saddam Hussein. Those people are parts of Russian, German, and Iraqi history exactly as Robert E Lee, Jefferson Davis, and others are part of American history, but American Caucasians have a clear understanding why Lenin and Stalin, Hitler, and Hussein are not worthy of commemoration. The difference here is that it's easier to recognize the mistakes Russians, Germans, and Iraqis made than it is to admit to the mistakes many of us made. And in the name of what should be a humiliating cause. Our defense is to keep making the mistake, as if continuing to make it would result in its not really being a mistake any more. (I have thought that the right doesn't really expect to replace all of American governmental functioning with Project 2025. They're sort of like Putin in his attack on the Ukraine. Both of them attack, and then they propose to agree to settle for just part of what they claimed to want. It's a foot in the door, and if they get something, then it doesn't look like they were entirely wrong.)
Racists are entirely wrong, and many of us (certainly the people who read Qasim Rashid, Jeremy Scahill, and others on Substack, and David Sirota of "The Lever," and "The Guardian," and "The Intercept," and other sources of thinking that comes from brains that aren't scrambled) know it.
Thanks for the book suggestion. Sorry for the rant.
Quasim, simply and FYI the date on the picture of Baldwin says 1924. I'm not good with numbers, but I'm not that bad with numbers either. Guessing that was his birth date and not a picture from 1924?
Thank you so much for sharing your tribute to James Baldwin. Ever grateful to Dick Cavett for the multiple times he invited Baldwin for conversations, including this classic with a cluelessly agitated Paul Weiss. But Baldwin, O Baldwin: his face, his voice, his words! The photo you shared reminded me of all the stunning images of his face: out of the depths of his thoughts and all the things he has seen and known, the ironies of existence play out, with a challenge. "Yes? You have something to say?"
Thank you, Qasim, for reminding us of the efforts made by James Baldwin.
We can learn from lessons he learned and shared. His sense of human capacity for choosing mutual understanding and cooperation to change everyone's living for the better can be an inexhaustible social resource. It is a matter of personal choice.
Together: a word that weighs nothing, yet carries everything.—ghy
💯
Thanks again for making this available for all to see! I really love and appreciate your work! It makes me think critically instead of emotionally. Please continue with the good work!
And for the education
Thank you Huley ❤️✊🏽
A thinker with such a heart.
Wishing he did not have the ravages of racism to discuss constantly... but .... sigh...
You’re right on target and how unfortunate to still have to go bring attention to the same freaking issues. Some of what we now have to contend with are too many of those who look like us, giving credence and carrying the banner of the very ones looking to destroy them as well! Geesh!!
God made all humans Equal ??? Some People just like to feel that they are better ??? Some will die & go to hell for their evil attack on other lives, livelihood & humanity ???
But I think it did matter, and does matter, if labor unions, or anyone else, hated Baldwin, and hates African Americans, or Native Americans, or Muslims, or any other group. It matters IF they hate these people, because it matters WHY they hate them. The people who are hated endure consequences for the fact that they are hated, with no reason. That's why Baldwin left. The US is a backward and horribly racist country, and it needs to admit it. Ideally, it should stop being racist, but it won't do that until it admits that it IS racist.
The fact is that race is a meaningless construct. In the past, those who constructed racism used as their excuse that there was something inferior about African Americans, or something dangerous about them, and about Muslims, too. Do many Caucasian Americans hate African Americans, and Muslims, and women, and Central Americans? Yes, they do. And the reason is that they're afraid of them, not because there's anything wrong with them, but because Caucasians know that they don't deserve what they've commandeered, and they don't want to be seen for what they are.
I have wondered if some of that fear is an unexamined acknowledgement of injustice, oppression, and brutality. "That Black man *must* be angry and dangerous, because he *should* be after what's been done to him & everything I have at his expense." And yes, ideally America would stop soaking each new generation in racist abuse, which won't happen without genuine acknowledgement at both the system level and the personal.
Not only that, but some sociologists posit that most or perhaps all anti-drug laws are really racially based, and the underlying basis is the imagined fear that people of other races are somehow more sexually impressive or potent than are Caucasians. That, of course, is different from unconscious guilt, but it suggests other unconscious motivating factors behind racism.
Your comment about "soaking each new generation in racist abuse" is also interesting, because all Americans, except Native Americans, are, or their forebears were, immigrants, and all immigrants to this New World, except the African Americans, came here for precisely the same reason: things were not good in the old country, and some people wanted more freedom and opportunity. That was true of the Pilgrims, and it's true of the people at today's "southern border," Haitians, and everyone else. Interestingly, I receive a five-days-a-week post called delanceyplace.com. (It's free.) A couple of years or so ago, they had an excerpt tracking that every immigrant group -- the Irish, the Germans, the Chinese, and all of them -- go through exactly the same thing: they're all demeaned as lazy, dirty, thieves, and whatever else. Racism in this country is more extensive than aimed at African Americans. The glaring difference is that you can't look at someone and tell if their forebears were Irish. You can look at them and tell if they're African American. So the latter are a much easier target.
But you're certainly right to say that if you mistreat people, you'd be an idiot not to expect them not to like it.
By the way, I also read something, likely also on delanceyplace, that talked about school children, and how African American ones are judged by their teachers as being bigger, OLDER(!), and more dangerous than their classmates, and getting sent to the principal's office more often. Of course, in a case like that, you could wonder if, over the course of a few centuries, people enslaved here for the purpose of doing difficult manual labor are essentially selected (more likely to succeed, and not keel over) for being bigger and stronger. And then, it's held against them, except they disproportionately populate sports teams.
Also read Stamped from the Beginning
Ms Sadowski, I don't think I'll make an attempt to read "Stamped From the Beginning." I have way too much ahead of it, and it's 600 pages. But I did look it up on ebay, which often has detailed descriptions of the things that are for sale, and it had an excellent description and discussion of "Stamped From the Beginning." I was put in mind of two things. One was someone's comment about the people who say "I don't see race." That part of the review said that a comment like that is an "inexorable alibi for white supremacy." As charming and intended to be generous as a statement like "I don't see race" is, I agree that it "whitewashes" the opposite of what it says. I have a friend who tells me I'm "colorblind." I tell my friend no one is colorblind. I am as aware of the characteristics, including race, gender, or anything else, of people who are not me as is everyone. I just don't let it interfere with how I think of the other person, and certainly not with how I treat them. That someone else has whatever characteristics they have doesn't make them less. It makes them different, or maybe even more, because they have experiences and a view of the world that I don't have. And you know people aren't colorblind when they say "some of my best friends are..." Oh, so you didn't fail to notice.
The other burden for American Caucasians, especially the ones we would recognize as conspicuously racist, is that they struggle with how badly they need the people they denigrate. I'm a psychiatrist, and one of the common enough therapy topics is how people deal with huge needs, especially when those needs don't get met. If Puritans, and the immigrants who came after them, weren't in powerful need of Africans, let's say, for example, to do things the Caucasians didn't want to do or couldn't do, and to do them for free, they would not have enslaved them. The Caucasians would have had the pride and sense of accomplishment to do them themselves. And they continue to feel like failures or inadequate in a way, which is why a proportion of them still argue that they should honor and revere Confederate "heroes." Interestingly, none of these American Caucasians think the Russians should honor Lenin or Stalin, or Germans should honor Hitler, or Iraqis should honor Saddam Hussein. Those people are parts of Russian, German, and Iraqi history exactly as Robert E Lee, Jefferson Davis, and others are part of American history, but American Caucasians have a clear understanding why Lenin and Stalin, Hitler, and Hussein are not worthy of commemoration. The difference here is that it's easier to recognize the mistakes Russians, Germans, and Iraqis made than it is to admit to the mistakes many of us made. And in the name of what should be a humiliating cause. Our defense is to keep making the mistake, as if continuing to make it would result in its not really being a mistake any more. (I have thought that the right doesn't really expect to replace all of American governmental functioning with Project 2025. They're sort of like Putin in his attack on the Ukraine. Both of them attack, and then they propose to agree to settle for just part of what they claimed to want. It's a foot in the door, and if they get something, then it doesn't look like they were entirely wrong.)
Racists are entirely wrong, and many of us (certainly the people who read Qasim Rashid, Jeremy Scahill, and others on Substack, and David Sirota of "The Lever," and "The Guardian," and "The Intercept," and other sources of thinking that comes from brains that aren't scrambled) know it.
Thanks for the book suggestion. Sorry for the rant.
If memory serves me, James Baldwin wrote in The Fire Next Time that racism - and slavery - is America's fatal flaw, underlying everything.
Harris disagrees... in as much as she sees difference as strength.
A brilliant read for sure
No hon, it's not the progressives you're thinking of, it's the NIMBY shit libs you're referring to. You know, the white moderates.
This! Progressive =\= Liberal. It’s frustrating that people think it does.
45 years ago the progressive agenda would have been termed centrist.
Indeed!
Well put
Yes, yes it is! Liberals are not the left. They're center right and will always align with capitalism.
With all of the attacks against her, it looks like we have a great candidate.
They're attacking her skin color not her policies. Those aren't the same. They did the same thing with Obama.
That is how I know we have a great one. That is all they can come up with.