You Mean It or You Don't: James Baldwin's Radical Challenge

by Jamie McGhee, Adam Hollowell

After a speech at UMass Amherst on February 28, 1984, James Baldwin was asked by a "You said that the liberal façade and being a liberal is not enough. Well, what is? What is necessary?" Baldwin responded, "Commitment. That is what is necessary. You mean it or you don't." Taking up that challenge and drawing from Baldwin's fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and interviews, You Mean It or You Don't will spur today's progressives from conviction to action. It is not enough, authors Hollowell and McGhee urge us, to hold progressive views on racial justice, LGBTQ+ identity, and economic inequality. True and lasting change demands a response to Baldwin's radical challenge for moral commitment. Called to move from dreams of justice to living it out in communities, churches, and neighborhoods, we can show that we truly mean it. Welcome to life with James Baldwin. It is raw and challenging, inspired and embodied, passionate and fully awake.

Genres: Nonfiction, Audiobook, Spirituality, Race

196 pages, Hardcover

Published June 14, 2022

Reviews

[E Money The Cat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short little book that uses James Baldwins literary art as a jumping off point for addressing important topics of the day and some suggestions of what can be done about them. Some reviews for books I’ve quite enjoyed will ask the question, “yes, okay, but what can I do???” If that’s a question in your mind after reading a book regarding any lgbt+, racial justice, abolitionist, or social justice themed book then you should drink this one up.

But if you’re a theory, “lets get deep into the issue here”, kinda person than this ones just a little snifter.

Also if you’re a huge James Baldwin fan looking for a biography or analysis of his wonderful works, this ain’t it. (Although I can tell the authors are huge fans themselves.)

Anyways here are the kinds of suggestions the authors have and some are reformist some are anarchist and some are potentially revolutionary. But most have the important ability of building solidarity and class consciousness.

- joining civilian oversight committees to monitor cop behavior
- joining a courtroom witness program
- assisting the ACLU’s ‘cops out of schools’ program
- promoting the PBIS school approach instead of punishment
- supporting SRLP inmate advocacy
- combat “policing logics” ie the idea that only enforcement can fix a problem
- checking out and promoting the Creative Interventions Toolkit
- checking out and promoting the Community Safe Toolkit
- checking out and promoting the PFLAG ally guide
- joining or supporting JATA (anti ‘conversion therapy’)
- assisting the Say Her Name campaign
- providing hygiene products for inmates (especially pads)
- supporting a childcare collective (eg Intergalactic)
- supporting Reparations
- supporting the goals of police and prison abolition and therefor promoting their community alternatives
- also a ton of great book recs are dropped: Angela Davis, Mariame Kaba, Patrice Khan Cullors, and many more

[Maileen Hamto · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jamie McGhee and Adam Hollowell began critically and reflexively reading James Baldwin’s work in 2012, in the aftermath of the murder of Trayvon Martin and the ensuing movement to assert the dignity and importance of Black lives.

Drawing on their own perspectives as a queer Black woman (McGhee) and a White Southern man (Hollowell), they began writing their reflections on what it means to stand up for racial justice in keeping with Baldwin’s bold challenge to take action and make a difference. What emerged from the decade-long project is "You Mean It or You Don’t," a collection of essays that offers a lens to pivotal moments of Baldwin’s life as a writer, thinker, and moral philosopher best known for incisive take about race and Blackness in America.

I started reading the book after a pointedly wearying work day, and I felt reinvigorated in my dedication to continuing the work toward liberation. Anyone who has engaged with Baldwin’s work in different ways will appreciate the authors’ reflections on the essence of his writing, art, and life’s work, which speak courageously about justice. McGhee and Hollowell make an impassioned case for how Baldwin’s enduring words about the radical moral challenge of ending racism are the right fuel for action that we need in these times.

[Ruby · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The American white has got to accept the fact that what he thinks he is, he is not."

"Baldwin writes to call marginalized people into full humanity and power. He echoes my experience when he writes, "It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I'd been taught about myself, and half-believed, befor I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here" but also my aspirations when he writes, "The point is to get your work done, and your work is to change the world."

"Balwdiwn writes to us not simply as individuals but in this collective way also. He is describing us when he writes, "If we are going to build a multiracial society, which is our only hope, then one has got to accept that I have learned a lot from you, and a lot of it is bitter, but you have a lot to learn from me, and a lot of that will be bitter. That bitterness is our only hope. That is the only way to get past it."

"To do much is to have the power and the necessity to dictate to the damned."

"The prison system was not made to reform or to forgive but to punish and to sequester."

"This laughter is the laughter of those who consider themselves to be at a safe remove from all the wretched, for whom the pain of living is not real."

"Baldwin describes the church as a site of hypocrisy. He hints that the church will become either ruins or a temple based on a single choice: to ignore or heed the prophets of racial justice. He demands a reckoning, not for what white America says but for what white America does."

"How does a body believe one thing and do another? Why are white bodies (and minds) so attached to positions of social dominance? What happens to a body when it undergoes an encounter with truth? Or when it feels surprised, embarrassed, and ashamed?"

"Do what you like" is apathy born of depression. It is the feeling of futility in the face of crushing oppression. It is despair made physical."

"I would like us to do something unprecedented," Baldwin wrote in 1967, "to create ourselves without finding it necessary to create an enemy."

"Confronting the truth may feel like a heart attack, but every true conversion happens in the days after the pain. And while a new life may not be easy, any beginning is better that none at all."

"Building a community of acceptance means spending less energy classifying people and more energy, well, accepting them. It also means working to make sure that children in churches and religious communities today will not receive the harm and judgment that Baldwin did. This includes addressing the full spectrum of harms that persist-from unconscious homophobic and transphobic bias to conversion therapy programs."

"If we want to build radical systems of justice and equity, we have to radically rethink the very ways in which we talk about power, including when retelling the past. As Audre Lorder famously said, "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house," and yet so often we simply build replicas of the houses we're trying to tear down. We are reproducing the same biases, inequalities, and oppressions. Instead, we need to see power as something that should be diffused and equalized, something that uplifts people equally and glorifies no singular figure above any other. Baldwin is sometimes on the beautiful side of history and sometimes on the terrible side. He understood that a political revolution must actively dismantle the powers and structures of oppression."

"The women of the civil rights movement sought to dissolve patriarchal ideals of power and build something entirely new. They pushed for a radical redistribution of respect, status, and resources on a level of equality hitherto unknown in mainstream American society. The way to honor revolutionary women is not just to say their names but also to act on their beliefs about political organization."

"A revolution of justice and gender equality will not confuse patriarchal ideals-being the strongest, loudest, most confident-with true leadership. It will not promote people to positions of power just because they take up the most space. It will not praise Black women on Twitter one night and then talk over them in Zoom the next morning."

"In certain progressive circles, it's easier to imagine solidarity than it is to practice it. It is easier to insist, "I care about everyone" than it is to take care of someone. In particular, it is easier to talk about feminism than it is to undo misogyny."

"It is possible to create spaces for women within an organization, to promote women within an organization, and even to be a woman and yet continually overlook the voices of women. Not by action but by silence."

"In larger fight for women's social and economic liberation, working for community-level change can make the difference between a woman easily taking control of her own situation and a woman being forced to take a back seat while other people claim to work and speak for her. There are no quotes from Baldwin to bolster this final section, no poems or short stories that illustrate their gravity. He was silent on these issues."

"This chapter is about making room at the inn. It is about opening what Baldwin called "the unusual door." It is about listening to the cries of those who live surrounded by evil spirits and making a place of safety, security, and care."

"We must do what we can do, and fortify and save each other."

"Many people want to imitate Baldwin's genius-his ability to read with precision, write with moral clarity, and speak with prophetic power. But how many people also want his love of family-his loyalty and service to his mother, his generosity of spirit, and his embrace of surrogate fatherhood to his siblings? How can your home, neighborhood, or community create spaces of welcome and care?"

"Opening the door means allowing ourselves to be changed, challenged, or even rejected by the people we choose to let inside."

"Baldwin would occasionally quip, "I don't trust missionaries." What he meant by this line was his preference for community-based change rather than outside intervention. He prioritized leadership by the most impacted rather than leadership by the wealthiest or most philanthropic."

"Activist and author Dean Spade has noted that reliance on saviors atrophies our ability to imagine collective responses to common challenges. Spade writes, "Part of the reason our dream of a savior government is so compelling is that it is hard for us to imagine a world where we meet core human needs through systems that are based on principles of collective self-determination rather than coercion." Our aim should be to develop social solutions to social problems. Our aim should be to build it, together, rather than hope that the haves will share with the have-nots. The safety of the commons cannot be secured in individual dwelling spaces. We have to leave home. Building a common justice means walking out of your front door."

"Baldwin always insisted that his ancestors built this country with their bare hands, and that gave him a permanent right to claim this place as his own."

"Engagement with the past is not an option, because simply to engage with the past-"to know whence you came,"in Baldwin's words-is to shake the foundations of a society that would rather forget than remember."

"In 1963, for every hundred dollars of wealth held by white families, Black families held approximately five dollars of wealth. In 2016, that number had risen to nearly ten dollars of wealth for black families, but the economic crash of 2020-2021 associated with the coronavirus pandemic sent that number crashing downward again."

"The Yale researchers put it this way: "Racial economic inequality is a foundational feature of the United States, yet many Americans appear oblivious to it." Baldwin, ever the prophet, said to the crowd in 1963, "We will use every weapon in our power to force this on the attention of the American Republic, which unluckily, I have to say, has its conscience mainly in its pocket book."

"Today, white families "are equally likely to have zero wealth as they are to be millionaires." Black families, however, are twenty times more likely to have zero wealth or negative wealth (meaning they carry more debts than assets) than to be millionaires. Latinx families are fourteen times more likely to carry zero wealth or negative wealth than to b millionaires."

"Baldwin wanted us to deal with our pain, lest we be destroyed by our hatred. This radical moral challenge was forged in the fire of his mother's love for him and his love for her. Mother and son were, in the end, inseparable. Perhaps Baldwin's most radical conviction was his belief that we are all, in the end, inseparable."

[Cameron Merrill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like many of the key leaders of the Black Freedom Movement, James Baldwin has become a renewed figure of interest the past few years. His name appears frequently in the stream of anti-racism resources, and his books and poetry have reappeared in bestseller lists, recommended readings, and social media influencer profiles.

Part of the struggle with this new wave of anti-racist resourcing is that you find two broad types: those books and resources that are focused on structural actions you can take to actively practice anti-racism in daily life, and historically-driven explorations on anti-Blackness’s sources to see how we can imagine the possibilities for undoing it. Books about key leaders in the freedom movement have tended to fall toward the latter: exploring their life, times, and teachings for extractable lessons that can give us new insight today.

McGhee and Hollowell have done something quite different here, something that is both in between these two types and altogether new. The project began with them reading Baldwin’s writings together, and then became them writing together with Baldwin—specifically, writing prayers with Baldwin. From that foundation—unique in the wider world of Baldwin scholarship—and in response to the ongoing realities of Black death and White violence, they realized that they had to write more with Baldwin, to let his writing and his voice shape a moral demand to each of us.

One of the distinct features of this book is the way that McGhee and Hollowell match Baldwin’s intensity of address. Over and over again, they are quite clear: they are speaking to you. If you think that what Baldwin is saying or arguing isn’t about you, it is. Each chapter is constructed to first convict, and then to help us as readers from conviction to action, with concrete steps to work for justice in your own neighborhoods that are both meaningful, costly, and possible. Their writing is direct, candid, and sincere, even while they avoid tactics of shame or judgmentalism. You can’t read without feeling their conviction and being convicted yourself.

While the authors don’t belabor Baldwin’s biography, they also don’t shy away from talking frankly about him, his complicated life, and his own shortcomings. In their chapter on sex and identity, they candidly claim that we too quickly focus on Baldwin’s own sexual identity without inspecting our own. Over and over again, Baldwin teaches us to interrogate our desires—not his alone. And yet Baldwin often overlooked or ignored gender dynamics in his own time, continually ignoring women like Ida E. Lewis even while literally sitting across the table from her.

This book and all that it offers to the ongoing work for liberation, justice, and Black freedom cannot be overstated. Maybe you’re like me, and your shelves are already full of anti-racism books, and you’re afraid you have little to show for it. But I assure you, there is room for one more—a guide that gives you an unflinching look into the mirror, with tangible, hopeful actions to guide us toward a better future.

We have much to learn with and from Baldwin, and as McGhee and Hollowell show us, Baldwin helps open a door toward the New Jerusalem—a door that must open both ways, a door to which no single person can hold the key. A door that we either want to open, or we which don’t—there can be no other kind of commitment.

[Elizabeth Lester-Abdalla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hollowell and McGhee expertly weave together Baldwin's life and words with challenges to act to address the violence against Black Americans in our society today. The strength of this book is the specificity of its focus on Baldwin and the moral clarity with which he wrote and spoke in a way that is universally applicable to our lives today. It offers further food for thought and opportunities to engage with Baldwin for those who have worn out his texts over and over, while also inviting those who have never heard of James Baldwin to dive in and appreciate the author and his work. It is clear that this duo has been doing this for a long time as they have skillfully honed the blend of lessons, reflections, and challenges into this remarkable book. A must-read for all. And in so doing, may we all find the courage to change within each one of us.

[Nick DiColandrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is a very good telling of how to interpret Baldwin’s legacy of his works into his meanings behind them. I found the insight and lessons drawn out by the authors to be incredibly enlightening and forceful.

However, the book is weighed down with over arching personal opinions ranging from pop culture to generalizations on history. Now that’s not to say the authors are wrong in their assertions. Instead the book could have been longer on the research behind those events that then led to better understanding of Baldwin’s passion to address them - in his day or in ours.

Instead the book reads too much like a long blog post, which I imagine the old website it is birthed from shares.

It’s a good read with some excellent nuggets of wisdom and sobering personal self reflection. However much is left to be desired in effort and substance.

[Joshua L. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked that this book took the very direct approach as advocated by James Baldwin. The reality is that "the road to h*ll is paved with good intentions" and this book provides the a path away from a doomed fate--if folks act. Unlike many books on similar subject matter, throughout the chapters, the authors offer multiple ways to live up to Baldwin's radical challenge. Any one who finishes reading this book will have to ask themselves very simply whether they mean what they say, or live in the reality that they don't. By eschewing the convenience of cognitive dissonance, this is a book every American should read.

[Hayley · Rating 5 out of 5]

An EXCEPTIONAL book that EVERYONE should read!!!

[Dom · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m not the target audience but it has James Baldwin in it so I had to read.