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

by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

What do you do when you have lost faith in the place you call home? That wasn’t quite the right way to put it: I never really had faith in the United States in the strongest sense of the word. I hoped that one day white people here would finally leave behind the belief that they mattered more. But what do you do when this glimmer of hope fades, and you are left with the belief that white people will never change—that the country, no matter what we do, will remain basically the same?

A moral reckoning is upon us, and we have to decide, once and for all, whether or not we will truly be a multiracial democracy.

The willingness of so many of our fellows to toss aside any semblance of commitment to democracy—to embrace cruel and hateful policies—exposes the idea of America as an outright lie.

Baldwin wanted Kennedy to see what was at the root of all of our troubles: that, for the most part, human beings refused to live honestly with themselves and were all too willing to hide behind the idols of race and ready to kill in order to defend them. His insight remains relevant today because the moral reckoning we face bears the markings of the original sin of the nation.

Not everything is lost. Responsibility cannot be lost, it can only be abdicated. If one refuses abdication, one begins again.

But the lie’s most pernicious effect when it comes to our history is to malform events to fit the story whenever America’s innocence is threatened by reality. When measured against our actions, the story we have told ourselves about America being a divinely sanctioned nation called to be a beacon of light and a moral force in the world is a lie.

Taken as a whole, then, the lie is the mechanism that allows, and has always allowed, America to avoid facing the truth about its unjust treatment of black people and how it deforms the soul of the country. The lie cuts deep into the American psyche. It secures our national innocence in the face of the ugliness and evil we have done.

Slavery would be banished from view or seen as a mistake instead of a defining institution of systemic cruelty in pursuit of profit. That history would fortify our national identity, and any attempt to confront the lie itself would be sabotaged by the fear that we may not be who we say we are. For white people in this country, “America” is an identity worth protecting at any cost.

“Ignorance allied with power is the most ferocious enemy of justice.”

This is the real American dilemma: acknowledging the moral effects of a way of life emptied of genuine meaning because of a lie that denies the things we have done.

We are told every day not to believe what we see happening all around us or what we feel in the marrow of our bones.

But for some reason love is the most frightful thing; something that the human being is most in need of and dreads most.

I wish I had learned that lesson: that voting, as much as it is a democratic duty, for black people, can also be a means to buy some time when the choice is as stark as it was between Carter and Reagan.

As with Reagan in 1980, with Trump white America reached for an image—a Hollywood-generated fantasy—on which to project their hatreds and fears. In this sense, Trump is best seen as a child of Reagan.

Since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, we have witnessed a 500 percent increase in the number of people in America’s prisons and jails. More than two million Americans are incarcerated, and 67 percent of that population are people of color. Our history corrupts the soul in such a way that we have stood by in relative silence as this happened.

Every day Trump insists on the belief that white people matter more than others in this country. He has tossed aside any pretense of a commitment to a multiracial democracy. He has attacked congressmen and women of color, even telling four congresswomen “to go back to the countries they came from”; scapegoated people seeking a better life at our borders; and appealed explicitly to white resentment. On top of the racist rhetoric, his judicial appointments and his policies around voting rights, healthcare, environmental regulations, immigration law, and education disproportionately harm communities of color. In every way imaginable, Trump has intensified the cold civil war that engulfs the country.

We should have learned the lesson by now that changing laws or putting our faith in politicians to do the right thing are not enough.