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

by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

Trump’s followers are all too often consumed with a debilitating anxiety about the current trajectory of the country, as they are told repeatedly by Fox News and in Trump rallies that America has been overrun by those who don’t look like them. That anxiety seeps into every nook and cranny of our politics and demands everyone’s attention. We are told constantly we must remedy this anxiety: Who is speaking for the white working class? Who represents rust-belt America? Who is talking to the so-called forgotten American? Every time I hear the question asked, especially by white liberals, I sink deeper into a kind of depression or rage, because these are just nice ways of saying that white people matter more than others. Nice ways of saying that the only way we can defeat Trumpism is to leave behind, or put aside, concerns about justice with regard to black and brown people or women or the LGBTQ community because all of that is just bad identity politics. As I watch the vitriol of Trump’s rallies, listen to the deafening silence of Republicans in the face of his racist demagoguery, and navigate my own anxieties about living in a place where white hatreds and fears are at a fever pitch, I can’t help but think, as Jimmy did after the disaster of 1968, of an elsewhere, a refuge to get myself together, because all of this shit can drive you mad. The work we must do of seeing ourselves and America anew can seem overwhelming in the face of our demands to respond to these day-to-day a...