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

by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

We have those who are desperately holding on to a vision of the United States that has never really made sense, at least to me, and those who are fighting for the birth of a new America. But, even in the fight, the divisions in the country feel old and worn. Today feels like we are fighting old ghosts that have the country by the throat. In his reflections on Dr. King, Baldwin wrote that we were witnessing the death of segregation as we knew it, and the question was how long and how expensive the funeral would be. If only he knew. We are still in that funeral procession. To be sure, a world is dying, but we have been slow-walking to put it in the grave, and the costs are mounting. How many of our children are languishing in failing schools? How many of our loved ones are rotting in prisons and jails? How many are breaking their backs trying to make ends meet only to fall deeper and deeper into holes full of economic quicksand? How many have we put in the ground? And how many souls have been darkened because of the corrosive effects of America’s original sin? Something has died. But the ghosts will not leave us alone. True freedom, for all Americans, requires that we confront them directly. Maybe tell a different, better story about how we arrived here. Tell the ghosts to go on and rest; we’ve got this now. All of which requires that we work even harder for a better world; that we put aside the old fears and the histories that justify them in order to finally bury that old ...