The Evidence of Things Not Seen: Reissued Edition

by James Baldwin

Once under suspicion, and so dreadful a suspicion, everything the person does is intolerably suspect—beginning, perhaps, with his intolerable assumption that he has any right to be born. It is much, much simpler, after all, and more considerate, for the accused to agree, at once, to be guilty. With this agreement, we are released from the ordeal of imposing or suspending judgment.

In any case, the male cannot bear very much humiliation; and he really cannot bear it, it obliterates him. All men know this about each other, which is one of the reasons that men can treat each other with such a vile, relentless, and endlessly inventive cruelty. Also, however, it must be added, with such depthless respect and love, conveyed, mainly, by grunts and blows.

A pound or a mark or a franc or a dollar or a diamond—or, even, a barrel of oil—does not, in an African village, have the meaning it acquires on the stock exchange. (Just as my ancestors did not have, in their village, the meaning their descendants were to acquire on the stock exchange.)

It is terribly boring to have to say it—again—but it is the White flight and not the Black arrival that alters, or demolishes, property values.

A high-risk area is intolerably expensive because the money spent by the ghetto never returns to the ghetto.

Wealth is not the same thing as affluence. Wealth, that is, is not the power to buy, but the power to dictate the terms of that so magical marketplace—or, at the very least, to influence those terms.

It is hard to imitate a people whose existence appears, mainly, to be made tolerable by their bottomless gratitude that they are not, thank heaven, you.

The Western world understood the German Chancellor’s need for Lebensraum very well and did nothing to thwart it until his living space interfered with their living space.

It is absolutely impossible for Authority or bureaucracy to scent danger as swiftly as does the menaced human being. Authority can scent danger only to itself.

For you, or for me, for example, the missing child distorts, totally, the universe, but, for Authority, it is a statistic and, for bureaucracy, a detail.

On the assumption, then, that Authority, in Atlanta, is Black, it could be assumed by that private and collective memory, precisely, which registers that it was not only bought or kidnapped, but sold; that Black people were indifferent to the fate of the children, and responded, when they did, less out of a concern for the children than a concern for the continued commercial viability of the city too busy to hate.

When I first arrived in Atlanta, I knew nothing of this meeting. Then, I encountered so many people who had not been there that I realized that this meeting must have taken place.

The poor do not exist for others, except as an inconvenience or a threat or an economic or sometimes missionary or sometimes genuinely moral opportunity. The poor ye have with you always; indeed, but never, in the main, to be seen, and never, certainly, as we should know by now, to be heard.

Black policemen were another matter. We used to say, “If you just must call a policeman”—for we hardly ever did—“for God’s sake, try to make sure it’s a White one.” A Black policeman could completely demolish you. He knew far more about you than a White policeman could and you were without defenses before this Black brother in uniform whose entire reason for breathing seemed to be his hope to offer proof that, though he was Black, he was not Black like you.

Thus, for example, these present days, to describe a person, or group of persons, as leftists, guerrillas, or terrorists is to dismiss their claim to human attention: we are not compelled to think of them at all anymore, except as the vermin that must be destroyed.

The White man, someone told me, discovered the Cross by way of the Bible, but the Black man discovered the Bible by way of the Cross.

When I began to think about it, I realized that I had been doing what every writer, unconsciously, is always doing: a writer is never listening to what is being said, he is never listening to what he is being told. He is listening to what is not being said, he is listening to what he is not being told, which means that he is trying to discover the purpose of the communication.

I try to tell the truth because it is simpler and more sanitary—and infinitely less calisthenic—than trying to remember where you said you were last night.)