Begin Again

A lot of the time when I think about society, I look at it in terms of a huge machine, some of the pieces of which are individual humans.  I think about flows of matter or money or data, gradients of incentive, and self-reinforcing causal mechanisms.  It seems dangerous to personify society.  Society is not a person.  Hell, even people aren't people when you look carefully enough, as any good buddhist, psychologist, or philosopher could tell you.  This ultimately machinic view of the world is important and useful in all sorts of cases, not least of which is preventing ourselves from tipping over into facile hope or debilitating fear.  As Deleuze put it, "There is no need to fear or hope, but only to look for new weapons".

Obviously, the ultimate view of reality is not the only one, nor is it the appropriate one in every case.  One thing it conspicuously lacks is any sort of moral viewpoint.  I give this preface to situate the type of thinking that is necessary for approaching Eddie S. Glaude Jr.'s sensitive and thoughtful intellectual biography of James Baldwin.  Glaude follows Baldwin in approaching the history of US race relations from an almost entirely moral perspective.  This means that neither is especially interested in exploring the political and economic causes and circumstances that led to slavery, its abolition, or the various more or less aborted attempts our country has made to reckon with this history.  What they want to ask is the simple moral questions behind all that history -- how could anyone do something like this!?  How could anyone keep doing it, in one form or another, for 400 years!?  And finally, how can any of us live with this level of hate for this long!?  In a sense, these questions are ultimately rhetorical.  You cannot answer them with an analysis of causes, nor quell them with a new set of progressive policies.  Glaude's idea is that you can only let the heavy weight of the question sink in till you can't stand it anymore.  And then you try to begin again, as a new person and a new country, with a new clarity about the problem and the goal.

The central trope of the book is that the problem we face today is analogous to the problem Baldwin faced after Medgar, Martin, and Malcolm were all shot.  How can you avoid despair when you realize that the country still can't lay its past to rest and live up to its image of itself, that it is still telling itself "the lie" as Baldwin put it?  Today, Trump and Charlottesville prompt the identical question.  This seems like it will never end.  It feels like we will keep endlessly fighting the same battle.  The fact that you can point to tangible progress in terms of the extent and depth of suffering created by racism, and might even see the Trump phenomena as the last gasp of White Power as it loses its demogrpahic grip on the country, is beside the point in this context.  It's clear that a large swath of our country has still not made any progress on the moral aspect of this question.  

As we reach this realization we find ourselves in a moment analogous to the poignant one Baldwin and King reached in 1968.  Less than a month before King was assassinated, Baldwin provided an introduction to a speech MLK made at a fundraiser in LA.  On the eve of his death, both Baldwin and MLK gave speeches to the effect that the civil rights movement was ultimately failing.  I found this extraordinary.  Having been taught to see MLK as more or less a superhero who obviously triumphed, I was amazed to read about his own, sadly final, assessment of the situation.  Of course, in a practical sense he was wrong -- the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts passed in 64-65 ended up making a big difference in lots of ways.  We rightfully celebrate MLK as a hero, not just a martyr.  But, even by the late 60's, it was clear that the movement was failing in a moral sense.  America was not able to stop, to look honestly at its history, to admit that what it had done was wrong, and to reach a moral epiphany to do better.  And that was ultimately both King and Baldwin's goal, to get us to see the hate that animates us and to turn towards love.  In this context, it's hard to see how we've progressed at all in the past 50, or even 150 years.  We tell ourselves a story of an ever more perfect union, but this hate still walks proud in broad daylight,  backed by all the power of dogs and guns and money.

Baldwin of course survived this moment to see all the disguised backpedaling of Nixon's southern strategy and Reagan's welfare queens confirm his moral analysis.  The latter half of the book examines his writing and state of mind as he confronted this "after times" in the last 20 years of his life.  If you are hoping to uncover a simple, feel-good solution that Baldwin came upon and that would apply analogously to our own moment, you have obviously not been following along.  Still, Glaude looks to his experience for some inspirations.  Baldwin gave up on trying to catalyze a moral reckoning in all of white America.  We can give up on trying to change the minds or compromise with Trump's core base.  Instead we can focus on organizing the power of what has now become the majority of this country that can see the problem.  Baldwin also spent a lot of time in Turkey during these years, a place that allowed him space to rest, recharge, and just put some of the rancor to the side for moments.  Glaude suggests that we also need an "elsewhere" that replenishes our reserves.  And finally, we can do what Baldwin never stopped doing, opening the book of history and looking honestly at the terror this country has again and again reigned down on anyone it doesn't consider white.  It's a hard book, but highly recommended.