“It is a complex fate to be an American.”
Following the Introduction, the very first words the reader comes across belong not to James Baldwin, but rather the American author (like Baldwin) who expatriated himself to Europe (like Baldwin) and is a major figure in one of the great transformative periods of American literature (like Baldwin). Unlike Baldwin, however, Henry James was privileged white son of a successful banker whose brother, William, is as famous in the field of psychology as Henry is to literature. One doesn’t open an essay with a quote from another writer—especially as the first sentence rather than as prefatory material—without it meaning a great deal. The fact that these who shared so much—including a name—while occupying absolutely the extreme ends of what it means to be America should be noted. Baldwin proceeds to write about issues that are personal—such as homosexuality—and cultural. And though race is a chasm across which it would have been impossible for these two men to cross at certain points in American history, Baldwin proceeds to link the history or privileged white American to that dispossessed black homosexual expatriates to Europe.
The great American illusion [is] that our state is a state to be envied by other people; we are powerful, and we are rich. But our power makes us uncomfortable and we handle it very ineptly.
Baldwin dances around the concept that the American Dream has over time devolved into not the American Nightmare, but the American Illusion. Many Americans—among them the richest and most powerful in the country—actually allow this illusion to transform into a delusion that one would suspect could never actually be bought by the rest of the country and yet continues to be bought and consumed every day: they are victims. The dream of success in the form of a good-paying job, a house to call one’s own and the right to the belief that anyone could grow up to become the leader of the country has been so powerfully ingrained into the country’s consciousness that, Baldwin suggests, the very fact that many cannot attain the lower-end of this dream much less become President leaves them feeling cheated. Baldwin immediately make this cult of victimhood seem every bit as empty as it is with an anecdote of flying over Georgia and looking down onto the land men were lynched for no other reason than that they happened to be born with darker pigment than the majority.
“I remember when conductors on streetcars wore pistols and had police powers.”
One of the reasons to dive into this book is that it presents a history that many African-American children today don’t know and that most white Americans never knew. The colorful cast of characters with whom Baldwin comes into contact have much to say on issues related to the history of prejudice and discrimination in America. The point is not to further engender the cult of self-victimization. Baldwin does not share these anecdotes from witnesses to history to stimulate pity nor do these people share them for that reason. The point is to remind people that all around them—much more so then, but still even today—are people who actually lived through acts of violent discrimination. Americans are a great big history book waiting to be opened.
“At lilac evening I walked with every muscle aching among the lights of 27th and Welton in the Denver colored section, wishing I were a Negro, feeling that the best the white world had offered was not enough ecstasy for me, not enough life, joy, kicks, darkness, music, not enough night”
Baldwin quotes from Kerouac’s Beat novel sensation On the Road and immediately offers a terse review that could well be applied to just about any other passage from this troublesome mess masquerading as a novel: “this is absolute nonsense, of course, objectively considered, and offensive nonsense at that.” It is, at heart, also an example of the very type of self-victimization that pervades among the privileged which in this case means about 90% of those Americans at the time not living in any “colored section” of the city. But then Baldwin takes an unexpected left turn, recognizing that while perhaps Kerouac’s sense of being a victim expressed in this passage would not play well if read out loud on stage at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, it would resonate with someone else. Pain is pain, Baldwin is suggesting, and part of the complex fate of being American is that we all suffer it in one way or another. Though, naturally, some much less often than others.
