Beau Fly Jones Summary

Following this in his book, Baldwin clarifies a few more of his ideas. He mentions how the separation of the races, predominantly the view of any one as being above another in any context, is a recipe for

The differences between the world then and now are that there are most definitely more blacks now then there was in the period when Baldwin wrote the essay for starters. Baldwin experience a lot of discrimination since “the first day [he] arrived, and the children shout Neger! Neger! as [he] walk[ed] along the streets. As of today you may not encounter that as common as it was before as the people there probably didn’t see black people as often. The society has been greatly altered since then and the coming to accept the presence of blacks, though there is a few still that don’t. Next there is also the evolution of black history in white lives now as Cole said he I sat down to [eat] lunch at the Römerhof restaurant one afternoon—that day, all the customers and staff were white—the music playing overhead was Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody.” The world is different from when Baldwin wrote the essay because of the fact blacks then were not allowed the

Hatred for white society was a strong theme among the African American community during the 1950s. These emotions were conveyed through different platforms of the time, ranging from art and music, to articles and books. But James Baldwin, a popular African American writer during this time period, does not obsess over this subject that was so passionately conveyed by so many people like him. Instead of preaching about his hatred for white America, Baldwin utilizes his story of his childhood as well as his early adulthood to illustrate the destructive nature of the African Americans society’s hatred for white society in the very well known essay, “Notes of a Native Son.”

Baldwin determines that violence and racial separatism are not acceptable solutions for achieving “power”. Baldwin believes that black people will only be able to achieve lasting influence in America if they love and accept white people. In contrast, writing 52 years after Baldwin, Coats tells his own son to “struggle” but not

King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” discusses the topic of segregation and just and unjust laws, whereas Baldwin in his “Notes of a Native Son” places an emphasis on relationships, particularly the relationship between his father and him. Additionally, Baldwin discusses the impact of racism on the lives of African Americans during that time. Although these essays are dated back over fifty years ago; the topics discussed in them are still very common today.

Personal stories and descriptions of major events are narrated throughout James Baldwin’s works as he analyzes the nature of the relationship between white and black America. The marriage of narration and analysis are especially evident in Baldwin’s essay, “Notes of a Native Son.” As Baldwin describes his father and their relationship until his father’s death, he simultaneously comments about the relationship between white and black America. Baldwin compares the events of his experience with concurrent American events to conclude about the nature of his personal relationships and the relationship between races; namely, that one must come to accept the

Baldwin noticed countless connections amid Malcolm X and himself. Mutually Baldwin and Malcolm X were irritated, clever black men who by no means let white civilization off the catch. Both were not enthusiastic to linger for white culture to fix the Negro issue. This originated them in cooperation to become conscious that the central white society in America was not rather what they required to be a fraction of. Baldwin disagreed, like Malcolm X white culture in America had to take an excellent extended look at its individual times past. It must have been obligated to come to the reality of slavery and the chronological certainty of the prejudice aligned with blacks. He disputed like Malcolm, that white culture was not anything to imitate and that if the black race was to raise itself up, it would have to pick up itself out of the foremost society. The Civil Rights group was not about incorporation of blacks into white culture. It was about altering white culture by strengthening it to recognize what it had put through to the blacks.

In the secular black Jeremiads, there is a hopeful tone that America will be the nation that it is destined to be. Baldwin focuses on three key aspects of the traditional black Jeremiad, hopefulness and persuasion of decline. Baldwin initates the Jeremiad with reflection on what this christian nation is and if we do not “all of us will abruptly stop living” (PG). He mourns the state of the nation whose obsessed with the “negro problem” (Baldwin, PG). Baldwin’s hopeful tone emerges as

An article in the New York Times newspaper depicted this problem in which it talked about the merged labor movement, which is a part of NAACP, not stopping widespread segregation and discrimination in unions. (Union Aides Rebut) The method of using the American legal system also has much irony within it based on the fact that it is partially at fault for separating the races, and is controlled by people who did it. The NAACP even with flaws seen by Baldwin, do not believe that all Whites are evil and this can be seen in how they’re a part of NAACP’s infrastructure. This point is were Baldwin confers with them on the fact that they should be creating a nation where Blacks and Whites are equal because “[Baldwin] did not care if White and Black people married” (Baldwin 327). From this point one can interpret the fact that Baldwin agrees with the overall goal of the NAACP to unify the two races. This future they look for is what he wants and sits well with Baldwin even though their methods are slow.

Jensen (2005), argues how people have a discriminating inclination on how they see history. When history is being used to make an ostentatious gesture of the past, it becomes vital. Jensen, (2005) also refers to the “new White People’s Burden,” (p. 93) as they understand that they are the problem and need to face what reality really means, and act based on that understanding. In essence, Baldwin wanted to help his nephew survive as a black man in America, with a more sympathetic concept of racial tautness.

Yet, what made Baldwin so much like his predecessors was his desire to understand what it meant to be black in America. How do they define themselves? How can they self-determine a better future?

“I had never thought of myself as an essayist,” wrote James Baldwin, who was finishing his novel Giovanni’s Room while he worked on what would become one of the great American essays. Against a violent historical background, Baldwin recalls his deeply troubled relationship with his father and explores his growing awareness of himself as a black American. Some today may question the relevance of the essay in our brave new “post-racial” world, though Baldwin considered the essay still relevant in 1984 and, had he lived to see it, the election of Barak Obama may not have changed his mind. However you view the racial politics, the prose is undeniably hypnotic,

Jamaica Kinkaid and James Baldwin have different approaches to reaching their end goal of regaining the upper hand that white people had taken advantage of. Baldwin’s strategy in his text was pursuing higher education, not to mention from an unlikely source- a “white woman” (5). Even then, his father was hesitant and totally against his child receiving instruction from a white woman. He assumes that

During an era of hostility towards African Americans, James Baldwin continues to believe that the oppressor and the oppressed share the same values such as belief, or even reality. Various scholars have continued these thoughts with similar ideas. Elise Miller wrote about a passage seen in Baldwin’s text “a Jewish American, eating his wife’s afterbirth” which “made his wife and child a part of himself.” (625) This is an example of cultural variation and their inherited traditions. African Americans are brought up with different traditions and lack in culture. Baldwin expresses that African Americans are “bequeathed … at … birth” (20) meaning the burden of skin colour disadvantages African Americans at birth. What society forgets to realise, is that between skin colours are historically unique and values and beliefs are different. The oppressed and the oppressor are not bound in the same society since there are two terms for the dominant and the less dominant figures. African Americans will always be locked in a “cage of reality” (Baldwin, p. 20) limiting their potential from the minute they are born. A Freudian lens on the oppressor sharing the same values and beliefs as the oppressed reveals dishonest external thoughts and sexual tensions between the two factions. As a society, we need to comprehend the fact that there are various cultures, all varying in values and belief. Unless we begin to accept new

James Baldwin’s essay, “Down At The Cross” emphasizes the importance of treating all people equally rather than adopting and perpetuating racially hierarchal mentalities. Baldwin describes the complicated dynamic he had with his father growing up, in the context of this human thirst for hierarchical dominance that is depicted in Baldwin’s father. Baldwin suggests multiple times that he and his father’s relationship is dysfunctional as a result of his father’s infatuation with having power over him. A similar infatuation with domination and power is also notably prominent in the people who have racially oppressed Baldwin’s father in his lifetime. Not only does this mentality demonstrate hypocrisy, but it also demonstrates the endless cycle of oppression that occurs when one person or group of people assert morally unwarranted dominance over another. In his letter, Down At The Cross, Baldwin refers to his father as an emblem of a thought paradigm that, in a racial context, is superficially appealing but ultimately ineffectual.