Essay about “Going to Meet the Man”; the Black Man Inside the Redneck

Throughout the entire essay, Baldwin’s rage seems to keep building up, specifically in the paragraphs where Baldwin is shown extreme prejudice. This is especially obvious when he walks into a diner with a friend to grab a bite to eat. The man at the counter rudely asks them what they want. Baldwin replies stridently that they want a hamburger and coffee. With this the man simply states that they do not serve Negroes. After a few more mocking comments Baldwin and his friend leave the diner. Baldwin simply went into another restaurant and sat down until the waitress came over (70). He describes his rage towards whites as he describes the waitress. He states, “I hated her for her white face, and for her great astounded, frightened eyes. I felt that if she found a black man so frightening I would make her fright worth-while” (71). The waitress, almost sounding apologetic, told him that Negroes were not served at this restaurant. This statement made Baldwin feel “colder and more murderous than ever” (71). He wanted to wrap his hands around her neck, and choke her. After realizing that she would never come close enough to do this Baldwin throws a water mug towards her head. The shattering of the mug snaps Baldwin out of his trance, and he sprints for the door (71-2). All of his pent up anger exploded.

James Baldwin argues that “such Frustrations, so long endured, is driving many strong, admirable men and women whose only crime is color

Baldwin uses the experiences he faced in New Jersey and the personal relationship with his father to show ethos throughout his essay. At one point in his essay, Baldwin finds himself in New Jersey where segregation still exist. “I learned in New Jersey…one was never looked at but was simply at the mercy of the reflexes the color of one’s skin caused in other people” (68). Here Baldwin expresses how circumstances in New Jersey were like at the time, but also portrays the way people were viewed based on the color of their skin. Baldwin later goes on to mention the year he spent in New Jersey, was the year in which “[he] first contracted some dread, chronic disease” (70). This “disease” Baldwin contracted is not an actual disease, but more of a way in which he begins to feel and see the world around him differently. The disease Baldwin is referring to throughout his entire essay is bitterness. Living in New Jersey caused Baldwin to gain the sense of bitterness that his father had lived with during his life. Baldwin’s bitterness comes from the way he was specifically treated in New Jersey and how he allowed that feeling to affect his behaviors. Baldwin specifically mentions the moment in New Jersey where the white waitress approaches him at the restaurant stating, “We don’t serve Negroes here” (71). At this point we begin to see Baldwin as he acts out in violence by stating, “I wanted her to come close enough for me to get her neck

The idea of relating public and private events in Baldwin’s own experiences is instituted later in the essay in order to transition from narrative to analysis. Baldwin started telling a story about when he lived in New Jersey before the time of his father’s death. He talked about his personal treatment by white people in the south, a first hand account of the racism of that particular era. He learned of the hostility of the Jim Crow Laws inflicted on African Americans during that time period. His story was analogous to nearly all African Americans at that point. When Baldwin lived in New Jersey, he became exposed to the racism of the south that occurred in restaurants and diners. During one of those experiences he wrote, “I

Many tragic events happen in this short story that allows the reader to create an assumption for an underlying theme of racism. John Baldwin has a way of telling the story of Sonny’s drug problem as a tragic reality of the African American experience. The reader has to depict textual evidence to prove how the lifestyle and Harlem has affected almost everything. The narrator describes Harlem as “... some place I didn’t want to go. I certainly didn’t want to know how it felt. It filled everything, the people, the houses, the music, the dark, quicksilver barmaid, with menace; and this menace was their reality” (Baldwin 60). Another key part in this story is when the narrator and Sonny’s mother is telling the story of a deceased uncle. The mother explains how dad’s brother was drunk crossing the road and got hit by a car full of drunk white men. Baldwin specifically puts emphasis on the word “white” to describe the men for a comparison to the culture of dad and his brother.

The Autobiography of An Ex-Colored Man depicts the narrator as a liminal character. Beginning with an oblivious knowledge of race as a child, and which racial group he belonged, to his well knowing of “white” and “black” and the ability to pass as both. On the account of liminality, the narrator is presenting himself as an outsider. Because he is both a “white” and “black” male, he does not fit in with either racial group. In the autobiography of an Ex-colored man, James Weldon Johnson uses double consciousness to show the narrators stance as a person that gives up his birthright for the “privilege of whiteness”.

The text continues with Baldwin warning his nephew about the struggle he is going to endure for just being born black and nothing else. Also telling him that he must survive for his children and his children’s children. He warns him, telling him that this country will set him up for failure and that they will try to control where he could go, what he could do, and how he could do it. He continues to articulate that he must stay true to himself because no matter how much he tries to resemble white people they will never accept him. He later states how corrupt the white mind is, for example, he says, “They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it. They have had to believe for so many years, and for innumerable reasons, that black men are inferior to white men. Many of them, indeed, know better, as you will discover, people find it very difficult to act on what they

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

James Baldwin in “Notes of a Native Son” writes about the death of his father and his struggle in America during segregation. He also reveals that he didn’t have a very good relationship with his ill father. Throughout the essay there is a repetition of bitterness. Also, Baldwin’s experiences reveal his purpose for writing the essay. One passage that is especially revealing is on page 222 which says, “When he died I had been away from home for a little over a year. In that year I had had time to become aware of the meaning of all my father’s bitter warnings, had discovered the secret of his proudly pursed lips and rigid carriage: I had discovered the weight of white people in the world. I saw that this had been for my ancestors and now would be for me an awful thing to live with and that the bitterness which had helped to kill my father could also kill me.” This passage reveals how Baldwin’s relationship with his father, and his father’s warnings help demonstrate how hatred can cause negative effects on African Americans.

Baldwin, however, describes his father as being a very black-like “African tribal chieftain” (64) who was proud of his heritage despite the chains it locked upon him. He is shown to be one with good intentions, but one who never achieved the positive outcome intended. His ultimate downfall was his paranoia such that “the disease of his mind allowed the disease of his body to destroy him” (66). Baldwin relates the story of a white teacher with good intentions and his father’s objection to her involvement in their lives because of his lack of trust for any white woman. His father’s paranoia even extended to Baldwin’s white high school friends. These friends, although they could be kind, “would do anything to keep a Negro down” (68), and they believed that the “best thing to do was to have as little to do with them as possible” (68). Thus, Baldwin leaves the reader with the image of his father as an unreasonable man who struggled to blockade white America from his life and the lives of his children to the greatest extent of his power. Baldwin then turns his story to focus on his own experience in the world his father loathed and on his realization that he was very much like his father.

Today, racist sororities and fraternities on college campuses have grown to be a public crisis. Recently at the University of Oklahoma, the Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) fraternity released a video including racial slurs and lynching of African Americans (Glionna et al.). This activity shows that there is racism among Americans even in the twenty-first century. There are many other publicized cases involving racism in American society which proves that racism is not just an issue of the past. The past contains elements of racial misconduct that can be explained by James Baldwin and Brent Staples. Baldwin, a preacher and published writer, writes “Notes of a Native Son” to emphasize his experiences and actions towards racism of a different time (50-71). Staples, a reporter and columnist who wrote “Just Walk on By: Black Men in Public Spaces”, describes difficulties and stereotypes from the nation and how he suffered through, yet, another difficult time in American history (394-97). Both have a way with words in describing past racial issues. But in comparison of Baldwin and Staples, one can see that the type of racism they experience, their age and maturity, and their response to racism differ entirely by noting the different time eras of racism that each encounters.

In paragraphs 7 and 8, Baldwin alludes to his hostility towards white people. Baldwin supposes that there is an immense distinction between being the first white person to be seen by black people and to be the first black person to be seen by white people. Baldwin asserts that it is not fair that a white man can come to a new

The article that I will be examines is “Booty call sex, violence, and images of black masculinity” by Patricia Hill Collins. The author has examined the black experience and how the media misrepresents black men; these effects are still felt in the present. Collins was using different forms of media such as sport, film, and historic events. To help the readers to learn where hyper sexuality, violet, and criminal stereotypes of black male come from.

Baldwin opens his argument acknowledging the distortion of segregation for the segregationists. According to Baldwin, people who, since birth, have been taught to think a certain way towards the African American race. “The white South African or Mississippi sharecropper or Alabama sheriff has at bottom a system of reality which compels them really to believe when they face the Negro that this

There is a harsh reality of racism, no matter what some choose to believe. James Baldwin says, " when you try and stand up, and look the world in the face, like you had a right to be here, when you do that without knowing the result of it, you have attacked the entire power structure of the western world.(Blay,2017)" His writing is raw, honest and truthful ideas of topics that make people feel uncomfortable,such as Going to Meet the Man. A memorable yet disturbing short story that spoke volumes because, of the horror shown in human nature. But most importantly, this story's’ highlighted moment is the lynching , and this is where it is nearly jaw dropping to readers because of the graphic details Baldwin included.