Baldwin in conversation: love and black lives matter

With rising tensions surrounding racial inequality in the United States, and the national prominence of the Black Lives Matter Movement, it is hardly surprising that the works of James Baldwin have had a revival in popular culture and literature. Throughout his writings, Baldwin has advocated for Black Americans to play a specific role in redeeming the United States from its history of slavery, racial oppression and violence. This paper will begin by exploring Baldwin's argument that Black Americans must love, guide and engage white Americans, if racism is to be overcome. I will seek to answer the question, why does Baldwin feel that this responsibility can and should be asked of Black Americans? I will then engage Baldwin's conceptions of love and guidance with the writings of those who have both criticized and affirmed them. Audre Lorde, Derrick Bell and Juliette Hooker raise important concerns about the practicality Baldwin's formulations, and whether Baldwin places undue responsibility for overcoming racism on Black shoulders. However, Lawrie Balfour, George Shulman, Sean Kim Butorac and Christopher Lebron effectively defend Baldwin against these arguments. Ultimately, this paper will explore whether Baldwin's formulations of guidance and love offer effective methods for democratic change and will conclude that the Black Lives Matter should consider Baldwin's proposals.

BALDWIN IN CONVERSATION: LOVE AND BLACK LIVES MATTER by Nikila Venugopal A Senior Honors Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of The University of Utah In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Honors Degree in Bachelor of Science In Political Science Approved: ______________________________ Dr. Steven Johnston Thesis Faculty Supervisor _____________________________ Dr. Mark Button Chair, Department of Political Science _______________________________ Dr. Ella Myers Honors Faculty Advisor _____________________________ Dr. Sylvia D. Torti Dean, Honors College April 2018 Copyright © 2018 All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT With rising tensions surrounding racial inequality in the United States, and the national prominence of the Black Lives Matter Movement, it is hardly surprising that the works of James Baldwin have had a revival in popular culture and literature. Throughout his writings, Baldwin has advocated for Black Americans to play a specific role in redeeming the United States from its history of slavery, racial oppression and violence. This paper will begin by exploring Baldwin’s argument that Black Americans must love, guide and engage white Americans, if racism is to be overcome. I will seek to answer the question, why does Baldwin feel that this responsibility can and should be asked of Black Americans? I will then engage Baldwin’s conceptions of love and guidance with the writings of those who have both criticized and affirmed them. Audre Lorde, Derrick Bell and Juliette Hooker raise important concerns about the practicality Baldwin’s formulations, and whether Baldwin places undue responsibility for overcoming racism on Black shoulders. However, Lawrie Balfour, George Shulman, Sean Kim Butorac and Christopher Lebron effectively defend Baldwin against these arguments. Ultimately, this paper will explore whether Baldwin’s formulations of guidance and love offer effective methods for democratic change and will conclude that the Black Lives Matter should consider Baldwin’s proposals. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ii INTRODUCTION 1 BALDWIN AND THE ROLE OF THE BLACK AMERICAN AS A GUIDE 3 BALDWIN, LORDE AND THE ‘MASTER’S TOOLS’ 6 BALDWIN, BALFOUR AND SHULMAN 11 A UNIQUE KIND OF KNOWLEDGE 14 BALDWIN AND BELL 17 BALDWIN AND LOVE 18 LOVE, ANGER AND TRANSFORMATION 20 BALDWIN, HOOKER AND BLACK AGENCY 22 BALDWIN AND BLACK LIVES MATTER 27 CONCLUSION 33 REFERENCES 35 iii 1 INTRODUCTION The works of James Baldwin provide a stark depiction of an America that must either come to terms with its history of slavery, racial oppression and violence, or continue down a path of moral bankruptcy and self-destruction. In the 1960s, Baldwin’s writings were at the forefront of the Civil Rights Era, reflecting on the struggle between racism and equality, a fight Baldwin claimed would determine the fate of all Americans. When Baldwin died in 1987, he left behind an important contribution to the American literary canon, which focused on the experiences of Black Americans. Today, his writings remain relevant because they bear witness to the legacy of American racism. As national protests have erupted over police shootings of unarmed Black men in particular and the devaluation of Black persons in general, Baldwin’s warning of “the fire next time” has taken on an eerie urgency. The lasting power of Baldwin’s writings has been amplified by the continued pervasiveness of racism in society today. There has been a resurgence of interest in Baldwin in popular culture and political discourse. In 2017, BAFTA-winning and Oscar-nominated film I Am Not Your Negro brought Baldwin’s writings and ideas to theatres around the country. Journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates based his 2015 award-winning book, Between the World and Me, explicitly on Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time. Critics noted that Coates had taken up Baldwin’s mantle in his, “forensic, analytical, cold-eyed stare down of white moral innocence” (Dyson, 2015). Bryan Jenkins, director of Moonlight, described the 2016 Academy Award winning film as “the child of 'Giovanni's Room' and 'The Fire Next Time' (Timberg, 2017). National Book Award-winning author Jesmyn Ward paid homage to Baldwin in her 2016 anthology of essays on race in America, The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race. 2 Listing the many modern tributes to Baldwin led LA Times writer, Scott Timberg, to declare, “the African American author feels as central as he has since he landed on the cover of Time magazine in 1963.” It is undeniable that Baldwin’s ideas still find purchase in our political and cultural landscape. As movements like Black Lives Matter have brought increased attention to systemic racism, debate continues over how a history of slavery and oppression can be overcome in the United States. More specifically, discussion continues over the role of Black people in this struggle and whether Black Americans have a responsibility to guide, enlighten or otherwise engage white Americans. Is it necessary or appropriate to ask Blacks to do so? Or does this falsely place undue responsibility on Black persons for alleviating their own subjugation, while permitting oppressive white behavior? What can be properly asked of Black Americans in the struggle for equality, and what must, practically, be done? This paper will seek to clarify the role Baldwin assigns to Black people, which requires them to act as guides for white Americans as part of the anti-racist struggle. How does the idea of love shape this view of the Black American as a guide for white Americans? This paper brings Baldwin’s works into conversation with interlocutors who have both criticized and affirmed Baldwin’s conception of love and his formulation of the Black person as a guide. Though the writings of scholars such as Audre Lorde, Juliet Hooker and Derrick Bell raise legitimate challenges to Baldwin’s most contentious ideas, others such as Christopher Lebron, Lawrie Balfour and George Shulman have, within Baldwin’s conceptions, located possibilities for real democratic redemption. Ultimately, this paper will ask, what is the relationship between Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Baldwin’s arguments? Could BLM incorporate some of Baldwin’s 3 ideas? More specifically, does Baldwin’s conception of love and his call to Black Americans to provide moral guidance offer resources to anti-racist activism today? BALDWIN AND THE ROLE OF THE BLACK AMERICAN AS A GUIDE Baldwin envisions Black Americans playing a very specific role in their struggle to achieve freedom and equality. To understand this allocation of responsibility, it is important to recognize the profound challenges Baldwin believes this struggle faces. For Baldwin, white Americans have always positioned themselves in society in relation to the inferiority they assigned to Blacks. This is significant because Baldwin believes the entire conception of “white” identity is predicated upon the subjugation of Black Americans. Baldwin explains, America became white - the people who, as they claim, “settled the country became white - because of the necessity of denying the Black presence, and justifying the Black subjugation…White men - from Norway, for example, where they are Norwegians - became white: by slaughtering the cattle, poisoning the wells, torching the houses, massacring Native Americans, raping Black women. (Baldwin, 1984) As a nation, the United States grew from the roots of slavery, racial oppression and inequality. Baldwin argues that at the heart of the issue of racial inequality lies the refusal of whites to come to terms with the ways in which the concept of the “Negro” has been woven into the fabric of American society and history. The identity of white Americans was forged in relation to the racist principle that Blacks are less than human. As an example of this phenomenon, Baldwin explains, “the white man’s masculinity depends 4 on a denial of the masculinity of blacks” (Baldwin, 1993, p. 77). White men try to assert their full maleness to themselves by assigning a lack of masculinity to Black men and believing that they stand in contrast. The projection of inferiority onto Black people made them into the Other against which white identity was defined as superior. Whites are in the midst of a crisis, as Baldwin sees it, because they “have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it” (Baldwin, 1993, p. 5). Currently, white Americans live in a constant state of denial of their complicity in the subjugation of their Black neighbors. However, when whites are brought face to face with the realities of American racial inequality, as Baldwin argues they must be, they are compelled to choose either to maintain the identities they have built by accepting that America does not provide freedom for all, or to expand the principles of democracy while demolishing their entire way of thinking about themselves. Baldwin contends that whites are unable to make, or even face, this choice, and so they actively work towards being ignorant of the problem at all, chipping away at their humanity and morality in the process. For whites to choose to remain ignorant would mean complete abandonment of their humanity, and transformation into “moral monsters.” This tension between white racial identity and democratic morality, and the resulting struggle to remain “innocent” of the prevailing legacy of racism is the phenomenon this paper will call the white identity crisis. For whites, confronting a true accounting of history and racism would entail shouldering responsibility for a legacy of oppression and inhumanity. It would also mean giving up the status and privilege that comes with being “white” because, as previously explained, white identity has been 5 formed in relation to Black subjugation. While white Americans do not “wish to be hated” they are nonetheless unwilling to give up their status (Baldwin, 1953, p. 45). For Baldwin, the most terrifying aspect of the white identity crisis is that whites’ continued denial of Black humanity damages, and perhaps destroys, their own moral faculties. Baldwin contends that white ignorance of the true condition of their Black brothers and sisters is an active not-knowing. White ‘innocence’ is therefore an intentional activity that requires energy to maintain. This implies a disparity between the knowledge whites hide deep down, and the false reality they choose to outwardly accept. Existing in this state of deliberate unawareness is self-preservative for the white American because it allows him to “avoid being called to account for crimes committed by his forefathers, or his neighbors” (Baldwin, 1953, p. 45). At the same time, such expenditure of energy towards denying the severity of everyday racism is destructive not just for Blacks, but also for whites, who are “terrified” of their “private selves.” Baldwin claims that despite efforts to maintain “innocence,” whites are on some level “inescapably aware” of the role they play in oppressing Black Americans. The implication is that whites dare not examine themselves too closely, for they have a dreadful suspicion that they will find their own humanity sorely lacking. By dehumanizing Blacks, whites haves essentially dehumanized themselves. Whites are terrified because, on some level, they know this to be true. In his “Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation” Baldwin tells his namesake James to “try to imagine how you would feel if you woke up one morning to find the sun shining and all the suns aflame” (Baldwin, 1993, p. 9). This is the effect Baldwin imagines that a change in the white-Black status quo would have on the average white 6 American. The lowly status of the Black American, has served as a “fixed star” for white Americans, orienting the white populace to their entire world (Baldwin, 1993, p. 9). Whites have the complete inability to truly address topics of racial inequality and the American legacy of the oppression of Blacks, because doing so would compromise their entire self-conception. BALDWIN, LORDE AND THE ‘MASTER’S TOOLS’ To deal with the white identity crisis, and overcome racism, Baldwin contends that Black Americans must serve as guides for their fellow white citizens. If whites are unable to recognize the racist threads woven into the fabric of American society and fail to acknowledge that their perceived universe is built on Black subjugation, then the United States will have no choice but to continue along its destructive path, to the detriment of white souls and Black lives. Baldwin believes that whites must be helped along a journey of re-definition in order to overcome their identity crisis because their denial is so strong that they will not be able see and amend injustice on their own. Baldwin tasks his fellow Black Americans with being the guides for their white “lost younger brothers” in this process, and leading whites to a place of humanity, honesty and recognition of the Black struggle (Baldwin, 1993, p. 9). Blacks must confront extreme white moral “bankruptcy,” resistant to reality, by holding a mirror to their white neighbors, so that white Americans may truly see themselves (Baldwin and Peck, 2016). The formulation of the Black American as the guide for the white American indicates that Baldwin believes whites will be unable, not to mention unwilling, to confront the legacy of racism on their own, and that their moral apathy has worsened to the point of no 7 return. Blacks must essentially play a leading role in returning humanity to white Americans and thus overcoming racism. Does this formulation allow white oppressors to escape responsibility? This is the question Audre Lorde asks and to which this paper now turns. In her essay, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master’s House,” Audre Lorde presents a major challenge to Baldwin’s thinking. Though Lorde is primarily writing about the ways in which the feminist movement has excluded women who have not fit traditional models of a “woman,” she also presents a general critique of the ways in which oppressed groups have sought to improve their situation, a critique that can be applied to Baldwin. Lorde writes, “within the interdependence of mutual (nondominant) differences lies that security which enables us to descend into the chaos of knowledge and return with true visions of our future, along with the concomitant power to effect those changes which can bring that future into being” (Lorde, 1984, p. 460). It is important to note that Lorde is concerned with the binding together of oppressed persons in order to spark their collective creativity. Her vision and solution does not focus, or depend upon, the mindsets of the oppressors. It depends primarily upon the oppressed recognizing and appreciating their own capabilities and creative powers as unique people bound together by a shared experience of oppression. In this way, she challenges Baldwin’s argument that redemption cannot be achieved until one engages one’s oppressors and seeks to change their minds about the world. Instead, Lorde locates redemption in the midst of community with fellow oppressed people. Furthermore, Lorde disavows any argument that make the oppressed responsible for educating their oppressors, because she believes this diverts energy that could 8 otherwise be used for empowerment and struggle. For Lorde, the only responsibility the oppressed have is to enhance their relative power through this sort of community interaction. She writes, “Women of today are still being called upon to stretch across the gap of male ignorance and to educate men as to our existence and our needs. This is an old and primary tool of all oppressors to keep the oppressed occupied with the master’s concerns” (Lorde, 1984, p. 462). Claiming “ignorance” about an issue is, in Lorde’s eyes, “the same evasion of responsibility” that has long served to divide and conquer groups that might otherwise share experiences of oppression. Lorde sees no reason why white women cannot educate themselves and would challenge Baldwin’s argument that whites do not have the ability to reflect on their lack of humanity and morality by themselves. Furthermore, Lorde would reject the argument that Blacks must guide whites because whites are otherwise unwilling to change. For Lorde, accepting this “unwillingness” only further enables oppressive structures because it excuses whites and who refuse to question their own racist attitudes. To explain Baldwin’s possible answer to Lorde’s critique, it is important to ask, why does Baldwin feel Black Americans should guide fellow white Americans? How are they situated to be guides? The answer to these questions lies partially in the type of knowledge he identifies as the heritage of Black Americans. Throughout his works, Baldwin presents the idea that Blacks possess unique access to two different kinds of knowledge. One type is the exclusive and comprehensive understanding Blacks have of whites and the other is Black comprehension and acceptance of mortality. The latter type will be addressed in the section “A Unique Kind of Knowledge” and the former discussed here. In Many Thousands Gone, Baldwin writes from the white perspective, “They 9 [Blacks] prepared our feast tables and our burial clothes; and, if we could boast that we understood them, it was far more to the point and far more true that they understood us. They were, moreover, the only people in the world who did; and not only did they know us better than we knew ourselves, but they knew us better than we knew them” (Baldwin, 1998, p. 22). Since the establishment of American slavery, Blacks in America have been compelled, by their need to survive racial oppression and violence, to develop a very real understanding of their oppressors. Lorde herself identifies this phenomenon in her essay “Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference,” as she explains how women have had to negotiate their differences with their male oppressors: “We have negotiated and recognized these differences, even when this negotiation only continued the old dominant/subordinate mode of human relationship, where the oppressed must recognize the masters’ difference in order to survive” (1984, p. 122). It is from this similar account of the unique knowledge held by the oppressed that the tension between Baldwin and Lorde’s arguments grows. Baldwin wishes for Blacks Americans to use this knowledge to their advantage. He believes their ability to face the past and present-day reality is the key to achieving redemption and their insight should be passed on to whites. In the documentary film I Am Not Your Negro, Baldwin explains to white audiences, “You [whites] never had to look at me, but I had to look at you” (Baldwin and Peck. 2016). In order to navigate a society dominated by racial violence and oppression, Blacks had to acquire an understanding of white motives, concerns and identities. While Baldwin wishes Black Americans to use this knowledge to their advantage, Lorde argues that doing so will only distract Blacks from self-empowerment. She agrees that Blacks have this knowledge, but sees continued systemic oppression as evidence that worrying about 10 the concerns of white oppressors has not been effective in achieving racial equality (Lorde, 1984, p. 123). Lorde believes Blacks must focus on the cultivation of Black unity, power and creativity and not spend time or energy on white constructions of society. Invoking Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, she writes, “the true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations which we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of us, and which knows only the oppressors’ tactics, the oppressor’s relationships” (Lorde, 1984, p.123). Lorde argues that placing the burden on Blacks to educate whites further perpetuates existing oppressive structures that allow whites to avoid responsibility. Lorde believes that holding Blacks responsible to guide their white neighbors deflects from the fact that whites have refused to own up to their role as the beneficiaries and perpetuators of racial inequality. While Baldwin’s works might not be able to provide a comprehensive argument against this point, Baldwin would say that Lorde is unnecessarily focusing energy on assigning guilt and claiming morally purity. He would also argue that he does not wish to ignore white complicity in racism, but believes that Blacks must assist whites in reaching acknowledgement of it. Lawrie Balfour’s writings confront Lorde’s argument and affirm Baldwin’s. Interestingly, while Baldwin clearly identifies white people’s refusal to acknowledge the realities of a racist society, just as Lorde does, Balfour’s reading of Baldwin would interpret Lorde as preoccupied with locating guilt in a way that detracts from the practical reality of addressing racial inequality. Balfour correctly identifies the centrality of willful white ignorance to Baldwin’s analysis. Because Black Americans are dealing with a group of oppressors who form an actively “resistant populace,” whose old attitudes “won’t be painlessly 11 superseded,” Balfour and Baldwin argue that that whites will have to be forced to come to terms with the reality of Black struggles (Balfour, 2001, p. 7). In this sense, Baldwin’s argument seeks to be more practical than Lorde’s. Baldwin lays out the path of moral bankruptcy that whites are headed down because of their denial of the past. Due to the nature of intransigent white innocence, it is extremely unlikely that whites would begin the process of reckoning with the history of American racism on their own. Without a guide to reveal to whites the loss of their own humanity in the denial of Black humanity, why wouldn’t white Americans continue their denial? BALDWIN, BALFOUR AND SHULMAN Balfour contends that Baldwin’s ideas have potential for use as redemptive, democratic tools because Baldwin “neither accepts that the oppressed are powerless victims, nor does he submit to the romance of a revolution where tables are turned” (Balfour, 2001, p. 27). By inhabiting the “murky area between principle and practice,” Baldwin allows for an honest discussion of race consciousness, without getting trapped in the divisive game of assigning guilt. Balfour locates a “moral subtlety” in Baldwin’s analysis that Baldwin might argue is lacking in Lorde’s work. The hallmark of this moral nuance is “Baldwin’s conviction that the attack on racial innocence must be part of a larger refutation of moral schemes which presume that it is possible to divide the innocent cleanly from the guilty” (Balfour, 2001, p. 91). Baldwin knows that in order to convince whites to confront their ‘innocence’ Blacks must reject labels of innocence and guilt altogether. Blacks also deny the intertwined fates of Blacks and whites when they 12 refuse to play a role in educating white Americans on their complicity in racism. This is the same denial that whites commit in order to maintain their ‘innocence.’ It is at this point that George Shulman enters the discussion in support of Baldwin’s conception of Blacks as guides and further refutes Lorde’s contention that requiring Blacks to educate whites only reinforces oppressive structures. For Shulman, Baldwin’s nuanced acceptance of the messiness of both white and Black experiences allows him to shift away from restrictive rules of moral responsibility, more usefully framing the conversation in terms of political responsibility. In American Prophecy: Race and Redemption in American Political Culture, Shulman argues that Baldwin’s positioning of Blacks as those who notify whites of their “disavowal” of Black humanity, “is a way to address responsibility without the rigid categories and idealized agency of the subject imagined by Christian morality” (2008, p. 135). In other words, Baldwin does not characterize Black redemption with Christian terms of purification and rebirth. Because the past is inescapable, redemption for Blacks will not occur through “an exodus from captivity,” but rather a “coming to terms with captivity’s complex, haunting legacy” (Shulman, 2008, p. 140). Shulman reads Baldwin in explicitly Nietzschean terms, explaining that both scholars seek to “‘redeem’ the past because we cannot change or escape it; we must change our relationship to it, its meaning for us, to make it a condition of action” (Shulman, 2008, p. 140). Shulman sees potential in Baldwin’s effort to break the cycle of resentment. . Baldwin disavows moral purity and wishes to avoid labeling groups of people as inherently guilty or innocent. This is evident when he reflects on sermons he gave to his congregation as a young man, recalling “I felt that I was committing a crime in talking about the gentle Jesus, in telling them to reconcile 13 themselves to their misery on earth in order to gain the crown of eternal life. Were only Negroes to gain this crown? Was Heaven, then, to be merely another ghetto?” (Baldwin,1993, p. 39). Baldwin views this type of mindset as a disengagement from reality that leads only to inaction. Rather, Baldwin would have Black Americans “turn to what we have evaded in ‘life’ and inner experience, social practices, political conduct, and national history…Redemption does not require God’s grace or mean an end to history it is a practice, rather, of “accepting” and wrestling by which to make the fatalities of history and desire into conditions of action” (Shulman, 2008, p. 135). Moral rules determine who is guilty and who is innocent, but such a determination would be antithetical to Baldwin’s purpose. Whites have long made such moral distinctions and believed themselves to be human because of the assigned contrasting inhumanity of Blacks. This echoes Nietzsche’s claim that the “high-stationed” seize the “right to create values” out of a “pathos of distance” between the ruling class and the lower class (Nietzsche, 1989, p. 26). The ordering of white identities in comparison to appointed Black inferiority follows Nietzsche’s explanation that “the protracted and domineering fundamental total feeling on the part of a higher ruling order in relation to a lower order, to a “below”—that is the origin of the antithesis ‘good’ and ‘bad’” (Nietzsche, 1989, p. 26). These are the type of moral distinctions that Baldwin wishes to move away from. Whites and Black must achieve redemption by acknowledging a past that was not made by the generations alive today, but must nonetheless be dealt and lived with. For Baldwin, the fates of white and Black Americans are inescapably intertwined to the extent that trying to divide them by distinguishing the guilty from the blameless is useless. Baldwin is trying to ground his argument at least partially on the achievement of 14 practical political results by subverting traditionally rigid ways of assigning responsibility, which may fail to induce white and Black Americans to work towards a solution. Baldwin claims that white innocence must not be met with accusations of guilt, but with tactics of persuasive inducement that invite white Americans to come to terms with the United States’ tragic history. A UNIQUE KIND OF KNOWLEDGE Baldwin contends Blacks must guide white Americans because Blacks have a thorough understanding of white identities learned through their need to navigate white supremacy. This is a comprehension better than whites’ knowledge of themselves, but Black Americans also have special access to another type of knowledge. Baldwin believes that, by nature of their suffering and struggle, Black Americans have long had to acknowledge the very real tragedy of life. Baldwin posits that through the crucible of slavery and racial oppression, Black Americans have learned to “rejoice in the fact of death” (Baldwin, 1993, p. 92). Having confronted racial violence and tragedy since birth, Black Americans have oriented their lives around the one certainty of human life, finitude. This has allowed them to confront “the conundrum of life” with “passion” (Baldwin, 1993, p. 92). Meanwhile, white Americans are less capable of accessing this acceptance, because they have long clung to safety, money and power as fleeting distractions from the certainty of struggle and death(Baldwin, 1993, p. 92). These same distractions have been denied to Black Americans, who come into contact daily with the truth of their mortality. The white man projects not only his fears, but also his longings 15 onto Black Americans and is jealous of Blacks’ abilities to confront mortality through a passion and zeal for life. Baldwin explains, The only way he [the white man] can be released from the Negro’s tyrannical power over him is to consent, in effect, to become black himself, to become a part of that suffering and dancing country that he now watches wistfully from the heights of his lonely power and, armed with spiritual traveler’s checks, visits surreptitiously after dark. (1993, p. 96) The ability to face and embrace human finitude is a skill that has been uniquely cultivated in Black Americans, because they have long lived with the overshadowing suffering that results from white domination and racial violence. Whites do not have the same access to this knowledge and acceptance of the tragic nature of life, because they have chosen safety over the acknowledgement of reality. White Americans have largely prioritized safety because they refuse to come to terms with their own identities as complicit perpetuators of racism. For Baldwin, if Black Americans can teach acknowledgment of human finitude, they can subvert white resentment of the past, induce white selfreflection and provoke communal action. In Baldwin’s eyes, the Black man must be the white man’s guide because he is the only one truly able to see the white man for what he is, having already conquered the greatest fears that the white man harbors deep down in his identity. If Blacks can help whites re-orient their lives around the undeniable truth of finitude, rather than inconstant comforts, then white identities will be able to divest themselves from the Black as the inferior Other. Any solution that falls short of transforming white identities and helping white Americans rediscover their moral 16 faculties as human beings will serve only to ameliorate symptoms of the “Negro problem” and will not cure the country of its need for a “Negro,” the baggage of the American legacy. Writing with a strong sense of urgency to his nephew, Baldwin claims, “We cannot be free until they are free” (Baldwin, 1993, p. 10). Contra Lorde, Shulman finds democratic value in Baldwin’s move away from a morality that cleanly distinguishes between the guilty and the innocent and instead tries to forge a creative relationship with the past and reality of the present. While Baldwin believes that it is important for whites to face their complicity in the oppression of Blacks, he does not wish to render Black Americans inactive and sacrifice collective political action by labeling some as ‘guilty’ and others as ‘innocent.’ Positioning Black Americans as guides does not necessarily involve the evasion of white responsibility; rather it leads whites to accept the responsibility they would otherwise be hopelessly resistant to. In fact, Balfour argues that by moving the conversation away from labels of guilt and innocence, Blacks can prevent whites from engaging in blame shifting tactics used to avoid personal responsibility. When the debate centers on attributing guilt, whites can ignore their complicity in the “everydayness” of racism by taking comfort in the knowledge “that one is nothing like a real racist—a George Wallace or Mark Fuhrman or David Duke” (Balfour, 2001, p. 94). Balfour explains, The focus on questions of innocence and guilt fosters an expectation that there is a responsible individual for every individual harm and relieves the rest of us from facing the ways in which we too are responsible for maintaining the conditions in which racial injustices flourish.” (2001, p.94) 17 In prioritizing engagement and acknowledgement over moral distinctions of guilt and innocence, Baldwin promotes a form of political responsibility that has the potential to invoke action in all citizens. BALDWIN AND BELL Baldwin’s arguments fare well against Lorde’s critique, however there is a challenge to his conception of Black Americans as guides that he does not fully address. Though Baldwin maintains that Blacks must steer whites to acknowledgement of the history of American racism and identity transformation, he assumes that whites are able to accept such guidance and be fundamentally changed. Derrick Bell disputes this assumption in his analysis of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case. Bell uses the aftermath of the court’s decision to integrate schools as a case study in whether the fundamental values of whites can be transformed. Bell finds that despite the Brown decision and the ensuing desegregation efforts, most Black children still attend public schools that are segregated or inferior to predominantly white schools. In uncovering the reason behind this phenomenon, Bell articulates his argument that “the interest of Blacks in achieving racial equality will be accommodated only when it converges with the interests of whites” (Bell, 1980, p. 523). In order for progress to take place, Bell argues that Black interests must align with potential for white political or economic gain. He argues that the Brown decision did not occur because whites were convinced of the need to extend equal protection to Blacks or to make good on American promises of equality, but because the interests of Blacks momentarily aligned with the material interests of whites in the policy of desegregation. Bell points out that both the 18 NAACP and the federal government’s lawyers made the case that desegregating American schools would provide credibility abroad to American efforts to defeat communism. According to Bell, such an argument was convincing because it spoke to the economic and political interests of whites, rather than adhering strictly to principles of equality or freedom. Bell’s “interest convergence” theory provides the major argument with which Bell would confront Baldwin. Why should we suddenly expect whites to be morally transformed through attempts to show them their inhumanity if history has shown that racial justice only progresses when whites have something material to gain? Baldwin may not be fully able to refute this contention but it is possible to deduce his answer by examining the form he expects Black guidance to take. BALDWIN AND LOVE Baldwin envisions Black guidance of whites to occur primarily through the act of loving. He believes love has a strong transformative power of that will induce whites to confront their complicity in racism and transform. On some level, whites are aware of the denial involved in their innocence. They are terrified of truly seeing themselves as they are and as a result, “love is so desperately sought and so cunningly avoided” (Baldwin, 1993, p. 95). For Baldwin, love will “swing wide the gates” to the universe for Blacks because it will “unmask” whites by allowing them to reconsider and change themselves (Baldwin, 1993, p. 30). Christopher Lebron, in support of Baldwin, claims that whites cannot confront an accurate accounting of racial oppression in the United States because doing so would mean acknowledging their complicity in the persistence of racism (2017). 19 The love Baldwin envisions must be utilized “not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace—not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth” (Baldwin, 1993, p. 95). This formulation suggests there is a sense of force behind the love Baldwin calls for as well as a sense of risk. Loving involves Blacks taking a risk, because they must trust that their oppressive white neighbors will meet expressions of Black vulnerability with showings of their own vulnerability. Baldwin uses the language of disconnection and deflection to characterize the ways in which whites seek to maintain their innocence claiming “it is the innocence which constitutes the crimes” (Baldwin, 1993, p. 6). The challenge is therefore to encourage whites to feel safe enough to come to terms with themselves and question the morality of their innocence. For Baldwin, the strongly transformative power of love counteracts the hazard involved with being vulnerable. In The Fire Next Time, Baldwin writes, “if the word integration means anything, this is what it means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it” (1993, p. 9). Baldwin believes that whites will only be able to truly look at themselves once they feel that the results of their self-reflection will be met with moral redemption, forgiveness and love. Lebron argues that Baldwin “counseled blacks to love whites in order to redeem the humanity whites were in danger of forfeiting by virtue of their complicity in the great injustices blacks suffered” (2017, p. 10). White Americans face an identity crisis, as previously defined, if they attempt to come to terms with the history of American racism. Baldwin therefore asks Blacks to love whites because he believes this show of vulnerability will give oppressors the safe space they need to take such a leap into the 20 unknown. Baldwin believes “love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without” and allows us to become more comfortable with showing and examining our true selves (Baldwin, 1993, p. 95). LOVE, ANGER AND TRANSFORMATION Baldwin believes showing love to whites will encourage them to confront their disavowal of Black humanity because the love Baldwin wishes to summon is more than just general affection towards whites. Baldwin continually uses the language of familial relations between Blacks and whites to clarify his conception of the love Blacks must cultivate. He situates the Black American’s relationship to the white as similar to the way that parents know, love and guide their children, also likening it to the duty that older siblings have to their brothers and sisters. To expand upon Bell’s argument that whites cannot be morally transformed, Baldwin’s parent/child formulation may raise the question of whether whites will be receptive to such a relationship. Sibling guidance and love implies a level of equality, but parent/child suggests a power dynamic that whites may not willingly accede to. For Sean Kim Butorac, Baldwin’s most politically useful metaphor for the loving relationships Blacks and whites must reach is located in one of the final lines of The Fire Next Time: If we—and now I mean the relatively conscious blacks, who must, like lovers, insist on, or create, the consciousness of the others-do not falter in our duty now, we may be able, handful that we are, to end the racial nightmare and achieve our country, and change the history of the world. (Butorac, 2018, p. 105) 21 For Butorac, the important metaphor is for Blacks to act like lovers, and the crucial word in this formulation is like. Butorac explains, “Acting like lovers suggests that we cannot love all our fellow citizens, especially not all the time, but we can engage with them— and ourselves—in ways that are informed by love” (2018, p.4). In an honest relationship, lovers do not always agree, and often quarrel, but in struggling together they each seek to better the other. For Butorac and Baldwin, lovers do not passively accept the shortcomings of their significant other out of a sense of indiscriminate affection, but instead have a deep and personal investment in the improvement of the object of their partner. In a 1984 conversation between Baldwin and Lorde, Lorde objected to the idea of lovers redefining each other and argued that this allows perpetrators of oppression to evade responsibility. Instead, Lorde believes “we have to define ourselves for each other” (Revolutionary Hope, 1964). Even Lebron admits he finds Baldwin’s formulations of love to be “especially remarkable given Baldwin’s very intense anger toward white America,” but he explains that Baldwin “turned this anger into an ethical fuel on account of the humanity no white person could ever deny them” (Lebron, 2017, p. 10). For Baldwin, love and anger are inextricably linked, and anger can serve as a useful dimension to Black and white relationships. Though Lorde is concerned about an evasion of responsibility, Butorac and Lebron see Baldwin’s conceptions of love and anger as related, political tools with the potential to force oppressors to face their own culpability. Butorac explains, Insofar as anger can be “accurately used,” it becomes a force uniquely suited for naming, confronting, and demanding accountability for white complicity in America’s racial nightmare. To that end, Baldwin’s account 22 of anger helps to explain white discomfort toward black rage, which threatens to undo the ways that black people still function ‘in the white man’s world as a fixed star, as an immovable pillar.’ Thus, while Baldwin legitimates black anger, he demands more generative forms of action in enacting that rage. (Butorac, 2018, p. 8) Baldwin is not necessarily acquiescing to holding whites blameless, but believes that Blacks must engage in the practice of love to avoid the “self-destructive impotence” that comes with unmediated rage (Butorac, 2018, p. 8). In Notes of a Native Son, Baldwin explains the devastating affect that this type of anger had on his father. Baldwin writes, “In my mind’s eye I could see him, sitting at the window, locked up in his terrors; hating and fearing every living soul including his children who had betrayed him, too, by reaching towards the world which had despised him” (1998, p. 66). Baldwin locates the isolating and inherently harmful nature of the unquestioned rage that led his father to turn away from the world. Love, on the other hand, led Baldwin and his siblings to reach toward it. His father tells Baldwin that the only way to deal with white people is to “have as little to do with them as possible” (Baldwin, 1998, p. 68). Baldwin sees such a statement as naive, given the pervasive nature of white oppression and the extent to which white and Black fates are interdependent in the United States. BALDWIN, HOOKER AND BLACK AGENCY By loving whites, Baldwin argues that Blacks can manipulate their position as a “fixed star” for white identities, and guide whites to a less destructive concept of self. 23 While Baldwin views this as empowerment of Black Americans and affirmation of their agency, his conception clashes with Juliet Hooker’s account of what should be expected from Black activists. For Hooker, citizens in a democratic society all wish to be the sovereign, and yet not all can occupy this role at the same time. Therefore, citizens take turns bearing this democratic loss. However, in our actual society, minority groups like Black Americans shoulder a disproportionate amount of this loss. Hooker argues that it is unfair and useless to require Blacks to both bear the brunt of democratic sacrifice and stoically endure racial oppression. Requiring Black Americans to be “democratic exemplars” before they can legitimately voice their concerns forces them to play by rules which were never intended to benefit them. Hooker, similar to Lorde, views this requirement as a perpetuation of oppressive structures. Hooker argues that historically subjugated groups in the American political arena, such as African Americans, are often called upon to display the kind of democratic exemplarity that groups with higher relative status and power are not. Furthermore, she argues that this requirement to abide by “the rule of law and the norms of liberal politics” can perpetuate “a very real danger that the notion of acquiescence to democratic loss as political exemplarity demands a kind of civic sacrifice of blacks that is not expected of other citizens” (Hooker, 2016, p. 455). Hooker exposes the hypocrisy of requiring Blacks to use democratic processes and methods to effect change when access to the benefits of those democratic processes have been categorically denied to them. Blacks are expected not only to suffer continual racial violence and oppression, but are also expected to protest this injustice within the confines of a system that has never worked for them. In this sense, Hooker’s thinking on the rules of democratic engagement challenges Baldwin’s idea that Blacks can best achieve 24 equality by appealing to white morality. Hooker would also argue that Baldwin’s call for Black to act as as moral guides enforces the double standard that whites can be oppressive, but Blacks must be democratic “exemplars.” A close reading of Baldwin complicates Hooker’s analysis because Baldwin cautions against viewing Blacks as victims and in doing so makes space for Black agency. For Baldwin, the severity of the white identity crisis speaks to the need for Blacks to be moral guides in fixing race relations. Baldwin explains that whites have become “the most ignorant and powerful people the world has ever seen,” through their denial of Black humanity and “by opting for safety instead of life” (Baldwin, 1984, p. 2). This ignorance is powerful, and actively resistant to acknowledgement. Baldwin also argues that because the unique positioning of Blacks has allowed them to know whites better than whites know themselves, Blacks are uniquely suited to guide white identity to a healthier place. In On Being White, Baldwin writes, “It is a terrible paradox but those who believed that they could control and define black people divested themselves of the power to control and define themselves” (1984, p. 3). The concept of the “Negro,” to use Baldwin’s language, and the Black American’s place in society has so long been used as the benchmark for the white person that whites can no longer divest themselves from the dehumanized “Negro.” This echoes Nietzsche’s claim that the “high-stationed” seize the “right to create values” out of a “pathos of distance” between the ruling class and the lower class (Nietzsche, 1989, p. 26). The attitude of whites that they are human in contrast to the inhumanity of Blacks follows Nietzsche’s claim that “the protracted and domineering fundamental total feeling on the part of a higher ruling order in relation to a lower order, to a “below”—that is the origin of the antithesis ‘good’ and ‘bad’” 25 (Nietzsche, 1989, p. 26). Baldwin implies that not only have whites lost the power to define themselves, but also that this power might have been transferred to Black Americans. This creates agency for Black Americans. Whites cannot disentangle the strength of their identities from reliance on the oppression of Blacks but Baldwin claims that Black citizens, as the benchmarks for white identities, have the power to do so. Baldwin does not advocate for Blacks to present themselves merely as victims subject to the decisions of white oppressors. In Many Thousands Gone, Baldwin criticizes Richard Wright’s protest novel, Native Son, because he believes it does not present the threedimensionality of Black Americans (Baldwin, 1998, p. 27). Instead, he argues that it presents them merely as helpless subjects who have no redress but to hope that their oppressors allow them equality. Baldwin cautions against viewing race relations as “simply the relationship of the oppressed to the oppressor, of master to slave” (Baldwin, 1998, p. 32). Hooker claims that Baldwin’s theories of love and guidance only enhance oppressive structures, but Baldwin believes that these concepts allow Blacks to have agency by locating an important affirmation of Black humanity in the act of loving white Americans. Lebron’s description of love and anger as “ethical fuel” correctly interprets Baldwin’s argument that love is transformative of both the one who engages in loving, and the person on the receiving end of this love (2017). The “deep significance of love” for Baldwin is that it allows Blacks not only to guide whites to transformation, but also enables them to “enrich their self-conception, to safeguard their inner lives from the destructive forces of racial hatred” (Lebron, 2017, p. 80). Hooker, similar to Lorde, anticipates that Baldwin’s conception of Black guidance of whites will face problems as a result of the double standards for democratic 26 engagement that apply to whites and Blacks. Hooker argues that placing Black activists in the role of national guides allows whites to ignore their claims on the basis of whether the outspoken Black person is individually worthy of recourse. The result is that the “goalposts for racial justice continually shift because every specific instance of injustice becomes a discussion of whether or not a particular Black victim was ‘deserving,’ which displaces the focus away from questions of racial injustice, democratic suffering, and black loss” (Hooker, 2016, p. 460). Hooker believes casting Blacks as moral guides in the struggle for racial equality increases the likelihood that Black efforts to protest or have their voices heard will be discounted or judged based on how ‘pure’ the white community feels the Black protestor was. Hooker, similar to Bell, dismisses the assumption that Black guidance will result in any sort of transformation of whites. She writes, “the common assumption that Black sacrifice will induce shame among white citizens, which will in turn produce a re-orientation to racial justice, is thus predicated on a particular account of white moral psychology that fails to take the effects of racialized solidarity into account” (Hooker, 2016, p. 460). Hooker argues that such a conception of white psychology is not backed up by historical or practical reality. Hooker uses the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s as an example, noting that some “northern observers of Black acquiescence to racial violence failed to see its heroic character, and interpreted it as motivated by self-interest rather than as a sacrifice on behalf of the common good,” (Hooker, 2016, p. 459). Hooker implies that whites, whose psychologies are predicated on white supremacy, will not view Black political excellence as instructive, but will dismiss such actions as self-serving political moves. In essence, Hooker challenges Baldwin’s idea that Blacks can somehow manipulate whites’ moral faculties. Hooker, 27 like Balfour, questions whether liberal democracy can truly address racial inequality. She comes to a different and more negative conclusion about Baldwin’s conception of the role of Black people in this struggle than Balfour does. Hooker argues that traditional approaches that ask Black activists to shoulder the responsibility of being “exemplars” is acquiescence to the disproportionate amount of democratic loss that Blacks are expected to bear in the face of racial oppression. As guides, Blacks will be forced to live up to unreal expectations of “political excellence” in order to be deemed legitimate in the eyes of white Americans and will not be able to disrupt cycles of white oppression. BALDWIN AND BLACK LIVES MATTER It is not difficult to place Baldwin’s arguments into context today. Balfour easily does so by clarifying how Baldwin’s understanding of white “innocence” can be applied to current political debates surrounding affirmative action. Balfour explains, “the effectiveness with which opponents of affirmative action have emphasized the punishment ‘innocent’ white men must bear for racial inequalities they did not create indicates a continuing presumption of white innocence” (Balfour, 2001, p. 90). The problems with racism in American society, as identified by Baldwin, are without doubt applicable to today, but does Baldwin offer possibilities for effective solutions? In part, the BLM movement tends to align with the sentiments of Lorde, Hooker and Bell in criticizing the approach to Black struggle that Baldwin promotes. However, BLM and Baldwin both use language that suggests a similar goal for the methods of protest and outcomes that each wishes to see. Though it may at first appear that the ideologies of Baldwin and BLM are incompatible, the two actually overlap in their goal to get the 28 United States to live up to its professed democratic ideals. Therefore, Baldwin may in fact provide valuable tools for BLM to utilize in its struggle for democratic change. It is problematic to summarize or generalize the philosophy of BLM because and the movement is large, adaptive and purposefully encompasses diverse viewpoints and experiences. Lebron notes, “Much like the way a corporate franchise works…#BlackLivesMatter is akin to a social movement brand that can be picked up and deployed by any interested group of activists inclined to speak out and act against racial injustice” (Lebron, 2017, p. 6). This paper will primarily use the mission statement of BLM, as stated on its website, the platform of the Movement for Black Lives and the words of outspoken BLM founder Alicia Garza, to represent BLM’s principles. BLM seeks to put Black Americans on an equal level of economic and political power as whites. Demands include reparations, the end of mass incarceration of Blacks, unimpeded access to voting and government investment in the health, safety and economic development of Black neighborhoods and communities (Movement for Black Lives). Baldwin himself admits, “the only thing white people have that black people need, or should want, is power,” but argues “…no one holds power forever. White people cannot, in the generality, be taken as models of how to live” (Baldwin, 1993, p. 96). The deviation between Baldwin and BLM is Baldwin’s insistence that white people must themselves fundamentally change or be changed before any hopes of progress can be realized. BLM echoes Lorde’s critiques of Baldwin’s call for Black people to guide their white neighbors. Jesse Williams, an American actor and BLM activist as well as the Executive Producer of the documentary Stay Woke: The Black Lives Matter Movement, gave an address as a recipient of the BET’s Humanitarian Award, arguing that “the 29 burden of the brutalized is not to comfort the bystander” (Williams, 2016). For Williams, in contrast to Baldwin, it is not the responsibility of Black Americans to provide a loving environment in which whites can recognize their humanity and complicity in racial oppression. Baldwin asks Blacks to love and guide white Americans but activists today often align with Hooker and Lorde and read Baldwin’s request as exoneration of white supremacy and oppression. However, Shulman and Balfour’s readings of Baldwin have shown that this is an inaccurate interpretation of Baldwin. As analysis of Butorac’s arguments has indicated, Baldwin is actually advocating for a practice of love that involves engagement, struggle, and provoking whites to accept their own complicity in the perpetuation of racism. This is love in a familial sense, but also in the patriotic sense of loving a fellow countryperson. Shulman clarifies that Baldwin’s refusal to allocate innocence and guilt allows for political responsibility to be assigned instead. This avoids resentment and division, and creates the possibility for collective action. This sense of political responsibility is compatible with BLM’s ideology because the movement seeks to fully actualize the vision of democracy that the United States falsely proclaims to have exemplified since its inception. According to Baldwin, if Black Americans act as loving guides for their white neighbors, there will be true fulfillment of the promises of American equality and freedom. For this reason, The Fire Next Time culminates in a call for Americans to “achieve our country” (Baldwin, 1993, p. 105). When Baldwin and Black Lives Matter activists speak of their ultimate goals, both utilize the language of forcing the United States to live up to its professed democratic ideals. It is because of this overarching idealism of purpose that both Baldwin and BLM seek to fit their discourse 30 within a broadly democratic frame, though BLM raises legitimate concerns about taking Baldwin’s path forward. BLM claims the United States has failed in its founding promise to provide equal economic opportunity and political representation. The platform of the Movement for Black Lives declares, “Despite constant exploitation and perpetual oppression, Black people have bravely and brilliantly been the driving force pushing the U.S. towards the ideals it articulates but has never achieved.” Baldwin and BLM find common ground in this statement but diverge and intertwine in their explanation of it and their treatment of what should be done next. BLM is by no means concerned with the health of white identities, and their approach is primarily centered on the advancement of Black access to economic and political power. Written into Black Lives Matter’s mission statement is the declaration that, “In affirming that Black Lives Matter, we need not qualify our position.” BLM agrees with Hooker that Black demands remain legitimate regardless of whether they act as political exemplars. Hooker points out that “the rejection of the politics of respectability and the insistence that “all black lives matter” by the BLM protesters, for example, point toward a more radical critique of the carceral state that rejects the distinction between law-abiding middle-class Black citizens and always-already criminalized Black “thugs” in urban ghettos” (Hooker, 2016, p. 465). Garza uses terms such as disruption, pressure, and resistance alongside the rhetoric of democratic idealism. She explains, “Black people have been at the center of the fight to force this country to live up to the values and ideals that it espouses” (2016). Garza is less concerned with whether whites are willing to see their true selves and more interested in pressuring white leaders to enact concrete policy initiatives. Baldwin would 31 argue that this approach might not ultimately be successful because white ‘innocence’ allows whites to refuse to see the need for such policy change. Though Baldwin finds affirmation for Black humanity in the individual act of loving, BLM affirms Black lives through resistance and struggle. Written into BLM’s “Guiding Principles” on their website is the declaration, “We intentionally build and nurture a beloved community that is bonded together through a beautiful struggle that is restorative, not depleting.” For BLM, as with Baldwin, shared experiences can bond and bind a community together. BLM diverges from Baldwin in claiming that affirmation comes through internal community love and constant struggle against oppression. This language of affirmation through struggle is reminiscent of language used by Bell in his article, Racial Realism. Bell argues that rather than pushing for transformation of moral concepts such as acceptance or equality, the oppressed must deal in the realities that will be produced by specific laws and policies. He writes, in language very similar to BLM’s, “We must realize, as our slave forebears, that the struggle for freedom is, at bottom, a manifestation of our humanity that survives and grows stronger through resistance to oppression, even if that oppression is never overcome” (Bell, 1992, p. 378) Though BLM, like Bell, may find self-affirmation through struggle rather than the act of loving, BLM does not agree with Bell’s diagnosis that the United States can never overcome its history of racism and achieve its democratic ideals. BLM does align with Baldwin in believing that redemption can be reached. It should also be noted that Baldwin’s conception of love involves struggle, though not necessarily resistance, and thus BLM’s version of affirmation is somewhat in alignment with Baldwin here as well. Butorac’s interpretation of Baldwin’s call for Blacks to act “like lovers” towards white oppressors 32 is that Blacks must engage in a caring struggle with whites. They must open themselves up to their white ‘loved one’ in the relationship in order to begin the creative process of redefining each other. This vulnerability does not allow for resistance, as resistance would mean disengagement, rather than engagement. Black Lives Matter aligns with Hooker and Lorde’s sentiments that racial equality must be achieved whether whites are ready for it or not, as advocates like Jesse Williams have expressed, but it also pursues a sense of community outreach that Baldwin calls for. Garza has been on record speaking about the importance “of building relationships,” explaining that this must be done “not just with the people who agree with you, but building relationships across difference, for the sake of our collective transformation” (2016). The term ‘collective transformation’ is evocative of the redemptive healing Baldwin envisions will result in white enlightenment and Black affirmation of their own humanity. Like Baldwin, Garza views the Black struggle in a long historical context and has called for a cultivation of “the humanity and the soul to a nation that claims to value freedom, justice and equality for all,” (2016). Unlike Baldwin, the path she envisions BLM activists taking to reach this goal involves resistance and unity among supporters rather than loving engagement with white oppressors. By disrupting “business as usual” and “building our own [channels]” her focus is on steamrolling over structures of white supremacy, rather than convincing whites of the moral need to change their systems so that Blacks may use them (Garza, 2016). In her speech at the University of Michigan she repeatedly espoused the need to “build a stronger movement” (2016). Garza does promote the idea that Black voices need to be “heard,” but indicates that the message she wants her movement to get across is a list of demands, not a lesson in morality. However, 33 some of Garza’s messages have aligned with Baldwin in recognizing the intertwined fates of Black and white Americans. Lisa Beard names the concept of this tied destiny “boundness” and finds that Garza often articulates this notion. Beard argues that both Baldwin and Garza seek to get whites to recognize their own responsibility in overcoming racism through convincing them of their boundness to Blacks (2017). Beard analyzes Garza’s essays, writing “Garza explains that ‘our collective futures’ (across lines of race) depend on nonblack people’s active and ‘unwavering’ solidarities with Black people in ‘defense of our humanity’ and that Black people’s freedom is and will be transformational for everyone: ‘when Black people get free, everybody gets free’” (Beard, 2017, p. 341). Beard finds that Garza is similar to Baldwin in her willingness to extend a “generous invitation” to whites as fellow residents of her country and to engage in a process that she believes will be beneficial for both Blacks and whites. CONCLUSION BLM formulations of the role of Black persons in achieving racial redemption in the United States mostly reject the idea that Blacks must love, engage or educate whites, claiming that this requirement allows white Americans to escape their responsibility in eradicating racism. BLM, Lorde, Hooker and Bell ask legitimate questions about what can be properly asked of Black Americans in enacting democratic change. However, the analysis of Baldwin shows that BLM might not be fully balancing what is proper against what is necessary to overcome white “innocence” and the identity crisis that lies at the heart of continuing racism. Baldwin’s conception of love is powerfully transformative because it provides the space for whites to reconsider their humanity. At the same time, 34 Baldwin argues that the act of loving preserves Black humanity and agency in a world that seeks to destroy both. Baldwin’s formulations offer BLM the chance to move beyond distinctions of innocence and guilt and to stop the cycles of resentment that impede real democratic engagement between Blacks and whites. Though BLM and Baldwin might appear to be at odds over the role of Black Americans in combating racial inequality, their shared overarching goal -- to fully realize American democracy -- leaves room for BLM to adopt some of Baldwin’s tools. Both BLM and Baldwin agree that Black Americans can find affirmation and agency through struggle with white Americans. Baldwin’s arguments present a possible refinement of the way BLM defines such struggle. Instead of practicing only antagonistic resistance, Baldwin makes a strong case for why BLM should consider utilizing struggle as a form of loving engagement that productively disrupts the white denial of Black humanity. Black Americans, according to Baldwin, hold the power to fundamentally transform white identities, and if Baldwin’s diagnosis of white “moral bankruptcy” is correct, BLM cannot afford to give up this power. Now that BLM has achieved national attention, the answer to how to use its platform to provoke collective anti-racist action and “end the racial nightmare” may indeed lie with Baldwin. 35 REFERENCES Baldwin, James. (1984, April). On Being White...And Other Lies. Essence Magazine. Baldwin, James. (1993) The Fire Next Time. New York: Vintage Books. Baldwin, James. (1953, October). Stranger in the Village. Harper's Magazine, 42–48. Baldwin, James. (1998). Many Thousands Gone. In T. Morrison (Ed.), Baldwin: Collected Essays (19-34). New York: The Library of America. 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