"White Americans find it as difficult as white people elsewhere..."

James Baldwin at writer's congress, 1962. Copyright Marc Riboud / Magnum Photos

A passage from "The Fire Next Time" by James Baldwin

"White Americans find it as difficult as white people elsewhere do to divest themselves of the notion that they are in possession of some intrinsic value that black people need, or want. And this assumption –which, for example, makes the solution to the Negro problem depend on the speed with which Negros accept and adopt white standards– is revealed in all kinds of striking ways, from  Bobby Kennedy's assurance that a Negro can become President in forty years to the unfortunate tone of warm congratulation with which so many liberals address their Negro equals.

It is the Negro, of course, who is presumed to have become equal –an achievement that not only proves the comforting fact that perseverance has no color but also overwhelmingly corroborates the white man's sense of his own value. Alas, this value can scarcely be corroborated in any other way; there is certainly little enough in the white man's public or private life that one should desire to imitate. White men, at the bottom of their hearts, know this. Therefore, a vast amount of energy that goes into what we call the Negro problem is produce by white mans' profound desire not to be judged by those who are not white, not to be seen as he is, and at the same time a vast amount of the white anguish is rooted in the white man's equally profound need to be seen as he is, to be released from the tyranny of his mirror. All of us know, whether or not we are able to admit it, that mirrors can only lie, that death by drowning is all that awaits one there. It is for this reason that love, is so desperately sought and so cunningly avoided. Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.

I use the word "love" here 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. And I submit, then, that the racial tensions that menace Americans today have little to do with real antipathy –on the contrary, indeed– and are involved only symbolically with color. These tensions are rooted in the very same depth as those from which love springs, or murder. The white man's unadmitted –and apparently, to him unspeakable– private fears and longings are projected onto the Negro.

The only way he 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 nights of his lonely power and, armed with spiritual traveler's checks, visits surreptitiously after dark. How can one respect, let alone adopt, the values of a people who do not, on any level whatever, live the way they say they do, or the way they say they should? I cannot accept the proposition that the four-hundred-year travail of the American Negro should result nearly in his attainment of the present level of American civilization. I am far from convinced that being released from the African witch doctor was worth-while if I am now –in order to support the moral contradiction and the spiritual aridity of my life– expected to become dependent on the American psychiatrist. It is a bargain I refuse.

The only thing white people have that black people need, or should want, is power –and no one holds power forever. White people cannot, in the generality, be taken as models of how to live. Rather, the white man is himself in sore need of new standard, which will release him from his confusion and place him once again in the fruitful communion wit the depth of his own being. And I repeat: The price of the liberation of the white people is the liberation of the blacks –the total liberation, in the cities, in the towns, before the law, and in the mind. Why, for example– especially knowing the family as I do– I should want to marry your sister is a great mystery to me. But your sister and I have every right to marry if we wish to, and no one has the right to stop us. If she cannot raise me to her level, perhaps I can raise her to mine.

In short, we, the black and the white deeply need each other here if we are really to become a nation –if we are really, that is, to achieve our identity, our maturity, as men and women. To create on nation has proved to be a hideously difficult task; there is certainly no need now to create two, one black and one white.  -- James Baldwin 1963