I always felt James Baldwin was one of the few deep writers who critiqued ĥimself first. He searched his own mind and heart and went from there. The worst lie to themselves.
1986 I picked up "No Name in the Street" and couldn't put it down. James Baldwin changed me. After I finished the book I moved on to Another Country and didn't stop until I read everything he wrote. Dr. West is correct, many people even in the 80's didn't put respect on his name in college, only a very few. He is my favorite author and when I need my ass checked, I pick up his books.
"relatively conscious whites and blacks" says it all. Another streetwise way to say that is "braindead asleep at the wheel while the passengers are screaming at the top of their lungs for their lives as the car goes over the 1000' cliff"...
I loved James Baldwin. He was a man ahead of his time, and thankfully, he existed and pushed back, so graciously, against the evils of racism. As for "Dr, Cornell ", not so much. He is, by definition, an educated idiot. He knows a lot of big words, but hasn't got enough sense to realize we in America live in a 2 party political system and his vote for "Jill Stein" was as stupid a thing to do as spitting into the wind.
I am 17 years old and i spend alot of my time preserving the Showband history. This video is absoloutely disgracefull to the talent of the men and women who preformed all over Ireland to bring happiness and joy to countless amount of people. Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash and the Beatles all praised Showbands. All i can say is you have no idea you can tell by your American accents!
Unpopular??? Every white kid i knew growing up was reading Baldwin, and many still do! I have seen documentaries about the man on tv, including the wonderful interviews about Jazz music from his apartment he shared with his gay lovers in Istanbul...Is the Black community ready to accept Black homosexuals?
Baldwin was a genius. He didn’t know the answer but he knew the culture that climbed to see was dead and blind. Godless though they claimed to be exceptional. A man who saw nearly all his Black friends get murdered. A culture full of words but unwilling to actually do anything of substance.
If you did not like or appreciate James Baldwin and his vast intellect, you have deep closet issues and you probably have a crispy white hood and cassock in that same disturbed closet.
Wow! Bravo! Fantastic! How to eliminate WS and Racism.... Simple. We must reprogram ourselves with knowledge. The white man is only 3% of the global population. Nubians of color are 93% of the global population. WS is no threat... just leave the matrix and become sustainable and lead ourselves. The American military is mostly people of color... so, we have all the power to change the world. Stop using money, buy land and build a healthy sustainable home and food garden... stop spending money with white owned companies, stop going to white schools, and stop eating white grown food... and we could take back the world in 30 days... and be loving, kind, and empowering to each other....
What a fool Cornell West is to have changed his tune so much from what he was saying then to what he was saying now. Don’t you see that the academic, the public intellectual, doesn’t actually know shit? Even in the present, when in the moment it sounds so good, you can bet, that the actual truth is found somewhere in the opposite of what they say.
He was not honest. He loved to put on a performance. He was a conceited narcissist that brought down the black urban communities. He should’ve stayed in France surrounded by people he fit in with ideologically.
I read the letter to his nephew and it brought me to tears. Im 33 years old and not american. Jesus the man is a masterclass of power in verse. Reality is solid all the world through, and by verse we conjure something more that transcends, something unreal but terribly and actually real.
I'm a big fan of Thomas Sowell, who wholeheartedly disagrees with the premises of Baldwin's notions of victimhood and absolving of personal agency; however, I find the subject and time period fascinating and would gladly read Baldwin's works.
