For those of you who are interested, here’s a link to the full text of the speech we watched Baldwin give in class.
I left Baruch last week really thinking a lot about Baldwin–why I teach his writing and what I think his writing teaches me.
I feel a little bit sad that we are only reading a tiny excerpt from his amazing The Fire Next Time. So, to begin this post, I want to just share some additional Baldwin quotes:
- “It is a complex fate to be an American,” Henry James observed, and the principal discovery an American writer makes in Europe is just how complex this fate is…I left America because I doubted my ability to survive the fury of the color problem here. (Sometimes I still do.) I wanted to prevent myself from becoming merely a Negro; or, even, merely a Negro writer…Still, the breakthrough is important, and the point is that an American writer, in order to achieve it, very often has to leave this country…” (from “The Discovery of What It Means to be an American”)
- “I had never thought of myself as an essayist: the idea had never entered my mind. Even–or, perhaps, especially, now–I find it hard to recreate the journey…If I was trying to discover myself–on the whole, when examined, a somewhat dubious notion, since I was also trying to avoid myself–there was, certainly, between that self and me, the accumulated rock of ages. This rock scarred the hand, and all tools broke against it. Yet, there was a me somewhere: I could feel it, stirring within and against captivity. The hope of salvation–identity–depended on whether or not one would be able to decipher and describe the rock.” (from “Introduction” to Notes of a Native Son)
- “I would not allow myself to be defined by other people, white or black. It was beneath me to blame anybody for what happened to me. What happened to me was my responsibility. I didn’t want any pity. “Leave me alone, I’ll figure it out.” I was very wounded and I was very dangerous because you become what you hate. It’s what happened to my father and I didn’t want it to happen to me. His hatred was suppressed and turned against himself. He couldn’t let it out—he could only let it out in the house with rage, and I found it happening to myself as well. And after my best friend jumped off the bridge, I knew that I was next. So—Paris. With forty dollars and a one-way ticket.” (from an interview in the Paris Review)
As I type this, however, I am realizing that perhaps my post isn’t really about Baldwin, but about those “red equals signs” that are everywhere. In the morning class I know I asked how many people changed their facebook profile photos to these symbols advocating support for same sex marriage, symbols that stem from the Human Rights Campaign‘s logo. But, what do these symbols mean and how many people really know why they are changing their profile pictures? These issues are complicated, so, what do we do with a meme?
There are two major issues up for debate–Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act.
Proposition 8 states that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”
The Defense of Marriage Act states:
- Section 2. Powers reserved to the states
- No State, territory, or possession of the United States, or Indian tribe, shall be required to give effect to any public act, record, or judicial proceeding of any other State, territory, possession, or tribe respecting a relationship between persons of the same sex that is treated as a marriage under the laws of such other State, territory, possession, or tribe, or a right or claim arising from such relationship.
- Section 3. Definition of marriage
- In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the word ‘marriage’ means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word ‘spouse’ refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.
- So, now, both are under discussion–the central issues seem to revolve around basic human rights. And, the HRC is a huge organization devoted to LGBT issues, so of course it makes sense that their logo becomes omnipresent right now. But, I am not sure it is that easy…
- But, back to Baldwin.
At the end of The Fire Next Time, Baldwin writes, “people are not, for example, terribly anxious to be equal (equal, after all, to what and to whom?) but the love the idea of being superior.” This idea combined with Baldwin’s idea that he did not want to be defined by other people led me to think about DOMA, HRC, Prop. 8, etc. But, why? How would Baldwin respond to today’s world?- In an article titled “Baldwin Comes Out,” James Tinney reminds us that “Gays, like Blacks, he believes, are being used as scapegoats for society’s own fears” and (directly quoting Baldwin), “One has to reject, in toto, the implication that one is abnormal. That is a sociological and societal delusion that has no truth at all. I’m no more abnormal than General Douglas MacArthur.”
