Personal Response to James Baldwin
Notes of a Native Son is a vulnerable, open-ended essay by James Baldwin. The essay tells the tale of injustice, violence and brutality towards the black race. Baldwin opens up about the sad reality that faces every generation of black men worldwide. Racism towards the black race is something we have seen happen in the past and sadly still experience today in the present. Even after years of freedom and laws apparently made to protect human rights. The harsh reality of constantly being killed and being victims of oppression and exclusion are subject to black people. This injustice has created a universal stigma on black bodies. One of bitterness, rage, and rejection
Notes of a Native Son reminds us of this cancer and bitterness that has killed and continues to kill black people physically, emotionally and mentally. History has shown images and told stories of the hash past of black ancestors before freedom. Yet, we sit today in ‘democratic’ societies facing the same brutality.
James Baldwin does an excellent job of showing the minor difference that the world has made to fix the racism problem. His father, a first-generation black person, was born free, and he, a black man who had never seen ‘the old America’ and yet both met with the same fate.
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The world was ejecting them because of their blackness.
The world was ejecting them because of their blackness.
I find myself deeply resonated within James Baldwin’s essay because of the colour of my skin. Being black has been an experience so far removed from an average human experience. Baldwin begins the essay by showing a somewhat chaotic series of events that happen on the same day. A child is born, his father is dead. On their way to bury their father, they are surrounded by remains of “ the bloodiest race riots of the century.” The same reality is actual today. While the world is going through a pandemic, black people are concurrently fighting against police brutality. Brutality Illustrated by the deaths of Nathaniel Julius in South Africa and George Floyd in America.
Being black has been an experience so far removed from an average human experience.
I often ask myself a question and a question I believe everyone should be asking themselves. How disregarded and unconcerned for a specific group can be when governance, law, humanity and morality are being shaped and enforced. Black bodies are often dehumanized so much that they are rid of innocence at such a young age, expected to mature faster. Black people cannot stay young and joyful because of the ruin and suffering they expected to bear. James Baldwin’s father is seen through the essay as he struggles with a mental health issue Baldwin describes later as paranoia. As he would frequently be ‘’sitting at the window, locked up in his terrors”. We can never be sure of Baldwin’s father personality, which caused him to be incapable of human connection, but we later observe the same bitter character in Baldwin. Today, the constant terror and aggression animate in many black people. Black people often turn their blackness into weapons of some sort, often vulnerability and fear covered by a front of desperate pride. Pride is enhanced by western ideas, success, education and properness. Depicted by the pride black parent’s finds when their children are attending predominantly white private school and can speak the most proper English.
James Baldwin’s essay Notes of a Native Child bring us to a full circle which serves as a rather cruel reminder for me. For him, maybe a realization and newfound understanding of his father’s character. That even after reaching this model of a better black man, he would still be treated as just that, a black man. In one of his essays, Baldwin says that ‘’To be a Negro meant, precisely, that one was never looked at but was simply at the mercy of the reflexes the colour of one’s skin caused in other people.”
‘’To be a Negro meant, precisely, that one was never looked at but was simply at the mercy of the reflexes the colour of one’s skin caused in other people.” — James Baldwin
The essay is written as a paradox of James Baldwin’s life and his fathers. All the memories interactions he holds, big and small, are all made meaningful. It leaves the reader feeling that nothing is ordinary in a black man’s life. Baldwin’s essay is a reminder of how hate, anger, and bitterness are not natural God-given characteristics to black people.
