James Baldwin

Until the moment comes when we, the Americans, we, the American people, are able to accept the fact that I have to accept, for example, that my ancestors were both white and black, that on that continent we are trying to forge a new identity for which we need each other.

Until this moment, there is scarcely any hope for the American dream because the people who are denied participation in it by their very presence

will wreck it.

And if that happens, it's a very grave moment for the West.

That's part of the dilemma of being an American Negro, that one is a little bit colored and a little bit white.

And not only in physical terms, in the head and in the heart,

And there are days, one of them, when you wonder what your role is in this country and what your future is in it.

I'm terrified at the moral apathy, the death of the heart, which is happening in my country.

These people have deluded themselves for so long, they really don't think I'm human.

And this means that they have become in themselves moral monsters.

Well, I'm both glad and sorry you asked me that question, but I'll do my best to answer it.

I can't be a pessimist.

Because I'm alive.

To be a pessimist means that you have agreed that human life is an academic matter.

Now the artist, no matter how he sounds, is by definition a religious man.

Believing that we can create and transcend all our God.

that is entirely up to us as a work of human beings to make the world more human.

One of the things that most afflicts this country is that white people don't know who they are or where they come from.

That's why you think I'm a problem.

But I am not the problem.