James Baldwin

Your history is.

And as long as you pretend you don't know your history, you're going to be the prisoner of it.

When, quote unquote, white people talk about progress in relation to black people, all they are saying and all they can possibly mean by the word progress is how quickly and how thoroughly I become white.

I don't want to become white.

I want to grow up, and so should you.

If we were Irish...

if we were Jewish, if we were Poles, if we had, in fact, in your mind, a frame of reference, our heroes would be your heroes too.

Nat Turner would be a hero for you instead of a threat.

Malcolm X might still be alive.

But, you know, when the Israelis pick up guns or the Poles,

or the Irish or any white man in the world says, give me liberty or give me death, the entire white world applauds when a black man says exactly the same thing, word for word.

He is judged a criminal and treated like one and everything possible is done to make an example of this bad nigger so they won't be any more like him.

your character is fundamentally affected by all of this can't you see I think that you and I might learn a great deal from each other if you can overcome the curtain of my color this country is mine too I paid as much for it as you white means that you are European still and black means that I'm African and we both know we've both been here too long

You can't go back to Ireland or Poland or England.

And I can't go back to Africa.

And we will live here together or we'll die here together.

And it's not I am telling you.

Time is telling you.

You will listen or you will perish.

What is it you want me to reconcile myself to?