Ramtin Arablui

But he insisted, we are not the mere product of social forces.

Each of us has a say in who we take ourselves to be.

No matter what America said about him as a black person, Baldwin argued, he had the last word about who he was as a human being and as a black man.

Just as we must examine our individual experiences and the terrors that shape how we come to see ourselves together as a country, we must do the same.

The two are bound together.

What I love is while it's deeply personal, it's very much examining the systemic of the broader responsibility of the country, of its government, of its policies.

Today, there seems to be a real tension between those things for many people.

What do you think Baldwin would have made of that tension today?

During the 1960s, different groups emerged in the movement for black liberation and civil rights.

There was the nonviolent direct action wing of the movement, headed by groups like SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and people like Martin Luther King and John Lewis.

And James Baldwin, who was a well-known figure by this point, kind of had a choice to make.

Clearly pick a side or potentially lose support from the mainstream.

Sometimes you got to sing off key to be heard, you know?

Throughout the book, just to follow up on that, there is this feeling that while he holds that rage, as you just said, he's also capable of simultaneously understanding that the white citizens of the United States who are

responsible for the state of a major role and responsible for the state of racism in the system in America.

He also holds a deep love for

and a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood for those people.

And do you think part of the reason he was able to do that so well, beyond just his ability to write and think, was that he was a witness and not necessarily a participant in the sense that he wasn't an activist.

He intentionally chose to be a witness, to bear witness, to document in a lot of ways

uh, what he was seeing, what does that tell us about kind of where, you know, many of us sit?