Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hey, it's Rand. In this month's ThruLine Plus episode, our producers take us behind the scenes of making our episode on the first transatlantic cable. To listen to these insider bonus episodes every month, sign up for ThruLine Plus at plus.npr.org slash ThruLine.
A quick heads up before we get started. This episode contains some strong language, including a racial slur and mention of suicide.
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.
Thank you.
Hey, I'm Rand Abdel-Fattah.
I'm Ramteen Adab. Louis, you may have noticed the quote making the rounds on social media. It goes, Those words were written by James Baldwin, whose voice you heard at the top, in an essay for the New York Times published in 1962. For many people, it rings as true today as it did then. The words have a power and clarity that seem to cut through time and space.
It also shows how ideas reemerge in times when they seem most needed. And actually, that's something we talk about a lot when we develop episodes. Historical figures and their ideas. They inspire us, challenge our assumptions, and sometimes push us to ask questions we might not otherwise have asked.
And what better way than to look at the philosophy of James Baldwin, a writer who used the power of his words to confront in order to connect, something we can relate to today.
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Chapter 2: What is the significance of James Baldwin's perspective on American identity?
This is Eddie Glaude, Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University.
I'm the author of Begin Again, James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own.
In 2018, Eddie was starting to write that book about Baldwin, but he was struggling. So he went to Heidelberg, Germany on a fellowship to try and figure it out.
You know, I had been thinking I was going to write this intellectual biography of Baldwin. And I was having all of this trouble. The archives weren't weren't yielding what I hoped they would yield. I'm in Heidelberg, and I experienced this horrible scene.
He'd just arrived at the train station when he saw something disturbingly familiar. Here's how he describes it in his book.
As we entered the station, I heard screaming. People in front of us stood still and stared at some kind of commotion. I followed their eyes. Four policemen were piled on a Black man. One officer had his knee in the man's back. The others twisted his arms. His pants were halfway down his legs. His bare ass was exposed.
The police pressed his head down into the concrete as if they were trying to leave the imprint of a leaf there. With each attempt to cuff him, the man let out a blood-curdling scream. All eyes were on him as the crowd stood by and watched intently, like spectators at a soccer game without any real attachment to the team's playing. I watched them as they watched the police and the black man.
Their faces revealed nothing. They were inscrutable, at least to me. I had not been in Heidelberg for two hours, and police had a black man's face pressed down on the concrete with a knee in his back.
The intensity of that scene snapped things into focus for Eddie. He wasn't gonna write an intellectual history of James Baldwin as he had originally planned. He was gonna try and write with Baldwin, to try to put him in a deeper, more philosophical context and understand what his work offers us in our world. He went back to his room and the words just started pouring out.
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Chapter 3: How did Eddie Glaude's journey with Baldwin's work begin?
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? And do you think that was what really enabled him to kind of really be able to balance those heavy emotions?
You know, I, I don't know, um, to be honest with you, it, it, there is a sense in which, you know, Baldwin is, is the poet in, in the Emersonian sense. Um, Baldwin never gave up on the fundamental sacrality of human being. We're all sacred. And then that line where he says, you know, I want us to do something unprecedented, and that is to create a self without the need for enemies. Oh, my Lord.
Every time, I mean, that's just, I just love that line. So part of what he's saying, I know I'm going around in circles, he's saying that what white supremacy does, it not only causes all of this hell for me and how I have to raise my children and live my life, it is literally deforming and disfiguring the character of the people who embrace it.
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.
And what he's warning us is not to fall into the trap because if it disfigures them, if we buy into its logic, it will disfigure us. We can't release the trap, man. But we also can't fall into this stuff of sentimentality either. But anyway. Jimmy.
What James Baldwin can teach us about dealing with our loneliness when we come back.
Hey, what's up? This is JC Williams calling from Zurich, Switzerland, and you're listening to ThruLine on NPR.
Throughout his life, James Baldwin felt the solitude of being an outsider. He was a nomad, spending many years living abroad in France and other parts of Europe. And whether it was because of the color of his skin, his sexuality, or his fiercely independent thinking, he could never escape being alone. And the more successful he became as a writer, the more the loneliness followed him.
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