No Name in the Street

“I starved in Paris for a while, but I learned something: for one thing, I fell in love. Or, more accurately, I realized, and accepted for the first time that love was not merely a general, human possibility, nor merely the disaster it had so often, by then, been for me—according to me—nor was it something that happened to other people, like death, nor was it merely a mortal danger: it was among my possibilities, for here it was, breathing and belching beside me, and it was the key to life. Not merely the key to my life, but to life itself. […] It began to pry open for me the trap of color, for people do not fall in love according to their color […] and when lovers quarrel, as indeed they inevitably do, it is not the degree of their pigmentation that they are quarreling about, nor can lovers, on any level whatever, use color as a weapon. This means that one must accept one’s nakedness.”

The passage illustrates Baldwin’s core thematic idea of love. For Baldwin, love is not only one of the possibilities of human beings, but also the key to human life. Falling in love, Baldwin reached emotional maturity and realized how racism works. Love counters racism as people who are in love accept each other’s reality and humanity. Race is no longer a means of putting each other down, therefore love is also key to social change.

“Or, in other words, my reasons for coming to France, and the comparative freedom of my life in Paris, meant that my attitude toward France was very different from that of any Algerian. He, and his brothers, were, in fact, being murdered by my hosts. And Algeria, after all, is a part of Africa, and France, after all, is a part of Europe: that Europe which invaded and raped the African continent and slaughtered those Africans whom they could not enslave—that Europe from which, in sober truth, Africa has yet to liberate herself. […] The Algerian and I were both, alike, victims of this history, and I was still a part of Africa, even though I had been carried out of it nearly four hundred years before.”

In Paris, Baldwin finds himself plunged into the social upheaval that precedes the Algerian War. Baldwin finds commonalities with the Algerians, who as immigrants and part of France’s colonial empire are subject to racism. The passage shows Baldwin’s ambivalence in his own identity as an American. As an American citizen, Baldwin is a Westerner. However, his oppression as a Black man also connects him to Africa. The ongoing exploitation of Africa by Europe is reflected in America’s racist reality.

“[M]y life in Paris was to some extent protected by the fact that I carried a green passport. This passport proclaimed that I was a free citizen of a free country, and was not, therefore, to be treated as one of Europe’s uncivilized, black possessions. This same passport, on the other side of the ocean, underwent a sea change and proclaimed that I was not an African prince, but a domestic n***** and that no foreign government would be offended if my corpse were to be found clogging up the sewers.”

Baldwin emphasizes the paradox of his identity. In France, his American citizenship connects him to the West, and Europe does not treat him as a colonial subject. However, America’s colonial mindset keeps him oppressed in his home country. For the American state, he is expendable.

“He wants the old order, which came into existence through unchecked greed and wanton murder, to redeem itself without further bloodshed—without, that is, any further menacing itself—and without coercion. This, old orders never do, less because they would not than because they cannot. They cannot because they have always existed in relation to a force which they have had to subdue. This subjugation is the key to their identity and the triumph and justification of their history, and it is also on this continued subjugation that their material well-being depends. One may see that the history, which is now indivisible from oneself, has been full of errors and excesses; but this is not the same thing as seeing that, for millions of people, this history—oneself—has been nothing but an intolerable yoke, a stinking prison, a shrieking grave. It is not so easy to see that, for millions of people, life itself depends on the speediest possible demolition of this history, even if this means the leveling, or the destruction of its heirs.”

Baldwin criticizes William Faulkner’s works to comment on American history and white Americans stance toward racism. For Baldwin, a history that depends on the subjugation of others cannot redeem or justify itself. White American identity depends on the oppression of Black Americans, and the only solution is its radical transformation. For Baldwin, history also needs to be revised. As mainstream history justifies European achievements against other nations, the oppressed can claim their own position in that history and affirm their presence.

“Finally, I got my assignment, and I went South. Something began, for me, tremendous. I met some of the noblest, most beautiful people a man can hope to meet, and I saw some beautiful and some terrible things. I was old enough to recognize how deep and strangling were my fears, how manifold and mighty my limits: but no one can demand more of life than that life do him the honor to demand that he learn to live with his fears, and learn to live, every day, both within his limits and beyond them.”

In traveling south, Baldwin, as a native New Yorker, is introduced to another part of the African American experience. Southerners show him the terrifying reality of racism and Black people’s courage and perseverance, forcing him to confront his own fears.

“This failure of the private life has always had the most devastating effect on American public conduct, and on black-white relations. If Americans were not so terrified of their private selves, they would never have needed to invent and could never have become so dependent on what they still call ‘the Negro problem.’ This problem, which they invented in order to safeguard their purity, has made of them criminals and monsters, and it is destroying them; and this not from anything blacks may or may not be doing but because of the role a guilty and constricted white imagination has assigned to the blacks.”

Baldwin analyzes the state of American consciousness and criticizes white Americans, focusing on the failure of the white imagination. Racism shows that white people project their own fears and troubles onto Black people; they have constructed a problematic and destructive identity based on subjugation. Ultimately, racism is a product of the white imagination and the poverty of white American minds.

“The slave knows, however his master may be deluded on this point, that he is called a slave because his manhood has been, or can be, or will be taken from him. To be a slave means that one’s manhood is engaged in a dubious battle indeed, and this stony fact is not altered by whatever devotion some masters and some slaves may have arrived at in relation to each other. In the case of American slavery, the black man’s right to his women, as well as to his children, was simply taken from him […] And one of the many results of this loveless, money-making conspiracy was that, in giving the masters every conceivable sexual and commercial license, it also emasculated them of any human responsibility—to their women, to their children, to their wives, or to themselves. The results of this blasphemy resound in this country, on every private and public level, until this hour.”

The passage illustrates the theme of The Role of Masculinity in the Racial Struggle. Baldwin traces the history of enslavement in America to illustrate that white masculinity has always been defined against Black manhood. White men repressed Black masculinity to affirm their own power, while racism emasculated Black men, who had no right to their families. This emasculation dehumanized Black men. Baldwin notes that the legacy of enslavement still haunts America.

“In spite of all that could have divided us, and in spite of the fact that some of them looked on me with an inevitable suspicion, I felt very much at home among the dark people who lived where I, if so much had not been disrupted, would logically have been born. I felt, beneath everything, a profound acceptance, an unfamiliar peace, almost as though, after despairing and debilitating journeys, I had, at last, come home. If there was, in this, some illusion, there was also some truth.”

The passage emphasizes the bonds within the African American community. Despite living abroad for years, Baldwin still feels connected to Black Americans. Even though racism still impacted human relations, Baldwin stresses Black people’s unbreakable bonds. He longed for a sense of belonging and home and finds it within the African American community.

“All of the Western nations have been caught in a lie, the lie of their pretended humanism; this means that their history has no moral justification, and that the West has no moral authority. Malcolm, yet more concretely than Frantz Fanon—since Malcolm operated in the Afro-American idiom, and referred to the Afro-American situation—made the nature of this lie, and its implications, relevant and articulate to the people whom he served. He made increasingly articulate the ways in which this lie, given the history and the power of the Western nations, had become a global problem, menacing the lives of millions.”

Baldwin criticizes Western culture and emphasizes the delusion of white supremacy. He notes that Western history has no moral justification since it depends on the exclusion and oppression of other nations, and the supposed superiority of Western civilization is a worldwide problem. For Baldwin, Malcolm X and his advocacy articulated the problem of white supremacy in American society.

“It is true that political freedom is a matter of power and has nothing to do with morality; and if one had ever hoped to find a way around this principle, the performance of power at bay, which is the situation of the Western nations, and the very definition of the American crisis, has dashed this hope to pieces. Moreover, as habits of thought reinforce and sustain the habits of power, it is not even remotely possible for the excluded to become included, for this inclusion means, precisely, the end of the status quo—or would result, as so many of the wise and honored would put it, in a mongrelization of the races. But for power truly to feel itself menaced, it must somehow sense itself in the presence of another power—or, more accurately, an energy—which it has not known how to define and therefore does not really know how to control.”

The passage illustrates Baldwin’s views on freedom and equality. For Baldwin, political freedom is not a matter of justice but a matter of power. Black Americans cannot be free within the existing social order because it guarantees their oppression. The freedom of the oppressed depends on the destruction of the establishment. However, another form of power is necessary to replace it.

“Power, then, which can have no morality in itself, is yet dependent on human energy, on the wills and desires of human beings. When power translates itself into tyranny, it means that the principles on which that power depended, and which were its justification, are bankrupt. […] The representatives of the status quo are sickened and divided, and dread looking into the eyes of their young; while the excluded begin to realize, having endured everything, that they can endure everything. They do not know the precise shape of the future, but they know that the future belongs to them. They realize this—paradoxically—by the failure of the moral energy of their oppressors and begin, almost instinctively, to forge a new morality, to create the principles on which a new world will be built.”

The passage illustrates Baldwin’s conceptualization of power. In his view, true power does not relate to oppression and fear. Rather, power derives from human energy. Baldwin alludes to the idea of Black Power. The people who have been excluded realize their own possibility to create a new form of power based on people’s desires and needs. Tyrannical power structures that depend on subjugation have no future.

“It was important for them to know that there was someone like them, in public life, telling the truth about their condition. Malcolm considered himself to be the spiritual property of the people who produced him. He did not consider himself to be their saviour, he was far too modest for that, and gave that role to another; but he considered himself to be their servant and in order not to betray that trust, he was willing to die, and died. Malcolm was not a racist, not even when he thought he was. […] What made him unfamiliar and dangerous was not his hatred for white people but his love for blacks, his apprehension of the horror of the black condition, and the reasons for it, and his determination so to work on their hearts and minds that they would be enabled to see their condition and change it themselves.”

Baldwin depicts Malcolm X through a lens that challenges his portrayal as a violent militant in popular culture. Baldwin argues that Malcolm X represented the desires and needs of the African American community. Mainstream American society considered him a threat because of his love for Black people. Malcolm X’s ideas about Black nationalism influenced the Black Power movement’s emphasis on the autonomy and self-determination of Black communities.

“I agree with the Black Panther position concerning black prisoners: not one of them has ever had a fair trial, for not one of them has ever been tried by a jury of his peers. White middle-class America is always the jury, and they know absolutely nothing about the lives of the people on whom they sit in judgment: and this fact is not altered, on the contrary it is rendered more implacable by the presence of one or two black faces in the jury box.”

The passage demonstrates Baldwin’s alignment with the Black Panther Party on contemporary issues like police brutality and institutional racism. Baldwin’s own experience shows that Black men’s incarceration is often the result of racism embedded in the American justice system.

“I don’t think I felt anything so trivial as guilt, guilt at what appeared to be my comparative good fortune, I knew more about comparative fortunes than that, but I felt a stunning helplessness. These two worlds would never meet, and that fact prefigured disaster for my countrymen, and me. It caused me to look about me with an intensity of wonder which had no pleasure in it.”

Baldwin expresses his personal feelings about his life as an African American writer, which often places him at odds with his community. Baldwin feels a sense of guilt for his putative privileges over other Black people, which only intensifies his distress and makes racism more evident to him. Baldwin aligns himself with the African American community.

“It was a symptom of how bitterly weary I was of wandering, how I hoped to find a resting place, reconciliation, in the land where I was born. But everything that might have charmed me merely reminded me of how many were excluded, how many were suffering and groaning and dying, not far from a paradise which was itself but another circle of hell. Everything that charmed me reminded me of someplace else, someplace where I could walk and talk, someplace where I was freer than I was at home, someplace where I could live without the stifling mask—made me homesick for a liberty I had never tasted here, and without which I could never live or work. In America, I was free only in battle, never free to rest—and he who finds no way to rest cannot long survive the battle.”

This passage demonstrates Baldwin’s need for a sense of belonging and his mental exhaustion. The reality of racism leads him to wander around the world in search of a place that will treat him as a human. He longs for a feeling of home in America but realizes that he can never be free there. Like all Black Americans, he always had to struggle to survive in his homeland.

“The reason for this, at bottom, is that the doctrine of white supremacy, which still controls most white people, is itself a stupendous delusion: but to be born black in America is an immediate, a mortal challenge. People who cling to their delusions find it difficult, if not impossible, to learn anything worth learning: a people under the necessity of creating themselves must examine everything, and soak up learning the way the roots of a tree soak up water. A people still held in bondage must believe that Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make ye free.”

Baldwin emphasizes the pervasiveness of white supremacy in American society. He explains that white superiority is a myth, a delusion for white Americans that endangers Black lives. White America’s limited grasp of reality keeps them trapped in their illusions and unable to work for social change. Black people, however, can see reality for what it is, and thus can map out the path to freedom. Ultimately, Black liberation also leads to white freedom.

“The reasoning behind the March on Washington, as it eventually evolved—or as it was, in Malcolm’s words, ‘diluted’—was that peaceful assembly would produce the best results. But, five years later, it was very hard to believe that the frontal assault, as planned, on the capitol, could possibly have produced more bloodshed, or more despair. Five years later, it seemed clear that we had merely postponed, and not at all to our advantage, the hour of dreadful reckoning.”

Baldwin refers to the 1963 March on Washington as a pivotal moment in civil rights history. For Baldwin, even though the march had a profound symbolic impact for Black people’s resistance and perseverance, it ultimately did little to improve their circumstances; the strategy of nonviolent protest could not result in the radical transformation of American society. In the late 1960s, racial violence persisted making Black people even more desperate about their struggle. The passage signals the movement’s ideological shift during the Black Power era.

“That black people need protection against the police is indicated by the black community’s reaction to the advent of the Panthers. Without community support, the Panthers would have been merely another insignificant street gang. It was the reaction of the black community which triggered the response of the police: these young men, claiming the right to bear arms, dressed deliberately in guerrilla fashion, standing nearby whenever a black man was accosted by a policeman to inform the black man of his rights and insisting on the right of black people to self defense, were immediately marked as ‘trouble-makers.’ But white people seem affronted by the black distrust of white policemen, and appear to be astonished that a black man, woman, or child can have any reason to fear a white cop.”

Baldwin explains the emergence of the Black Panther Party. He notes that the Black Panthers were not autonomous militants imposing their will on others. Instead, the party voiced the needs of the Black community in the late 1960s. The Black Panthers affirmed the right of Black people to battle against police brutality. White people’s ignorance of police violence allowed the political authorities to target the Black Panthers and deem them a threat to domestic order.

“All of these are antidotes to the demoralization which is the scourge of the ghetto, are techniques of self-realization. This is also why they are taught to bear arms—not, like most white Americans, because they fear their neighbors, though indeed they have the most to fear, but in order, this time, to protect their lives, their women and children, their homes, rather than the life and property of an Uncle Sam who has rarely been able to treat his black nephews with more than a vaguely benign contempt. For the necessity, now, which I think nearly all black people see in different ways, is the creation and protection of a nucleus which will bring into existence a new people. The Black Panthers made themselves visible—made themselves targets, if you like—in order to hip the black community to the presence of a new force in its midst, a force working toward the health and liberation of the community.”

The passage explains the significance of the Black Panther Party for the civil rights struggle. The party worked for the self-determination and empowerment of the African American community. Baldwin explains that they carried weapons not to perpetrate violence against white people but to protect the Black community. He stresses that the emphasis on Black Power is key for the creation of a new society in which Black people will be free.

“I felt that he used my public reputation against me both naïvely and unjustly, and I also felt that I was confused in his mind with the unutterable debasement of the male—with all those faggots, punks, and sissies, the sight and sound of whom, in prison, must have made him vomit more than once. Well, I certainly hope I know more about myself, and the intention of my work than that, but I am an odd quantity. So is Eldridge; so are we all. It is a pity that we won’t, probably, ever have the time to attempt to define once more the relationship of the odd and disreputable artist to the odd and disreputable revolutionary; for the revolutionary, however odd, is rarely disreputable in the same way that an artist can be.”

The passage indicates that the emphasis on masculinity within the Black Panther Party also had its limitations. Baldwin notes that Eldridge Cleaver was critical of him due to his sexual orientation and considered his masculine identity compromised. Baldwin dismisses Cleaver’s criticism and compares the role of the artist to that of the revolutionary activist, as they both work for the empowerment and renewal of their community.

“They want to hide this truth from black people—by making it impossible for them to respond to it—and they would like to hide it from the world; and not, alas, because they are ashamed of it but because they have no intention of changing it. They cannot afford to change it. They would not know how to go about changing it, even if their imaginations were capable of encompassing the concept of black freedom. But this concept lives in their imaginations, and in the popular imagination, only as a nightmare. Blacks have never been free in this country, never was it intended that they should be free, and the spectre of so dreadful a freedom—the idea of a license so bloody and abandoned—conjures up another, unimaginable country, a country in which no decent, God-fearing white man or woman can live. A civilized country is, by definition, a country dominated by whites, in which the blacks clearly know their place.”

Baldwin notes that the political state persecuted Black Panthers to obscure the reality of racism. For Baldwin, American power structures have no incentive to change, because American society’s transformation would necessitate the elimination of white privilege. White people are trapped by their own vision of a civilized society in which Black people are always oppressed. For Baldwin, white Americans cannot envision a society where both Black and white people are free.

“The fact that their uniforms and their jargon precisely represented the distances they had yet to cover before arriving at that maturity which makes love possible—or no longer possible—could not be considered their fault. They had been born into a society in which nothing was harder to achieve, in which perhaps nothing was more scorned and feared than the idea of the soul’s maturity. Their flowers had the validity, at least, of existing in direct challenge to the romance of the gun; their gentleness, however specious, was nevertheless a direct repudiation of the American adoration of violence. Yet they looked—alas—doomed. They seemed to sense their doom.”

Baldwin expresses his views on the young white revolutionaries of the period. Young white people are also trapped within the illusion of white supremacy. The “flower children” tried hard to repudiate the establishment but were limited by their immaturity. Even though their activism made violence within American society more visible to white people, they lacked the ability to envision a different form of power that would lead to a liberated society.

“The black and white confrontation, whether it be hostile, as in the cities and the labor unions, or with the intention of forming a common front and creating the foundations of a new society, as with the students and the radicals, is obviously crucial, containing the shape of the American future and the only potential of a truly valid American identity. No one knows precisely how identities are forged, but it is safe to say that identities are not invented: an identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience.”

Baldwin reiterates his hopes for social change. He notes that the racial conflict between Black and white people could generate a new world and guarantee the future of America. Ultimately, the racial struggle is the only way to create a truthful American identity that reflects the reality of the country and the experiences of all its people.