James Baldwin’s Ideas and Activism during the 1980s

Why aren’t Black people more optimistic? Is it at once getting much better and hopeless? To shed light on these, we only need to return to James Baldwin who eloquently and cogently put it best regarding race, optimism, and the future of America: “I am not a pessimist because I am alive. To be a pessimist, it means that you have agreed that human life is an academic matter. So I am forced to be an optimist. I’m forced to believe that we can survive whatever we must survive.” The future of Black people, Baldwin continues, is “precisely as bright or as dark as the future of the country. It is entirely up to the American people and our representatives [. . .] whether or not they will deal with and embrace the stranger they have maligned for so long.”
Source: “Why Aren’t Black People More Optimistic?” – AAIHS

“I think I know how many times one has to start again, and how often one feels that one cannot start again,” Baldwin once wrote, but “one can never remain where one is” because we owe it to ourselves and to each other to “bear witness” for generations both past and yet to come."
MORE: HERE
Author, Mosaic Artist, Blogger

Comments

Post a Comment

Indian Slavery

Think so?

absolute power depends on absolute control over knowledge, which in turn necessitates absolute corruption

Think about this

“Politicians, Priests, and psychiatrists often face the same problem: how to find the most rapid and permanent means of changing a man’s belief…The problem of the doctor and his nervously ill patient, and that of the religious leader who sets out to gain and hold new converts, has now become the problem of whole groups of nations, who wish not only to confirm certain political beliefs within their boundaries, but to proselytize the outside world.” – William Sargant “Battle of the Mind”

Popular posts from this blog

Other Address for BIG ISMS

Image
Here is where you can find us: https://thebigisms.wordpress.com/2020/11/29/my-white-friend-asked-me-on-facebook-to-explain-white-privilege-i-decided-to-be-honest-yes-magazine/   (we will leave this blog up since there is so much history to read and consider.)
Read more

Andrew Jackson Was A Real-Life Horror Movie Monster

Image
The truth about Jackson’s savagery was just as disturbing as the fake news. After a particularly bloody battle in 1814, Andrew Jackson’s men counted the dead Indians by cutting off their noses. They collected 557 noses. and... (this comment) Jackson ran an ad in the Nashville Gazette, in October, 1804, for the capture of a runaway slave, which stated that in addition to the reward, he would pay an extra $10 per 100 lashes (up to 300), to anyone who willing to inflict them upon his miscreant property. He was known to hold a vengeful lifetime grudge against anyone whom he felt had slighted him, regardless of how minor the supposed offense. His betrayal the Choctow tribe, whom he persuaded to become American allies over the British during the war of 1812, culminated in the “Indian Removal Act” (Trail of Tears), of which he took personal responsiblity to see implemented, resulted in the death of thousands of men, women and children. It’s no surprise that the current occupant of the Wh
Read more

Contact Us

Name

Email *

Message *

Visitors

Little Man Little Man