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STEPHEN SPENDEl
other people in the world who are "have-nots"-are forced back onto
personal values. It is by no means clear, though, whether the oppressed
if
they were set over their oppressors- the blacks over the whites-would
not lose their "sensuality" and become as bad as the present white ruling
class. Lack of sensuality is the result of . running and deriving benefits
from an industrial society. The "sensual" are simply the outcasts.
When he discusses white Americans and Christians, he tends
to
attribute to them generalized qualities. Indeed, for him, white Americans
seem hardly to be people ; they are an abstraction, "America." When ,
he discusses Negroes he tends to attribute to them particularized,
personal qualities. "White Americans do not believe in death, and
this
is why the darkness of my skin so intimidates them. And this is
also
why the presence of the Negro in this country can bring about its
destruction. It is the responsibility of free men to trust and to celebrate
what is constant-birth, struggle and death are constant, and so is love,
although we may not always think so-and to apprehend the nature of
change, to be able and willing to change."
Mr. Baldwin asserts that the white American does not recognize
death because he does not recognize life. He does not recognize the
"constants" of life in himself, and therefore he does not recognize them
in the Negro.
If
he recognized the Negro as a being like himself, then
he would recognize in himself those constants which he acknowledges
in the Negro. Thus the black can "save" the white by making the white
conscious of his humanity.
This position is summarized in his letter to his nephew:
" Integration
means that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves
as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it."
Much the same message is contained in the most quoted poem of
Auden: "We must love one another or die."
It
is worth noting, however,
that Auden in later editions dropped the stanza containing this line.
When I asked him why he had done this, he replied, "Because we're
going to die anyway." He might have added that if our living depended
on our loving one another then we would all be doomed instantly.
And to this he could have added that when we assert that we can all love
one another, we cannot be sure that what we are saying is true.
Although Mr. Baldwin considers love is the only answer to the
American race problem, it is not at all evident from his book that he
loves white Americans, and at times it is even doubtful whether he loves
his own people. Not that I blame him for this. What I do criticize
him
for is postulating a quite impossible demand as the only way of dealing
with a problem that has to be solved.
