BOO KS
259
Mr. Baldwin's bias towards discussing the American Negro as
though he had no characteristics in common with Negroes elsewhere or
other oppressed people and classes contributes to his tendency to think
that the problem can only be met by all Negroes and all white Americans
being seized at the same moment by the same wave of love. My argu–
ment is that the relationship of Negro to white exists within a situation
comparable to other situations.
It
is partIy a situation of color, partly
one of class. The American Negro is in effect a world proletarian who
suffers under the disadvantage that he appears to be indelibly branded
as
such by the blackness of his skin. People used to talk about the
European proletariat as Baldwin does about Negroes, as though their
status was inbred and could only be changed by love (which meant it
could not be changed at all). But if you change the circumstances of
the workers, so long as they are white they simply become like other
white people who are not workers. What is menacing about the color
problem is that even if you change the status of the Negro his color
remains the same. Color prejudice is extremely deep, and far more
widespread than Mr. Baldwin seems to realize, since it exists all over
the world, where similar circumstances (such as that of there being a
majority of Negro proletarians among a minority of whites) produce
similar results. !Moreover, color prejudice is not confined to white
Americans and Europeans.
It
exists between colored people themselves.
This last point is rather important, because while disapproving
of the Black Muslims, Mr. Baldwin seems to accept their view that the
world is divided into blacks and whites, of which the black are the
majority. As a matter of fact, if the white races disappeared from
the face of the earth, there would be perhaps worse color problems than
there are today; for whereas white men are (though not fast enough)
beginning to be ashamed of their attitude towards colored people,
many Asians have little tolerance for other Asians of slightly different
shades of color, and none at all for Negroes.
It seems best then to consider the color problem in America as
the problem of a proletariat, with the special difficulty attaching to it
that Negroes are labeIled by their color as proletarians. Mr. Baldwin
himself sometimes states the situation of the Negroes as if it were that
of the industrialized and unorganized working class in Europe in the
nineteenth century. He writes:
Even the most doltish and servile Negro could scarcely fail
to be impressed by the disparity between his situation and that
of the people for whom he worked; Negroes who were neither
doltish nor servile did not feel that they were doing anything
