James Baldwin’s Critique of the Social Condition Essay

James Baldwin's "Notes of a Native Son" demonstrates his complex and unique relationship with his father. Baldwin's relationship with his father is very similar to most father-son relationships but the effect of racial discrimination on the lives of both, (the father and the son) makes it distinctive. At the outset, Baldwin accepts the fact that his father was only trying to look out for him, but deep down, he cannot help but feel that his father was imposing his thoughts and experiences on him. Baldwin's depiction of his relationship with his father while he was alive is full of loathing and detest for him and his ideologies, but as he matures, he discovers his father in himself. His father's hatred in relation to the white American

Throughout his essay, Baldwin makes numerous use of italicize words or sentences to state a strong fact that he agrees with or deems important to readers. By italicizing that “Negroes want to be treated like men”, Baldwin clearly states his position. The extent, to which he uses this writing technique, signifies that he not only speaks for himself but also for his Community, Harlem. Aside from using italics Baldwin makes use of lengthy sentences, that are sustain with breaks such as hyphens and dashes, and a tone of sarcasm to affirm his position in the matter. He goes into hesitations when writing the lengthy sentences by including the dashes, which suggests that he is not only sustaining his position but also indicating that he has an experienced idea of what he is expressing. Baldwin`s degree of sarcasm in the opening paragraphs, is used to give an idea of how poorly their environment is but more over to show the insignificance that their environment has on others and their lack of attempt to “rehabilitate” it.

The audience sympathizes for Rodney King and the young victims and are angered by the bigotry of the vulgar signs, therefore the mood is suited to support the argument. Baldwin sums everything up by saying, “When you try to stand up and look the world in the face like you had a right to be here, you have attacked the entire power structure of the Western World.”

James Baldwin was a prominent African American writer, social critic, and racial justice advocate in the 1960’s and 70’s. In his 1963 Talk to Teachers he aimed to persuade an audience of teachers that education must exist to challenge systems and structures of power and that when it does not, it only serves to reinforce them and amplify their injustice. He specifically focuses on racial hierarchies and white supremacy in the United States. He achieves his persuasive purpose through the strategic use of first, second, and third person pronouns and the use of evocative language, and emphasizes the actionability of his message with anaphora.

Baldwin uses the experiences he faced in New Jersey and the personal relationship with his father to show ethos throughout his essay. At one point in his essay, Baldwin finds himself in New Jersey where segregation still exist. “I learned in New Jersey…one was never looked at but was simply at the mercy of the reflexes the color of one’s skin caused in other people” (68). Here Baldwin expresses how circumstances in New Jersey were like at the time, but also portrays the way people were viewed based on the color of their skin. Baldwin later goes on to mention the year he spent in New Jersey, was the year in which “[he] first contracted some dread, chronic disease” (70). This “disease” Baldwin contracted is not an actual disease, but more of a way in which he begins to feel and see the world around him differently. The disease Baldwin is referring to throughout his entire essay is bitterness. Living in New Jersey caused Baldwin to gain the sense of bitterness that his father had lived with during his life. Baldwin’s bitterness comes from the way he was specifically treated in New Jersey and how he allowed that feeling to affect his behaviors. Baldwin specifically mentions the moment in New Jersey where the white waitress approaches him at the restaurant stating, “We don’t serve Negroes here” (71). At this point we begin to see Baldwin as he acts out in violence by stating, “I wanted her to come close enough for me to get her neck

There are some things to what Baldwin said that aren't very accurate. By this I mean that some of the thought he expressed aren't relevant to our society today. This essay was written in the fifty's, a lot of chaos and anarchy was prevalent. This being said, it makes sense that Baldwin wrote: "American white men still nourish the illusion that there is some means of recovering the European innocence, of returning to the state in which black men do not exist…people who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction." (pg 101). The point I'm trying to make is that Baldwin was in a more violent mind state toward American life at this time. The Civil Right Movement slowly started in 1955 then gained speed with Rosa parks and what really sparked the movement came from one speech. Martin Luther King gave his I Have a Dream speech in

Baldwin determines that violence and racial separatism are not acceptable solutions for achieving “power”. Baldwin believes that black people will only be able to achieve lasting influence in America if they love and accept white people. In contrast, writing 52 years after Baldwin, Coats tells his own son to “struggle” but not

James Baldwin in “Notes of a Native Son” writes about the death of his father and his struggle in America during segregation. He also reveals that he didn’t have a very good relationship with his ill father. Throughout the essay there is a repetition of bitterness. Also, Baldwin’s experiences reveal his purpose for writing the essay. One passage that is especially revealing is on page 222 which says, “When he died I had been away from home for a little over a year. In that year I had had time to become aware of the meaning of all my father’s bitter warnings, had discovered the secret of his proudly pursed lips and rigid carriage: I had discovered the weight of white people in the world. I saw that this had been for my ancestors and now would be for me an awful thing to live with and that the bitterness which had helped to kill my father could also kill me.” This passage reveals how Baldwin’s relationship with his father, and his father’s warnings help demonstrate how hatred can cause negative effects on African Americans.

Baldwin, however, describes his father as being a very black-like “African tribal chieftain” (64) who was proud of his heritage despite the chains it locked upon him. He is shown to be one with good intentions, but one who never achieved the positive outcome intended. His ultimate downfall was his paranoia such that “the disease of his mind allowed the disease of his body to destroy him” (66). Baldwin relates the story of a white teacher with good intentions and his father’s objection to her involvement in their lives because of his lack of trust for any white woman. His father’s paranoia even extended to Baldwin’s white high school friends. These friends, although they could be kind, “would do anything to keep a Negro down” (68), and they believed that the “best thing to do was to have as little to do with them as possible” (68). Thus, Baldwin leaves the reader with the image of his father as an unreasonable man who struggled to blockade white America from his life and the lives of his children to the greatest extent of his power. Baldwin then turns his story to focus on his own experience in the world his father loathed and on his realization that he was very much like his father.

African Americans have to strive extremely hard to be successful and obtain a place in America. When reading Baldwin’s statement it seems much like Martin Luther King Jr. statement: “One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land”(3). African Americans are trying to obtain their place in American society but are restricted to the area that the white Americans set aside for them. Both Martin Luther King Jr. and James Baldwin are striving to make a difference to better America by publicly sharing their emotions.

When James Baldwin was younger he was brought up and faced racial harassment by being teased and abused by New york police officers . According to Wikipedia it states “At the age of 10, he was teased and abused by two New York police officers, an instance of racist harassment by the NYPD that he would experience again as a teenager and document in his essays.” From this it indicates that the racial harassment has being going on still ever since james baldwin was at age 10. It also shows that while James Baldwin was young he started to document on what was happening at the time and start to put it into a form of essays, which would later form one of his first books named “Notes of a Native Son.” What also had happen in his early life was that he had started to write down on how he was being treated which would later form one of his books. According to Wikipedia it states “which was portrayed at the beginning of his essay "Notes of a Native Son".[3] The quest to answer or explain family and social rejection—and attain a sense of selfhood, both coherent and

The essay “Notes of a Native Son” takes place at a very volatile time in history. The story was written during a time of hate and discrimination toward African Americans in the United States. James Baldwin, the author of this work is African American himself. His writing, along with his thoughts and ideas were greatly influenced by the events happening at the time. At the beginning of the essay, Baldwin makes a point to mention that it was the summer of 1943 and that race riots were occurring in Detroit. The story itself takes place in Harlem, a predominantly black area experiencing much of the hatred and inequalities that many African-Americans were facing throughout the country. This marks the beginning of a

Baldwin describes “history being a nightmare…people are trapped in history and history is trapped in them” (3). The European’s experience of race is from their ignorance and “innocence” (7). Europeans have never lived in a world where black men were part of it, so Baldwin’s arrival makes them curious and makes them react the way they were taught by European culture, touching his head and calling him insulting words. The people of the Swiss village can’t be held responsible for the European culture, as they have unconsciously-inherited this culture, considering the black man not even as a man, because of slavery in the past. On the other hand, American’s understand that the black man is “an inescapable part of the general social fabric,” (6) where people are greatly involved in the lives of the black people. Baldwin was motivated to write this to show despite how history has defined the Black Man, “the American Negro Problem is not merely shameful, it is also something of an achievement,” (8) as the Black Man has established an identity in the world, which they been fighting to have for a long

Baldwin?s father hailed from New Orleans, the heart of the Deep South which could only mean that as a Negro he had experienced Jim Crow first hand. Experiencing seclusion based on ones outward image can have a two pronged effect on a person. Either they disregard the social standards of seclusion or they develop a self conscious hatred for themselves and the system that labels them as a pariah. Baldwin?s father represents an example of the latter and as Baldwin articulates; beautiful had never been a word his father would have used to describe himself (Baldwin 64). His experience of segregation had left him with a bitter image and hatred of himself and American society which Baldwin describes as boundaries due to his self-humiliation (64). These boundaries represent an allegory to the hatred and bitterness that Baldwin?s father felt towards white society. Society had excluded his father, so in recoiling defense he shut himself away in his own world with as little personal relationships as possible. Because Baldwin? father had such a disdain for himself, he felt the same way about his children as they reminded him of his own humiliating existence. This of course brought about a felling of bitterness towards his children as though they had betrayed him by the blackness they shared. The young James Baldwin will grow up under these conditions in the presence of a father who disdains not only his own image but the image

In ‘’Notes of a native son’’ by James baldwin starts off by saying how his father’s funeral was on his 19th birthday and the affected relationship that he had with him. Once his father died he realized that he never spoke to his father and this reminds me of the saying that my mother always says ‘’we don 't know the worth of the water until the well runs dry’’ he realized that when he could not do anything to avoid it. Baldwin couldn 't understand his father’s hatred toward white people until he witnessed himself when he was living in new jersey. but also his sister was born on his birthday and the harlem riot of 1943 occurred. We also can see how he explains his paranoia in society with white people and how black people were treated in the south and also the time he lived in new jersey. ‘’The streets were very crowded and i was facing north. People were moving in every direction but it seemed to me, in that instant, that all of the people I could see, and many more than that, were moving toward me, against me. And that everyone was white’’