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James Baldwin Quotes

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Famous James Baldwin Quotes

“One would never defeat one's circumstances by working and saving one's pennies; one would never, by working, acquire that many pennies, and, besides, the social treatment accorded even the most successful Negroes proved that one needed, in order to be free, something more than a bank account. One needed a handle, a lever, a means of inspiring fear. It was absolutely clear that the police would whip you and take you in as long as they could get away with it, and that everyone else—housewives, taxi-drivers, elevator boys, dishwashers, bartenders, lawyers, judges, doctors, and grocers—would never, by the operation of any generous human feeling, cease to use you as an outlet for his frustrations and hostilities.”

PovertyRacismOppression
Book:The Fire Next Time
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“It was not only colored people who praised John, since they could not, John felt, in any case really know; but white people also said it, in fact had said it first and said it still. It was when John was five years old and in the first grade that he was first noticed; and since he was noticed by an eye altogether alien and impersonal, he began to perceive, in wild uneasiness, his individual existence.”

Self EsteemIdentityRacismRespectSelf RespectIndividualismRace RelationsAngstRacism In AmericaRace And Racism In AmericaSelf ActualizationRespectabilityIdentity CrisisRacism And CultureIdentity Confusion
Book:Go Tell It on the Mountain
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“There appears to be a vast amount of confusion on this point, but I do not know many Negroes who are eager to be "accepted" by white people, still less to be loved by them; they, the blacks, simply don't wish to be beaten over the head by the whites every instant of our brief passage on this planet. White people in this country will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other, and when they have achieved this -- which will not be tomorrow and will not be today and may very well be never -- the Negro problem will no longer exist, for it will no longer be needed.”

LoveAmericaPoliticsRaceCompassionAcceptanceRacismAfrican AmericansRace RelationsWhite People
Book:The Fire Next Time
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“There is no reason for you to try to become like white people and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent assumption that they must accept you. The terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them. And I mean that very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love. For these innocent people have no other hope. They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it. They have had to believe for many years, and for innumerable reasons, that black men are inferior to white men. Many of them, indeed, know better, but, as you will discover, people find it very difficult to act on what they know.”

AcceptanceRacismSuperiorityAfrican AmericansRace RelationsInferiorityWhite People
Book:The Fire Next Time
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“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.”

RaceFamilyRacismBitternessAfrican AmericansRace RelationsFathersWhitesSons
Book:Notes of a Native Son
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“Most people are not naturally reflective any more than they are naturally malicious, and the white man prefers to keep the black man at a certain human remove because it is easier for him thus to preserve his simplicity and avoid being called to account for crimes committed by his forefathers, or his neighbors.”

RaceRacismReflectionGuiltThoughtAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsWhitesThoughtfulness
Book:Notes of a Native Son
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“The people who think of themselves as White have the choice of becoming human or irrelevant. Or--as they are, indeed, already, in all but actual fact: obsolete. For, if trouble don't last always, as the Preacher tells us, neither does Power, and it is on the fact or the hope or the myth of Power that that identity which calls itself White has always seemed to depend.”

RacePowerRacismAfrican AmericansRelevanceRace RelationsWhitesObsolescence
Book:Notes of a Native Son
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“That cop," Fonny says, "that cop." "What about that cop?" But I am suddenly, and I don't know why, as still and as dry as a stone: with fear. "He's going to try to get me," Fonny says. "How? You didn't do anything wrong. The Italian lady said so, and she said that she would swear to it." "That's why he's going to try to get me," Fonny says. "White men don't like it at all when a white lady tells them, You a boatful of motherfuckers, and the black cat was right, and you can kiss my ass." He grins. "Because that's what she told him. In front of a whole lot of people. And he couldn't do shit. And he ain't about to forget it.”

RaceRacismPrejudicePoliceAfrican AmericansBlacksPolice BrutalityCopsBad Cops
Book:If Beale Street Could Talk
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