Article Link - https://time.com/5859214/james-baldwin-racism/
5 Main Points In The Article
We have been here before. Martin Luther King Jr. and countless others risked everything to persuade the country to live up to its stated ideals and to rid itself of the insidious view that white people mattered more than others.
If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country,” Baldwin writes, “one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected … and listens to their testimony.”
“What we are dealing with really is that for Black people in this country there is no legal code at all. We’re still governed, if that is the word I want, by the slave code. That’s the nature of the crisis. [Y]ou haven’t got to have anything resembling proof to bring any charge whatever against a difficult, bad nigger.”
“They have never confessed their crimes, and they don’t know how to confess their crimes … If you can’t confess, you can’t be forgiven, and if you can’t be forgiven, you can’t get past it. That is the sin against the Holy Ghost … The only way to get past it is to confess.”
The current crisis around policing and the protests in the streets confront us with the ugliness of who we are as a nation. As Baldwin knew, that ugliness cuts deep–to the marrow of the bone. In such moments, in fact throughout our days, Baldwin insisted that we tell ourselves the truth about what we have done and what we are doing. We cannot stick our heads back in the sand or seek comfort in our national illusions or our so-called innocence. This moral reckoning requires confession and repair. If we fail this time, and it may well be our last chance, ours will be the latest addition to the ruins.
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