This is what Baldwin says in the 1984 preface for essays he wrote in the 1940’s: “There have been superficial changes with results at best ambiguous and, at worst, disastrous. Morally there has been no change at all and a moral change is the only real one." (1984 Preface to ‘Notes of a Native Son’) (Cont’d after cover image)
Why are these our darkest of times? Simply because, another 40 years on, there is still no moral change. Which brings me to something else that Baldwin wrote in that very preface, a couple of pages on: “The people who think of themselves as White have the choice of becoming human or irrelevant.”
It is the bottomless pit of irrelevance, then, that we (and this we stands for white) face, after dehumanizing always other others over and over again until this dehumanization became our second nature. And we transform to merely factual walls standing, unwell, between those not yet irrelevant and a real change ending their inhuman conditions.
Still Baldwin, now in the essay of this book entitled ‘Stranger in the Village’: “Yet they move with an authority which I shall never have; and they regard me, quite rightly, not only as a stranger in their village but as a suspect latecomer, bearing no credentials, to everything they have - however unconsciously - inherited.” (they being we, of course)
I let that stand there as its own paragraph for a while and invite you to reread it. I am - by the way - here unequivocally (therefore self-reflexively) talking to the white man. If we pride ourself to have turned this earth into a global village, how can we at the same time remain unconscious about the wherefrom of our inherited privilege?
Back to Baldwin to describe the moment in which we (!) ponder this question: “This is a very charged and difficult moment, for there is a great deal of will power involved in the white man’s naïveté.” In this moment we protest: for haven’t we done many a good deed also? And haven’t we lifted the world’s over-all level of welfare up?
With all our willpower we measure the world’s progress. We see the ugly and the bad - it really does make us sad - but we also stubbornly maintain that in the end the good is what prevails. The good by our measure, in the global village we built, where we live in the prime real estate that we protect with walls. Walls around walls.
We are wall-builders first and foremost, and the most formidable wall we’ve built is in our own minds. Tearing down that wall is the only source of real change. It is a risk we still do not take. Instead, just like with rising sea levels, we react by building a thicker wall still; a superficial change that allows us to ignore the present disasters for others.
On this wall we build in ourselves, Baldwin says this: “For it protects our moral high-mindedness at the terrible expense of weakening our grasp of reality.” It, for instance, makes us prone to believe in conspiracy theories. Anything to stay away from the real insight that we are the actual conspirators, building walls to protect our prime estate.
And, another genocide on, we may even mistake another superficial change for a real one. Having pressured our governments to take action, we might think we can remain in our innocence. Believing things can be non-violently made all right. Believing that we can still occupy the moral high ground just like we occupy the prime real estate.
Baldwin baldly: “(..) anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself in a monster.” What will we do when we are fully armed up again? Will we suddenly learn from history, or will we create more darkness, death and destruction? Will we still have our walls up, or finally let our guard down?
If you hope - like I do - that history will not repeat itself, then it is incumbent upon us (the incumbents, after all) to make a moral change. Only that really: to accept blame, to make preparations towards reparations, to act as humans ashamed that their privilege was built on another’s dehumanization. In short: to listen to what ‘the others’ say.
My hopes for this are not too high. I know my impatience, and my in-built supremacy in thinking in terms of efficient solutions. If I take some pain, I at least want it to be in the service of effective measures. And I know it is easy and convenient in all of this do-gooding to forget that what was needed was a real - a moral - change.
This will be the hardest of all: to relinquish control of our own destinies, and believe -really, morally (i.e. with conviction), believe - that it is for the best to do the right thing even if the right thing starts with merely admitting you did wrong. Not your ancestors, or bad apples, or crazies but you (hence also: I). And that you have to make it right.
A last quote (still the same essay): “Yet one must also recognize that morality is based on ideas and that all ideas are dangerous - dangerous because ideas can only lead to action and where the action leads no man can say.” Easy to hide behind danger (easier even than hiding behind pure evil). Our walls were precisely built to keep danger out.
So, there it is: we have to let danger in. That is the real change. Call me naïve. Better it is then being irrelevant, and dead inside. Will chaos ensue? Maybe. Still, in owning up to our part in these darkest of times, we might finally bring some light. And the ask is not for self-flagellation, but for things like a climate fund paid for by a wealth tax.