Meredith Tax: Watching James Baldwin, Thinking About Syria (or, the Alpha Males of America)
The Alpha Male is not interested in promoting human connections. His self-image is based on protecting his turf, his women, and his children from the poison of otherness. He has to make sure they will never hear ideas he doesn’t agree with, never date people who are not like him, and never move away. In order to do this, he has to fence off sexual conduct and gender identity
As James Baldwin said in his letter to his nephew fifty years ago, “One can be—indeed, one must strive to become—tough and philosophical concerning destruction and death, for this is what most of mankind has been best at since we have heard of war; remember, I said most of mankind, but it is not permissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime.”
The problem is that, since the days of Teddy Roosevelt at least, the US has defined itself as the Alpha Male of nations. Many of us hoped, especially after his 2007 speech on race, that Obama would move us towards a different self-definition, one based on principle and humanity. This hasn’t happened, but it remains necessary.
The other night, trying to stop brooding about Syria, I watched “The Price of the Ticket,” a biopic about James Baldwin which PBS rebroadcast to honor the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington. This year is also the anniversary of Baldwin’s book The Fire Next Time, which includes a letter to his nephew about racism. In the spring of 1963, I heard him read from it at Brandeis, where I was then a student. Baldwin was a skinny little guy with enormous eyes and an unforgettable voice: soft and mellow with great expressive range. His words moved me deeply, but though I read his book over and over, I did not know where to go with the feelings it evoked.
My life until then had been completely segregated, shaped by my parents’ flight to the suburbs of Milwaukee. By the time I reached high school I knew I hated white bread suburban culture, but had no idea how to fight it and no connection with any movement. At college, there was a small civil rights movement; one of my friends was in it and I went with her to picket Woolworth's. The seduction of collective action was already palpable and I certainly felt it but was afraid to succumb. My goal was to become a writer, hard enough for a girl in those days, so instead of plunging into activism, I fled to Europe. From London I watched as Malcolm was shot; Bobby Kennedy was shot; Dr. King was shot, and the riots began in Harlem, Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Newark. Finally I could stay away no longer; as Baldwin had suggested in 1963, I had to commit:
“[White people] 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. To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.”
Baldwin believed in integration thouigh some of his friends, like Malcolm X, disagreed. Though Baldwin could be scathing about white racism, cruelty and stupidity, it is clear in the PBS bio that he also had a lot of white friends, especially artists and writers. I wanted that kind of life for myself. I wanted to live in a world where people could meet one another as individuals, ignoring boundaries of history and prejudice and identity and taking pleasure in their differences rather than being divided by them. I knew that, in such a world, I would find friends everywhere.
There are many barriers to the construction of such a world. Racism is one, religious fundamentalism another, the complex tangles of international power politics a third. And then there is the Alpha Male, in all his many international and local varieties. The Alpha Male is not interested in promoting human connections. His self-image is based on protecting his turf, his women, and his children from the poison of otherness. He has to make sure they will never hear ideas he doesn’t agree with, never date people who are not like him, and never move away. In order to do this, he has to fence off sexual conduct and gender identity. To a man whose goal is to control the herd, gay sexuality and feminism are equally threatening.
When I returned to the US in 1968, Malcolm X and Dr. King were dead, civil rights had been replaced by Black Power, and James Baldwin was in eclipse, dissed by Alpha Males like Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver. Cleaver saw rape as a political act by which black men could throw off their shackles; they could practise on black women to work up to the ultimate transgression of raping white women. He wrote a poisonous essay on Baldwin’s homosexuality, published first in Ramparts and then in his book Soul on Ice:
“... it seems that many Negro homosexuals, acquiescing in this racial death-wish, are outraged and frustrated because in their sickness they are unable to have a baby by a white man. The cross they have to bear is that already bending over and touching their toes for the white man, the fruit of their miscegenation is not the little half-white offspring of their dreams but an increase in the unwinding of their nerves—though they redouble their efforts and intake of the white man’s sperm.”
It isn’t such a big jump from this kind of thing to the everpresent macho attacks on Barack Obama, today’s most prominent Black political leader, who has been called a wuss (by Bill Clinton), a pussy (by Don Imus and Mark Halperin), a guy with no balls (by Matt Damon, of all people) and “not tough enough” (by Fox News, Jesse Jackson, and many others). I have plenty of criticisms of Obama but it is a relief that he does not feel the need to be an Alpha Male.
Unfortunately, he has a tendency to surround himself with them—Rahm Emmanuel, the odious Larry Summers, John Kerry. Even his female advisors (Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, Samantha Power) sometimes seem to have a very male notion of strong leadership.
The problem is that, since the days of Teddy Roosevelt at least, the US has defined itself as the Alpha Male of nations. Many of us hoped, especially after his 2007 speech on race, that Obama would move us towards a different self-definition, one based on principle and humanity. This hasn’t happened, but it remains necessary... read more:
http://www.meredithtax.org/taxonomyblog/watching-james-baldwin-thinking-about-syria
As James Baldwin said in his letter to his nephew fifty years ago, “One can be—indeed, one must strive to become—tough and philosophical concerning destruction and death, for this is what most of mankind has been best at since we have heard of war; remember, I said most of mankind, but it is not permissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime.”
The problem is that, since the days of Teddy Roosevelt at least, the US has defined itself as the Alpha Male of nations. Many of us hoped, especially after his 2007 speech on race, that Obama would move us towards a different self-definition, one based on principle and humanity. This hasn’t happened, but it remains necessary.
The other night, trying to stop brooding about Syria, I watched “The Price of the Ticket,” a biopic about James Baldwin which PBS rebroadcast to honor the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington. This year is also the anniversary of Baldwin’s book The Fire Next Time, which includes a letter to his nephew about racism. In the spring of 1963, I heard him read from it at Brandeis, where I was then a student. Baldwin was a skinny little guy with enormous eyes and an unforgettable voice: soft and mellow with great expressive range. His words moved me deeply, but though I read his book over and over, I did not know where to go with the feelings it evoked.
My life until then had been completely segregated, shaped by my parents’ flight to the suburbs of Milwaukee. By the time I reached high school I knew I hated white bread suburban culture, but had no idea how to fight it and no connection with any movement. At college, there was a small civil rights movement; one of my friends was in it and I went with her to picket Woolworth's. The seduction of collective action was already palpable and I certainly felt it but was afraid to succumb. My goal was to become a writer, hard enough for a girl in those days, so instead of plunging into activism, I fled to Europe. From London I watched as Malcolm was shot; Bobby Kennedy was shot; Dr. King was shot, and the riots began in Harlem, Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Newark. Finally I could stay away no longer; as Baldwin had suggested in 1963, I had to commit:
“[White people] 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. To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.”
Baldwin believed in integration thouigh some of his friends, like Malcolm X, disagreed. Though Baldwin could be scathing about white racism, cruelty and stupidity, it is clear in the PBS bio that he also had a lot of white friends, especially artists and writers. I wanted that kind of life for myself. I wanted to live in a world where people could meet one another as individuals, ignoring boundaries of history and prejudice and identity and taking pleasure in their differences rather than being divided by them. I knew that, in such a world, I would find friends everywhere.
There are many barriers to the construction of such a world. Racism is one, religious fundamentalism another, the complex tangles of international power politics a third. And then there is the Alpha Male, in all his many international and local varieties. The Alpha Male is not interested in promoting human connections. His self-image is based on protecting his turf, his women, and his children from the poison of otherness. He has to make sure they will never hear ideas he doesn’t agree with, never date people who are not like him, and never move away. In order to do this, he has to fence off sexual conduct and gender identity. To a man whose goal is to control the herd, gay sexuality and feminism are equally threatening.
When I returned to the US in 1968, Malcolm X and Dr. King were dead, civil rights had been replaced by Black Power, and James Baldwin was in eclipse, dissed by Alpha Males like Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver. Cleaver saw rape as a political act by which black men could throw off their shackles; they could practise on black women to work up to the ultimate transgression of raping white women. He wrote a poisonous essay on Baldwin’s homosexuality, published first in Ramparts and then in his book Soul on Ice:
“... it seems that many Negro homosexuals, acquiescing in this racial death-wish, are outraged and frustrated because in their sickness they are unable to have a baby by a white man. The cross they have to bear is that already bending over and touching their toes for the white man, the fruit of their miscegenation is not the little half-white offspring of their dreams but an increase in the unwinding of their nerves—though they redouble their efforts and intake of the white man’s sperm.”
It isn’t such a big jump from this kind of thing to the everpresent macho attacks on Barack Obama, today’s most prominent Black political leader, who has been called a wuss (by Bill Clinton), a pussy (by Don Imus and Mark Halperin), a guy with no balls (by Matt Damon, of all people) and “not tough enough” (by Fox News, Jesse Jackson, and many others). I have plenty of criticisms of Obama but it is a relief that he does not feel the need to be an Alpha Male.
Unfortunately, he has a tendency to surround himself with them—Rahm Emmanuel, the odious Larry Summers, John Kerry. Even his female advisors (Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, Samantha Power) sometimes seem to have a very male notion of strong leadership.
The problem is that, since the days of Teddy Roosevelt at least, the US has defined itself as the Alpha Male of nations. Many of us hoped, especially after his 2007 speech on race, that Obama would move us towards a different self-definition, one based on principle and humanity. This hasn’t happened, but it remains necessary... read more:
http://www.meredithtax.org/taxonomyblog/watching-james-baldwin-thinking-about-syria
