Status Updates From The Fire Next Time

My Dungeon Shook

* Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation*

• Baldwin says US is built on lies bout race - not his fault
• White Society created the idea of Black Inferiority
• Urges self-love and dignity as acts of resistance
• Anger is justified - Must not turn into hatred
• Survival means clarity not bitterness
• Future of US Depends of Black people standing up

“If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.”

“When the white man came to Africa, the white man had the Bible and the African had the land, but now it is the white man who is being reluctantly and bloodily, separated from the land, and the African who is still attempting to digest or vomit up the Bible.”

“The person who distrusts himself had no touchstone for reality - for this touchstone can be only oneself. Such a person interposes between himself and reality nothing less than a labyrinth of attitudes.”

“To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread.”

“Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure, does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity and fear.”

baldwin.

Buddy really really really needed a law-gospel distinction

Buddy really really really needed an absolution