The African American writer James Baldwin is being interviewed
by a European American woman for a segment on the news show 60 Minutes, a segment that CBS recorded
in 1979 but never aired. The interviewer
seems well intentioned and appears to be genuinely interested in the
experiences and thoughts of Baldwin.
At one point in the interview, Baldwin speaks candidly of
his experience of living as an African American man in America. Baldwin then says to this sympathetic
interviewer: “I don’t know you. I’ve got
nothing against you. I don’t know you
personally, but I know you historically.”
I don’t know you personally, but I know you historically. That is a telling distinction.
I think of myself as a well-intentioned white American of
goodwill. I know myself personally in
this way. Baldwin is suggesting I ought
to also know myself historically.
I think such a distinction between the personal and
historical lies at the heart of the ministry of Dr. King.
Paul Greenberg wrote King “understood he [King] had an ally
in the heart of his adversary, and he never ceased appealing to it. He was
relentless in his application of mercy [Philadelphia
Inquirer, January 15, 1988].” King
was a man of great mercy and grace, even in the face of ugliness, indifference,
threats, and violence. King believed his
adversaries had it within them to be converted to better things, but in the
meantime he knew they remained impediments to his quest for racial justice. He strove
to confront them with the tension between knowing themselves personally, on the
one hand, and knowing themselves historically on the other hand.
King was not naïve about the momentum of our nation’s
history that sweeps up well-intentioned people in its current. We call this momentum “systemic racism.” We all have a personal identity, but we also
have an historical identity shaped by our ethnicity, religion, class, and
gender. We were all cast into roles
before we were born. To break out of
those roles takes deliberate initiative.
We call this “anti-racism.”
Ant-racism undermines the inertia of the status quo into which all were
born.
In King’s Letter from
a Birmingham Jail, he exposes the tension between our personal identities
and our historic identities. In April of
1963, when King writes the letter, some local Birmingham
clergy have called King’s activities in Birmingham “unwise and untimely,”
activities for which King has been jailed.
He responds with this public letter.
King begins by observing that he rarely responds to criticism,
otherwise he would have no time for constructive work. In this case he makes an exception: “Since I feel that
you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set
forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient
and reasonable terms.” In King’s
opinion, “their genuine good will” is not sufficient for the situation. King is looking for some action that will
transform the historically-scripted roles of both the white people and black
people of Birmingham.
King suggests
that we must avoid “the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely
with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes.” When he talks of “underlying causes,” King is
referring to that momentum of our national history; we name this “structural
racism.” He is calling us to know
ourselves historically, to take a broader view of our lives than our own individual
efforts at being fair and kind in our daily dealings with people.
In his letter
King recounts, what in his day was, 340 years of history. He wants those well-intentioned clergypersons
to understand that their good intentions do not cancel the structures and
practices built by 340 years of injustice. He writes: “Shallow misunderstanding
from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding
from people of ill will.”
We all know
ourselves personally, but we need to know ourselves historically. We need to understand the residual power of a
history of slavery, then Jim Crow in the South and segregation in the North,
and the persistent and pernicious legacy of systemic racism, up to and
including the killing of Ahmed Arbury.
King writes in
his letter that he sheds tears of love over the state of race relations in his
day. He closes his letter by expressing
the hope that he can meet with the addressees of his letter as “a fellow
clergyman and Christian brother.” He
simply wants them to face the tension created by knowing themselves personally
and knowing themselves historically. He
is as was his custom, “speaking the truth in love [Ephesians 4:15].”
I encourage you
read the letter in its entirety at https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html.
Jim Kelsey
Executive Minister—American Baptist
Churches o New York State
