A Letter to My NephewJames Baldwin's thoughts on his nephew'sfuture—in a country with a terrible historyof racism— first appeared in TheProgressive magazine in 1962. Over 50years later his words are as powerful asever.James Baldwin
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James Baldwin's thoughts on his nephew's future—in acountry with a terrible history of racism— first appeared inThe Progressive magazine in 1962. Over 50 years later hiswords are, sadly, more relevant than ever.
Dear James:
I have begun this letter five times and torn it up five times. Ikeep seeing your face, which is also the face of your fatherand my brother. I have known both of you all your lives andhave carried your daddy in my arms and on my shoulders,kissed him and spanked him and watched him learn to walk.I don't know if you have known anybody from that far back,if you have loved anybody that long, first as an infant, thenas a child, then as a man. You gain a strange perspective ontime and human pain and effort.
Other people cannot see what I see whenever I look intoyour father's face, for behind your father's face as it is todayare all those other faces which were his. Let him laugh and Isee a cellar your father does not remember and a house hedoes not remember and I hear in his present laughter hislaughter as a child. Let him curse and I remember his fallingdown the cellar steps and howling and I remember with painhis tears which my hand or your grandmother's hand soeasily wiped away, but no one's hand can wipe away thosetears he sheds invisibly today which one hears in hislaughter and in his speech and in his songs.
I know what the world has done to my brother and hownarrowly he has survived it and I know, which is muchworse, and this is the crime of which I accuse my countryand my countrymen and for which neither I nor time nor
history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed andare destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do notknow it and do not want to know it. One can be–indeed,one must strive to become–tough and philosophicalconcerning destruction and death, for this is what most ofmankind has been best at since we have heard of war;remember, I said most of mankind, but it is not permissiblethat the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It isthe innocence which constitutes the crime.
They have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousandsof lives and do not know it and do not want to know it.
Now, my dear namesake, these innocent and well meaningpeople, your countrymen, have caused you to be bornunder conditions not far removed from those described forus by Charles Dickens in the London of more than ahundred years ago. I hear the chorus of the innocentsscreaming, “No, this is not true. How bitter you are,” but Iam writing this letter to you to try to tell you somethingabout how to handle them, for most of them do not yetreally know that you exist. I know the conditions underwhich you were born for I was there. Your countrymen werenot there and haven't made it yet. Your grandmother wasalso there and no one has ever accused her of being bitter. Isuggest that the innocent check with her. She isn't hard tofind. Your countrymen don't know that she exists either,though she has been working for them all their lives.
Well, you were born; here you came, something like fifteenyears ago, and though your father and mother andgrandmother, looking about the streets through which theywere carrying you, staring at the walls into which theybrought you, had every reason to be heavy-hearted, yetthey were not, for here you were, big James, named for me.You were a big baby. I was not. Here you were to be loved.To be loved, baby, hard at once and forever to strengthenyou against the loveless world. Remember that. I know howblack it looks today for you. It looked black that day too.Yes, we were trembling. We have not stopped trembling yet,but if we had not loved each other, none of us would havesurvived, and now you must survive because we love youand for the sake of your children and your children'schildren.
This innocent country set you down in a ghetto in which, infact, it intended that you should perish. Let me spell outprecisely what I mean by that for the heart of the matter ishere and the crux of my dispute with my country. You wereborn where you were born and faced the future that youfaced because you were black and for no other reason. Thelimits to your ambition were thus expected to be settled.You were born into a society which spelled out with brutalclarity and in as many ways as possible that you were aworthless human being. You were not expected to aspire toexcellence. You were expected to make peace with
mediocrity. Wherever you have turned, James, in your shorttime on this earth, you have been told where you could goand what you could do and how you could do it, where youcould live and whom you could marry.
I know your countrymen do not agree with me here and Ihear them. saying, “You exaggerate.” They do not knowHarlem and I do. So do you. Take no one's word foranything, including mine, but trust your experience. Knowwhence you came. If you know whence you came, there isreally no limit to where you can go. The details and symbolsof your life have been deliberately constructed to make youbelieve what white people say about you. Please try toremember that what they believe, as well as what they doand cause you to endure, does not testify to your inferiority,but to their inhumanity and fear.
Please try to be clear, dear James, through the storm whichrages about your youthful head today, about the realitywhich lies behind the words “acceptance” and “integration.”There is no reason for you to try to become like white menand there is no basis whatever for their impertinentassumption that they must accept you. The really terriblething, old buddy, is that you must accept them, and I meanthat very seriously. You must accept them and accept themwith love, for these innocent people have no other hope.They are in effect still trapped in a history which they do not
understand and until they understand it, they cannot bereleased from it. They have had to believe for many years,and for innumerable reasons, that black men are inferior towhite men.
They are trapped in a history which they do not understand anduntil they understand it, they cannot be released from it.
Many of them indeed know better, but as you will discover,people find it very difficult to act on what they know. To actis to be committed and to be committed is to be in danger.In this case the danger in the minds and hearts of mostwhite Americans is the loss of their identity. Try to imaginehow you would feel if you woke up one morning to find thesun shivering and all the stars aflame. You would befrightened because it is out of the order of nature. Anyupheaval in the universe is terrifying because it soprofoundly attacks one's sense of one's own reality. Well,the black man has functioned in the white man's world as afixed star, as an immovable pillar, and as he moves out of hisplace, heaven and earth are shaken to their foundations.
You don't be afraid. I said it was intended that you shouldperish, in the ghetto, perish by never being allowed to gobeyond and behind the white man's definition, by neverbeing allowed to spell your proper name. You have, andmany of us have, defeated this intention and by a terriblelaw, a terrible paradox, those innocents who believed that
your imprisonment made them safe are losing their grasp ofreality. But these men are your brothers, your lost youngerbrothers, and if the word “integration” means anything, thisis what it means, that we with love shall force our brothersto see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from realityand begin to change it, for this is your home, my friend. Donot be driven from it. Great men have done great thingshere and will again and we can make America what Americamust become.
It will be hard, James, but you come from sturdy peasantstock, men who picked cotton, dammed rivers, builtrailroads, and in the teeth of the most terrifying odds,achieved an unassailable and monumental dignity. Youcome from a long line of great poets, some of the greatestpoets since Homer. One of them said, “The very time Ithought I was lost, my dungeon shook and my chains felloff.”
You know and I know that the country is celebrating onehundred years of freedom one hundred years too early. Wecannot be free until they are free. God bless you, James,and Godspeed.
Your uncle,
James
by James Baldwin
December 1, 1962
