What Would James Baldwin Do (In this MAGA Error)?
S. E. Anderson
What Would James Baldwin Do?
I still remember the day my mother handed me a worn paperback by James Baldwin. It had the scent of aged paper and sunlight caught in its fibers, the smell of a book that had been passed through more hands and histories than I could imagine at the time. Opening it felt like stepping into a world both familiar and completely unknown, a world where language could reveal truths that people feared to speak aloud. I did not understand then how deeply Baldwin would shape my thinking about America, leadership, identity, and moral responsibility. What began as a simple act of sharing a book became the doorway to a lifelong conversation. This December, as I sit with the memory of his passing, I find myself returning to Baldwin with a sense of obligation rather than nostalgia. His voice has a way of resurfacing whenever the country loses its moral compass, which seems to be happening more frequently. For my leadership class this semester, I demonstrated a Cambridge style debate and used Baldwin’s famous exchange with William F. Buckley. Watching Baldwin in that moment, surrounded by history and tension, reminded me again that he spoke not to impress but to clarify. He understood the difference between persuasion and revelation. James Arthur Baldwin was a novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and civil rights advocate whose work continues to unsettle and illuminate. His novel Go Tell It on the Mountain is often listed among the twentieth century’s greatest works, yet it is his essays that keep commanding the world’s attention. When the nation reaches another moment of confusion, Baldwin’s words rise again like smoke curling from an old fire, carrying heat long after the flames have disappeared. He never wrote to soothe. He wrote to awaken. He knew that truth rarely receives applause in its own time. It becomes prophecy only after people finally learn how to hear it. So the real question is not what Baldwin would do today. The deeper question is what he would expect from us. He did not want disciples. He wanted witnesses. He believed the measure of a person was not their admiration for him but their willingness to confront what he revealed. Baldwin’s work is not an artifact to revisit for comfort. It is a mirror that refuses to let us look away. He Would Tell the Truth, Even When It Burns Baldwin believed truth telling was a form of love, although not the gentle kind that avoids discomfort. It was the type of love that insists on honesty because anything less would be a betrayal. He confronted America’s contradictions without hesitation, and he refused to allow the country to claim innocence where harm had been intentional. Racism and inequality did not persist because Americans misunderstood them. They persisted because certain Americans benefited from their continuation. Baldwin understood that injustice is not a mistake. It is a choice. If Baldwin were writing today, he would not dilute his critique. He would witness the polarization of public life, the addictive pull of manufactured outrage in social media, and the deterioration of trust in institutions. He would not be distracted by the performance of elections and politics. His concern would be the moral condition beneath the noise. Baldwin once wrote that any profession reveals its ugliness to those who pursue it seriously. He believed the same about a nation. The question is whether we possess the courage to see what is revealed when the mask falls. Silence, for Baldwin, was not a neutral position. He believed that refusing to speak in moments of crisis was an act of complicity that protected the status quo. His words were instruments of accountability. Every essay and interview was crafted to provoke a reckoning. He wrote as if the conscience of the nation depended on his honesty. In many ways, it did. He Would Call Educators and Artists to Account Baldwin with BFF activist singer, Nina Simone. Baldwin saw educators and artists as guardians of a society’s soul. He believed that education was more than the transfer of information. It was the cultivation of consciousness. Students were not meant to be trained into acceptance but challenged into awareness. This belief feels increasingly urgent in a period when debates about curriculum, inclusion, and censorship echo through classrooms and boardrooms. Baldwin would remind us that education grounded in fear rather than curiosity produces citizens who cannot face the truth. Imagine Baldwin in a school board meeting today confront Moms for Liberty. He would not raise his voice. He never needed to. His authority came from clarity, not volume. He would ask why a society afraid of its own history believes that young people should be sheltered from it. He would challenge the idea that banning books protects children from harm. He would argue that avoiding complexity only deepens it, and that students become stronger when they learn how to grapple with difficult realities rather than escape them. Baldwin felt similarly about the banning of art. He believed art was a public responsibility. It was not created to distract people from hardship but to reveal the hardship with dignity and intelligence. Artists were meant to expose the truths that others refused to see. In Baldwin’s eyes, the work of creation was inseparable from the work of liberation. Art was both witness and teacher. He believed it had the power to reshape consciousness when society grew numb to its own reflection. He Would Tell Us to Love America Enough to Criticize It Baldwin’s love for America was fierce and carefully examined. He did not romanticize the nation and wrap himself in fake patriotism and thin blue lines. He challenged it precisely because he believed in what it could become. He wrote that he loved America more than any other country, which is why he insisted on the right to criticize it perpetually. He believed that patriotism built on denial was a fragile form of loyalty. Only honesty could strengthen the nation’s moral foundation. In a moment when cynicism is often mistaken for realism and political outrage has become an entertainment business, Baldwin’s commitment to nuance feels almost revolutionary. He would tell us that progress is not achieved through memes or reels. It requires the slow and steady work of confronting social and governance failure. He would refuse to give despair the final word, even when evidence of injustice seemed overwhelming. Baldwin understood that despair can lull a society into resignation, and resignation is far more dangerous than hostility as it leaders to authoritarianism. He believed democracy fails when people stop participating in its protection. It does not collapse only through dramatic actions from the top. It erodes through inattention at the bottom. I believe that Baldwin would ask us to care about government institutions and fixing them instead of blowing them up even when they disappoint us. He would ask us to hold the nation accountable not because it is flawless but because it remains unfinished. He Would Ask Us to Face Ourselves Baldwin argued that political change and personal change are inseparable. He believed that systems are extensions of individual choices, fears, and fantasies. He wrote that not everything faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced. That sentence remains one of the most honest statements about social transformation. It reminds us that the work of justice requires introspection as much as activism. He warned that racism, sexism, homophobes, anti-semitism and all the forms of hatred distorts both the one who hates and the one who is hated. Baldwin insisted that love was not sentimental rhetoric. It was a discipline that required vulnerability and truth. He believed that a society could not heal unless its people confronted the truths they hid from themselves. He believed that the greatest battles are fought within the individual long before they surface in the public arena. Imagine Baldwin scrolling through our digital world on his iPhone 17. He would observe the speed, the fragmentation, and the performance of conviction this his tailored algorithm would confront him with. But his attention would return to a single question. Are we willing to confront ourselves with the honesty we demand from others. He would say that a nation in denial cannot repair what it refuses to see. Healing requires courage, and courage requires truth. He Would Write, Speak, March, and Hope Baldwin never relinquished hope, although his hope was never naive. It was shaped by struggle and sharpened by heartbreak. He believed in the possibility of human redemption even when the country appeared determined to repeat its own mistakes. Hope, for Baldwin, was a form of resistance that refused to surrender to despair. It was an insistence that change remained possible even when progress faltered. If Baldwin were alive today, I believe not only would be omnipresent on social media, he would still be writing in cafes, speaking in classrooms, and walking through the neighborhoods that shaped him. He would still be in conversation with young activists who carry the weight of a new era. He would tell them that the struggle for justice is not a sprint. It is a relay that moves across generations. He would remind them that despair is not an option for those who believe in the possibility of transformation. Baldwin understood that the moral project of a nation is never complete. It advances, retreats, and advances again. He believed that democracy survives only when enough people care to protect it. He believed that change requires imagination, courage, and an unshakable commitment to truth. Baldwin’s hope was not fragile. It was forged in fire and carried by purpose. So what would James Baldwin do in our current moment. He would write. He would teach. He would testify. He would call us to a higher level of honesty. And he would leave us with the question that echoes through every era of American life. Do we really want to be changed. That question is no longer for Baldwin. Its the legacy he left for us.
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s. e. anderson
author of The Black Holocaust for Beginners
www.blackeducator.org
"If WORK was good for you, the rich would leave none for the poor." (Haiti)
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