The Evidence of Things Unseen: Baldwin, Faith, and Fiction
The Evidence of Things Unseen: Baldwin, Faith, and Fiction
At the Center for Fiction, Tuesday, November 19, 2024, 7 p.m.
First of all, I would like to say thank you to all the paid subscribers to Witness. Your contributions help ensure that I can continue to write for this newsletter. If you are not a paid subscriber, please consider being one to gain full access to longform essays and other great content.
If you are enjoying what you read and see here, please invite your homies to come through, If you do, you can earn a complimentary paid subscription.
Please join Simon & Schuster Senior Editor and Literary Swag Book Club founder Yahdon Israel and me for a dynamic conversation about the fiction of the legendary literary icon James Arthur Baldwin. We will be discussing the powerful link between Baldwin’s faith and artistic imagination that enabled him to create a language of possibility on the page—and how we can all work to apply this in our own lives.
Tuesday, November 19, 2024
7 p.m. ET
Center for Fiction
15 Lafayette Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11217
In-person and livestream
REGISTER: HERE
Yahdon Israel is a Senior editor at Simon Schuster and founder of Literaryswag, a cultural movement that intersects literature and fashion to make books accessible. He has written for the New Inquiry, LitHub, Poets and Writers, Vanity Fair, and the Atlantic. He teaches Creative Writing at the MFA Program at City College, previously served on the Board of the National Book Critics Circle, and founded the Literaryswag Book Club, a Brooklyn-based subscription service and book club that meets every last Wednesday of the month. Photo Credit: John Midgley
Robert Jones, Jr. (formerly known as “Son of Baldwin”) is a Brooklyn, New York-based writer and public speaker. He is the author of The New York Times bestselling novel, The Prophets, which was a finalist for the 2021 National Book Award for Fiction. His writings have been featured in The New York Times, Essence, Variety, and the Paris Review. Subscribe to Robert’s newsletter, Witness, at robertjonesjr.substack.com. Photo Credit: DP Jolly
This will likely be the last of my celebrations of Baldwin’s centennial, though certainly not the last time I will celebrate Baldwin himself, as he is someone I cherish daily.
Here are some of the other Baldwin celebrations I took part in this year. Enjoy!
“A Century of Baldwin: The Legacy Lives!”
“Celebrating James Baldwin’s 100th Birthday: His Legacy and Influence”
On Some Other Shit
I often wonder what James Baldwin would make of the rise and worship of Donald Trump. I think he would see him as the inevitable outcome of a nation that resists, by any measure, honest self-inventory; a country that does everything, including banning books, to deny its history of sins. As he says in I Am Not Your Negro:
“In this country, for a dangerously long time, there have been two levels of experience. One, to put it cruelly, can be summed up in the images of Gary Cooper and Doris Day, two of the most grotesque appeals to innocence the world has ever seen. And the other, subterranean, indispensable, and denied, can be summed up, let us say, in the tone and in the face of Ray Charles. There has never been any genuine confrontation between these two levels of experience.”
Some worried friends of mine have sent me screenshots of social media conversations where Black people—only and in particular—are being told not to vote or that “voting doesn’t matter.” If voting doesn’t matter, then why are members of the Cult of Trump setting ballot boxes on fire, threatening Harris supporters with machetes, and sacrificing their daughters to the altar of MAGA all in the name of getting you to not vote?
BECAUSE YOUR VOTE DOES MATTER.
Don’t let nobody—I don’t care what identity they claim—bamboozle you out of your right to vote. Because 1. It *IS* your right, and 2. If they succeed in convincing you to give up that particular right, they will be emboldened to keep going and force you to give up all others.
As a descendant of that Ray Charles countenance Baldwin talked about, I voted on the first day of early voting in New York, Saturday, October 26, 2024. I got to the polling place a little after 8 a.m. and was pleased to see that the place was packed and the lines were long. In addition, at the time I showed up, the majority of the people there were Black men—which, I am ashamed to say, surprised me because all the horrific things the media has been telling me Black male voters—which is to say, about myself—for the past few months.
There were so many Black men in my polling place that it looked like a Nation of Islam meeting up in there. LOL! And there were impromptu conversations happening about doing our part to ensure Trump doesn’t get a second term. It was very encouraging. Let’s hope the rest of the nation concurs. We’ll know by tomorrow night whether we have a chance or if America has decided to choose the man who pantomimes fellatio on stage.
Trump has a chance for one reason and one reason alone: white Americans.
recently shared an excerpt from Charles W. Mills’ The Racial Contract that sums it up:“The requirements of ‘objective’ cognition, factual and moral, in a racial polity are in a sense more demanding in that officially sanctioned reality is divergent from actual reality. So here, it could be said, one has an agreement to misinterpret the world. One has to learn to see the world wrongly, but with the assurance that this set of mistaken perceptions will be validated by white epistemic authority, whether religious or secular.
Thus in effect, on matters related to race, the Racial Contract prescribes for its signatories an inverted epistemology, an epistemology of ignorance, a particular pattern of localized and global cognitive dysfunctions (which are psychologically and socially functional), producing the ironic outcome that whites will in general be unable to understand the world they themselves have made…. To a significant extent, then, white signatories will live in an invented delusional world, a racial fantasyland.”
In other words, as Berlatsky breaks down:
“The racial contract—or to call it by the more familiar name of white supremacy—requires those who embrace it to turn themselves into dunderheads as a prerequisite for turning themselves into monsters. As Mills says, white supremacists have to sign on to an ‘epistemology of ignorance’; they have to ‘live in an invented delusional world.’ To agree to white supremacy, to accept the idea that you are superior to entire classes of people just because your skin is paler, requires you to take your brain out of your head and jump on it, and then to keep doing that for your entire life. Racism is a system of oppression, but alongside that it is a system of enforced ignorance and delusion. It’s centuries of supposedly brilliant thinkers like Kant and Heidegger opening their skulls and dumping in horseshit.”
And this dumping in of horsehit becomes the breeding ground for hate.
This I have come to know and I hope you come to know it, too:
The only thing that can defeat the loveless is love—and I mean the “growing up” kind that Baldwin speaks of, not the senseless, useless version that Hollywood promotes.
Here’s to hoping we make it to the other side of the nightmare and finally wake up.
Blessings upon blessings,
Robert
Recommended Listening
“A Change Is Gonna Come” by Sam Cooke
Recommended Reading
“Fewer Black men are enrolling in HBCUs. Here's why and what's being done,” NPR
“By the time students actually come to college, we're dealing with the males that have actually transcended what we call the “belief gap” — this gap in between what students can actually achieve and what their professors, teachers, counselors believe they can achieve. For Black males, that gap is the largest. When they get into the campus, the campus experiences are significantly impacted by the imbalance, right?”
The Evidence of Things Not Seen by James Baldwin
“What white men see when they look at Black men—insofar as they dare, or are able to perceive a Black as a man like themselves, like all men—I do not have the heart to conjecture. But whatever this vision, or nightmare, is, it corrodes the life of the Republic on every level. A stranger on this planet might find the fact that there are any Black people at all still alive in America something to write home about. I, myself, find it remarkable not that so many Black men were forced (and in so many ways!) to leave their families, but that so many remained and aided their issue to grow and flourish.”
No lie, this book is currently saving my life. I highly recommend it.
“By licensed therapist and author of Self-Care For Black Men Jor-El Caraballo, LMHC, this audio meditation program is filled with unique insights and tools for Black men everywhere to prioritize mental health, empowering listeners to create a deeper connection with their body, mind, and spirit over the course of ten guided meditations.
For Black men, self-care too often feels like a luxury. But being in touch with your emotions, deepening sensory awareness, and taking time to quiet the busy mind are essential tools for a healthy lifestyle. Mindfulness can be a pathway to emotional and psychological freedom.
Over the course of ten guided meditations, this audio program covers topics such as redefining Black masculinity, connecting with your ancestors, and creating sacred space, as well as physical practices such as breath work and a walking meditation. The program closes with affirmations: short, positive messages to further instill self-confidence and emotional well-being.
The ten meditations vary in length from five to twenty minutes and are designed for all levels. Each is performed by the author and includes music and rich sound design for an immersive listening experience. This inspiring program will provide everything you need to develop your own meditation practice and find mindful moments every day.”
Recommended Viewing
Immaculate (Neon, 2024)
The most courageous horror film I’ve seen since Get Out. Definitely the best of 2024. I may have to write a review about it.
“Ta-Nehisi Coates on whether Democrats are falling short with Black voters” | UpFront
Barbados PM’s extraordinary reply to Netanyahu for selective use of Bible in UN | Janta Ka Reporter
Recommended Substacks
Beyond The End Zone: Voices of Identity and Change by
The incomparable R.K. Russell provides unique insight into what it was like to live inside complexities of his life as a bisexual Black man in one of the most patriarchal of all spaces: the NFL. He shares his perspectives with great wisdom and grace. And you really couldn't expect any less from someone so courageous.
Underwhelmed by
Quiet as its kept, literary activist Cree Myles is out here doing the arduous work of ensuring that the literary arts remain at the forefront of intellectual and entertainment culture. And she's also writing truth to power.
Coffee & Contemplation by
I just started reading Jor-El Caraballo's new book, MEDITATIONS FOR BLACK MEN: TEN GUIDED MEDITATIONS FOR THE BODY, MIND, AND SPIRIT, and I can already tell how much this work is going to transform not just the way I show up in the world, but the way I move in it and view it as well. Jor-El invests so much love, compassion, honesty, intelligence, and wisdom in the book that I consider it—and him—necessary and indispensable. Subscribe to his newsletter forthwith. And buy his book.
No More F@ggots by
Don’t be put off by the title. It is a spiritual call for the world to stop degrading queer people and for queer people to resist internalizing the world’s misconceptions of ourselves. Compassionate and comedic observations from someone with both wisdom and astrological awareness. One of the most creative newsletters I've come across in a really long time.
people v. thotscholar by
The analysis coming from this scholar is both courageous and invaluable. Consider a paid subscription to help her continue to provide the most incisive and challenging commentary to be found on the extraordinarily troublesome Internet.