James Baldwin

After reading James Baldwin's excellent essay "The Discovery of What it Means to be an American," first published in the New York Times Book Review on January 25, 1959, I realized that Mr. Baldwin faced many challenges related to his personal freedom during his lifetime, especially since he was an African-American and was openly homosexual. Although I was not alive in 1959, I know enough about American history to understand what Baldwin must have endured as a black man and a homosexual during the late 1950's. For example, this was a time when African-Americans were just beginning to free themselves from the bonds of racism and segregation through the Civil Rights Movement and were attempting to become regular members of American society without having to live under some very dire circumstances.
Of course, since my heritage is British and I am not a black man nor homosexual, I find it rather difficult to relate to Baldwin's story contained in this essay which became part of his collection Nobody Knows My Name in 1961. As a brilliant writer, Baldwin was forced to confront not only racism in America but also discrimination because he was a homosexual. In fact, as he explains in this essay, things were so bad for him that he decided to flee America in 1948 and relocate to Paris, where he found some support from other expatriate Americans and from other members of the literary society of Paris.
After living in France for some years, Baldwin returned to America and started giving lectures on racism and homosexuality. Not surprisingly, he immediately faced much controversy, simply because he was black and homosexual, not to mention very intelligent and gifted with the ability to express his innermost thoughts.
Overall, after reading "The Discovery of What it Means to be an American," I came to understand that what Baldwin is really trying to say in this essay is that there is nothing more important than personal freedom. Therefore, I would have to agree with Baldwin, for I personally believe that being an American all comes down to freedom, the freedom to do what one wishes, to live where one wants, and to strive for what makes one happy and content.
There is one special part of Baldwin's essay that I found most interesting because of how it relates to freedom. This would be his discussion on being "thrown into the world." As Baldwin explains it, when we are born, we enter an unknown world and the name of the game is make it if you can. This is also a random act, where a person is born into a certain environment that he/she has no control over whatsoever.
Of course, some people are born into wealth which makes it easier to survive, but in Baldwin's care, he was born into a world of poverty and disillusionment and had no advantages over anyone else in this type of environment. To make things worse, Baldwin was black and a homosexual which only had existence harder, especially since being "gay" in the early years of the 20th century was not at all acceptable.
Since my heritage is British, the ability to be truly free in a free society is very closed linked to it. For example, during the American Revolution, the colonists fought hard against the British Empire and the monarchy of King George III in order to gain their freedom from tyranny and oppression. At first, the British did not believe that the American colonists had the courage to fight against the mightiest empire on the earth at the time, but after ten years of struggle and bloodshed, the colonists did achieve their freedom and went on to create the United States of America.
With this in mind, being an American is all about freedom. In other nations around the world, people are forced to live under some extreme conditions and do not have individual freedom to pursue their own dreams and desires. I think that this is part of the reason why so many people emigrate from their homelands and come to America so they can be free and choose their own destinies.
Personally, I believe that if a person is not free, then life is really not worth living. But as an American, I can choose my own lifestyle, my own friends, where I live and work, and how far in my career I wish to go. Of course, being of British ancestry does help to eliminate some of the barriers that individuals like James Baldwin face on a daily basis in today's United States, even though racial discrimination, prejudice, and discrimination have been greatly reduced over the last fifty years or so.
I guess it all comes down to the United States Constitution which guarantees certain freedoms and liberties to all Americans regardless of race, color, religion, or national origin. But when I think back to James Baldwin and his descriptions of what it was like being a black man and a homosexual in late 1940's America, it makes me wonder how he survived to become one of the best African-American writers of the 20th century. I assume that Baldwin knew exactly how to define true freedom and was willing to do anything to achieve it, even if it meant leaving America for France.
But in the end, Baldwin did achieve his freedom as a true American by writing about it and letting everyone know that even a black homosexual man deserves the freedom to be an American, just like the colonists during the American Revolution who fought the great British Empire, the home of my ancestors, and came out victorious to live as they please and to pursue their own American dream.
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