James Baldwin emphasized the struggle of poor black men calling them “Authentic Blacks” (Wiesenberger). Baldwin’s radicalism can be seen through, No Name in the Street, and also through a collection of his essays, Notes of a Native Son, (Lyne, 12). Baldwin’s strong and compelling books and essays helped thrive for change in the mid-twentieth century America.
James Baldwin is considered an “Authentic” black man to be poor. They were to understand the struggle of starving for a day and working every day to survive. This drove Baldwin’s writing expressing his desire for an equal country. Baldwin believed that the blacks were stuck in a social class. His family was very poor growing up putting him even more at a disadvantage considering he is black and gay man during a time of little to no rights for blacks and gays. At a young age, he started to experience discrimination because of …show more content…
James Baldwin felt he had to tackle racism before he could move on and write about other matters. Baldwin wrote many essays that were later put into a book called Notes of a Native Son. Baldwin started critiquing Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. He condemns Stowe for endorsing anti-slavery but criticizes it for having the wrong meaning behind it. Baldwin believes one should be ant-slavery as the humane thing to believe, not for best interest by means of relations with God as Stowe makes it out to seem. “Our dehumanization of the Negro then is indivisible from our dehumanization of ourselves: the loss of our own identity is the price we pay for our annulment of his (Baldwin 25).” This is written throughout Notes of a Native Son. Baldwin wants to reinstall the idea that by blacks being oppressed is taking their identity away from them and what it means to be black. Also in this novel his essay “Journey to Atlanta” Baldwin describes how he is pleased that blacks do not have high anticipations in the Politian’s of the time. Baldwin felt that they were playing the black voter as pawns only to increase their votes. But in return they would only make promises they won’t