Student Question
How does Baldwin in "A Letter to My Nephew" illustrate white people as both innocent and guilty, and reconcile these seemingly contradictory states?
Quick answer:
In "A Letter to My Nephew," Baldwin establishes that white people are both innocent and guilty because "it is the innocence which constitutes the crime." In other words, while white people are innocent in "that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it," it is precisely this innocence which results in guilt, for white people are guilty of naively perpetuating white supremacy culture.
In Baldwin's "A Letter to My Nephew," Baldwin instructs his nephew how to simultaneously live in a Black body and live in a world intent on destroying and dehumanizing that Black body, a crime for which white people are responsible.
First, Baldwin establishes that white people are "innocent" of that which they do. He writes,
This is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it.... but it is not permissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime.
Baldwin argues that this innocence comes from a white person's complete ignorance of the conditions under which Black people exist. He explains that...
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while he and his nephew understand, because they are Black and live the Black experience every day, white people "haven't made it yet" to understanding, because they have not seen—and therefore cannot understand or empathize with—the Black experience.
Such innocence does not mean that white people are completely free of any obligation to dismantle systemic racism, however. It is "the innocence which constitutes the crime," as Baldwin says. To live in a state of such ignorance and naivete is irresponsible, unpatriotic, and delusional. White people's refusal to "awaken" from their ignorance indicates their fear of losing their identities; when they are no longer the "dominant race," they would feel as though "heaven and earth are shaken to their foundations."
Thus, their ignorance is willful—that is, it is deliberately chosen and maintained in order for white people not to have to reconcile with a new social order in which a racial hierarchy no longer functions as a classist system.
Baldwin's choice of the word "innocent" is not a "get out of jail free" card for white people; indeed, they are culpable for that innocence and obligated to teach themselves and their fellow white people the real truth, thereby losing their innocence and awakening to the true America. So, white people are both innocent and guilty at the same time: innocent in the sense that they truly don't know the Black experience, and guilty for not wanting to know and not wanting to change in order to make equality a reality and not a dream.