their societies. People must first recognize that a problem exists before they can begin to restructure society in ways that offer needed changes. The civil rights movement offered this kind of insight as leaders like Baldwin, King, and Malcolm X began to force the nation to face the necessary societal changes needed for a more equitable country.

In your own life, you might consider this quote from a racial experience, but there are other societal inequalities which may be more personal to your own unique background. As a teacher, I often advocate for learners with mental or physical challenges; our society is not well-constructed to offer these unique people opportunities which are comparable to a person who doesn't face these challenges. For example, I once chaperoned a field trip with a student who used a wheelchair for mobility. It was quite difficult for us to navigate streets as many places didn't offer a spot for a wheelchair crossing (just a steep curb which he couldn't navigate). It took us significantly longer (and quite a bit of forethought) to simply move from one point to the next, which most people in society take for granted. You might also consider the way gender, economic background, religion, or culture negatively impact your own opportunities or the opportunities of those around you.

I hope this helps as you further contemplate a well-known quote by one of America's most influential authors.

James Baldwin meant that acknowledging and understanding a problem are necessary but not sufficient conditions for solving it. The acknowledgement is the first step towards the solution, if there is one. It may or may not be possible to solve the problem of racism, but the problem certainly cannot be solved by people who deny that racism exists, or by those who are unable or unwilling to grasp its nature.

The size of such problems as racial and social injustice means that, if they are ever solved at all, or even significantly ameliorated, these changes will happen slowly and incrementally, over several generations. Baldwin is therefore writing to the future. He hopes that each succeeding generation will be in a position to do more. The civil rights movement was already a century after Emancipation. Who knows what might be possible by the 2060s?

To apply this idea in your own life is, of course, to scale it down from this chronology. Nonetheless, you will almost certainly find that it is applicable, and the context does not need to have anything to do with racism. Baldwin's statement has much wider application, since it is about the comforting lies people tell themselves, which are a way of avoiding action.

Any major change that you have made in your life probably started with your acknowledgement that there was a problem you needed to face. This could be in the area of work, education, personal relationships, diet and exercise, and many others. You might have been failing in class, continually arguing with friends, or experiencing one of many other difficulties. To take an extreme example, no alcoholic or drug addict ever overcomes their addiction while they persist in denying that it exists.

This quote comes from a manuscript called Remember this House that Baldwin began but never completed about Medgar Evers, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X. It confronts several realities about racism.

First, Baldwin states that not everything that is faced can be changed. This expresses the reality that we can face racism or aspects of it, but we may not be able to change these problmes in our lifetimes. What we have to do instead, as Baldwin suggests in The Fire Next Time, is make a choice between hope and despair. Just because a situation is not likely to change as much or as quickly as we like doesn't mean we can find strategies to maneuver and make the best of an imperfect situation. Black theorists sometimes use the metaphor of the "trap" to describe what life is like in a racist society: it often feels impossible to escape, but even traps have trap doors, underground tunnels, and room to maneuver. Change can come.

Second, Baldwin states that nothing can be changed until it faced. This part of the statement is aimed more at white audiences, but it is also aimed at Black people who are trying to bury their heads in the sand and pretend things are OK. What Baldwin means is that until there is a communal acknowledgement that a problem exists, nothing can be done to fix it. Therefore, as long as white people, for example, say racism is "over" or that they themselves suffer from no racism, no progress can be made.

How you apply this to your own life is, of course, a function of your own situation, but perhaps the best way is not to shut your eyes to uncomfortable problems by blaming other groups. There are problems in this society, such as racism, but they are systemic: they are about Black people systemically being denied access to resources. If you think this is not true, you have simply not looked hard enough. Go, for example, to Black churches and white churches in your area and see who has the money. Also, it helps to believe that progress can be made. We shouldn't give up because we can't reach perfection immediately or because we have tried and failed before. We keep trying; that's the important point.

Your ability to apply this quote to your own life will of course depend in part on your own opinions and context. However, in general, this quote by James Baldwin highlights the importance of confronting problems head-on. In the first part of the quote, Baldwin recognizes that no matter how hard we work to create change, we might not be successful. But in the second part of the quote, he underscores that although this is true, if we do not try at all we do not even have a shot at making change.

With this quote, Baldwin hopes to encourage others to confront the problem of systemic racism in the United States of America. Consider what he writes just before he says this:

You cannot lynch me and keep me in ghettoes without becoming something monstrous yourselves. And furthermore, you give me a terrifying advantage: You never had to look at me. I had to look at you. I know more about you than you know about me. Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.

When Baldwin says “you never had to look at me,” he is referring to how white people have always been able to live their lives without truly confronting the issue of racism and without confronting how they have benefitted from oppressing Black people. He feels that this racial power dynamic cannot be changed unless white people face their role in it.

This quote about change is relevant to the contemporary Black Lives Matter movement, and how it is working to get people around the world to confront the United States’ history of brutal racial discrimination. But this quote can also relate to lots of other issues as well, and anywhere in life where people strive for progressive change. For example, some sports teams use this quote to motivate them to confront the problems holding them back from victory. Or on a more personal level, some people look to it as a means of confronting destructive habits, like substance abuse. No matter what the issue, unless we are completely honest about it, and face it head-on, we cannot change it.

Let's ponder this well-known quotation from James Baldwin using examples from the struggles and issues people face every day.

Baldwin asserts that “not everything that is faced can be changed.” Our experience tells us this is true. We cannot change the death of a loved one or the loss of a job or a scary diagnosis. We usually cannot change another person's attitudes or behavior (at least without that person's assent and cooperation). We cannot change many things about our circumstances. Yet we must face all of these. We have no other choice if we want to keep living. Of course, we could try to run and hide, but this generally does no good. We are still affected by our trials whether we try to deny them or not. So the best thing we can do is look at them squarely and move ahead as best we can, accepting what we cannot change.

Now let's look at the second half of Baldwin's assertion: “but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” A person who has experienced addiction knows the truth of this claim all too well. This is something that can be changed (with plenty of commitment and hard word and support, of course), but first it must be faced. The person with the addiction must admit that they have a problem. That person must look squarely at the addiction and see what it is doing to their life, family, and friends. Only then can that person change his or her life. Otherwise, there will be little or no motivation to do anything but maintain the addiction. Clear sight is absolutely necessary.

Certainly Baldwin would hope that other people gain courage from these words. He wants to comfort them that some situations are simply out of their control. They must look at them and move on as best they can. Other situations, however, can be changed but only if one has enough gumption to face up to the problem and make a commitment to act. The first step in doing that is knowledge and a clear perspective, and those are what Baldwin provides here.

This James Baldwin quote comes for a 1962 article he wrote in The New York Times. The article was headlined “As Much Truth As One Can Bear.”

When examining the meaning of Baldwin’s quote, truth might be a good place to start. In the article, Baldwin lambasts the “soothing lies.” He encourages people to do “great violence to language” and “disrupt the comforting beat.” It’s possible that Baldwin is asking readers to stand up to America’s years of deception about its own history. He wants people to try and topple the delusional status quo. They may not succeed in getting America to confront its lethal racism, but they certainly won’t succeed if they don’t make a forceful attempt.

Someone could apply Baldwin’s quote to their own life in multiple ways. It could be applied to a bully at school. Instead of letting the bully continue to harry other people, people could confront the bully and try to get that bully to be less mean.

The quote could also be applied at a personal, individual level. For instance, say Evan is starting to get upset with herself about the amount of time she spends on her phone. It’s making her feel like a zombie. She knows she should do something else, like read a book, but it’s hard for her to confront her phone habit. Besides, even if she does force herself to read a book, she might not be able to focus on the book.

Yet if Evan doesn’t try to put down her phone and read a book, she’ll never read. Maybe she won’t be able to concentrate. Maybe she will toss the book aside and pick her phone up again. Then again, maybe she won’t. Ultimately, the only way to find out is for her to face her dilemma head on.