In "My Dungeon Shook," James Baldwin addresses his nephew, also called James, on the one hundredth anniversary of the Emancipation. He begins by discussing his own father, his nephew's grandfather, who "had a terrible life," because he had internalized the racism that surrounded him. Later in the letter, Baldwin says of white people,
They have had to believe for many years, and for innumerable reasons, that black men are inferior to white men.
This false belief, Baldwin argues, has been toxic for everyone, Black and white. His father's life was ruined, because he came to believe that he was an inferior being, and the same is true of many Black people.
However, it is also bad for white people to believe a lie which they cannot justify intellectually or emotionally and which makes them mean-spirited and brutish in their behavior. White people are trapped by their failure to understand history and have defined their own identity in relation to the misconceived ideas they have about Black people.
Baldwin says that his nephew should not attempt to become like a white person and should not care whether white people accept him or not. The great challenge, he says, is for James to accept them and attempt to love them however wrong their ideas are. Black men and white men are bothers, and it is the duty of the Black man to force his white brother to face reality and to change it.
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