“All of the Western nations have been caught in a lie, the lie of their pretended humanism; this means that their history has no moral justification, and that the West has no moral authority. Malcolm, yet more concretely than Frantz Fanon—since Malcolm operated in the Afro-American idiom, and referred to the Afro-American situation—made the nature of this lie, and its implications, relevant and articulate to the people whom he served. He made increasingly articulate the ways in which this lie, given the history and the power of the Western nations, had become a global problem, menacing the lives of millions. “Vile as I am,” states one of the characters in Dostoevski’s The Idiot, “I don’t believe in the wagons that bring bread to humanity. For the wagons that bring bread to humanity, without any moral basis for conduct, may coldly exclude a considerable part of humanity from enjoying what is brought; so it has been already.” Indeed. And so it is now. Dostoevski’s personage was speaking of the impending proliferation of railways, and the then prevalent optimism (which was perfectly natural) as to the uplifting effect this conquest of distance would have on the life coldly exclude a considerable part of humanity.” Indeed, it was on this exclusion that the rise of this power inexorably depended; and now the excluded—“so it has been already”—whose lands have been robbed of the minerals, for example, which go into the building of railways and telegraph wires and TV sets and jet airliners and guns and bombs and fleets, must attempt, at exorbitant cost, to buy their manufactured resources back—which is not even remotely possible, since they must attempt this purchase with money borrowed from their exploiters. If they attempt to work out their salvation—their autonomy—on terms dictated by those who have excluded them, they are in a delicate and dangerous position, and if they refuse, they are in a desperate one: it is hard to know which case is worse. In both cases, they are confronted with the relentless necessities of human life, and the rigors of human nature.”
Excerpt From: James Baldwin. “No Name in the Street (Vintage International).”
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Thanks, but no thanks
I will pass on your poison
The rye has rot
The apple makes me drowsy
Your smile, sultry
Its crooked deception
Telling me your my friend
But showing me foe
The three inches of knife
Slowly pulled out
Is not enough
As six still remains
The disease of my thought
From your infectious mind
Makes my heart hurt
Makes my soul weep
I want to kill your hate
But that won't extricate
These feelings
What have we become
The violence we do
To each other, ourselves
Out of fear
Will not right these wrongs
Love
Cautious love
Not forgetting pain
Trying to forgive
It may be a start
Maybe the end
Seeds of hope
We can grow
But you must prove
You're more than greed
More than he
Please stop killing me
