Inspired by The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin 1962
To My Brothers--- Brian Christopher and Jonathan Maxwell,
and to the brothers who share not my blood, but my skin.
I see and understand your pain. I am enlightened enough to know from which it comes; empowered by your courage to withstand. I do not exonerate your behavior or response. Yet, I am not so naïve to think that it does not come from the conundrum of your existence--- the realities ---which never elucidated and elaborated on, can only help to produce such a response.
The penumbra of your actions, mistakes and victories alike, are not always expected. Thus the response of fear; not always welcomed, hence the response of anger. Nevertheless, understand that whatever your response you effect/affect the people--- the plebeians/proletariat, we your family also among and about you.
The soldiers, you our warriors, have deserted the battle from either weary, disappointment or denial. However, in order to overcome every man must return to his post as watchmen of his people, and take up arms (figuratively) wherever he should be. To fight the power that is all encompassing and oppressive. Remember the revolution will not be televised…for it must happen in your mind, your heart, your soul.
Peace be unto you black brother.
I have known both of you all your lives, have carried your Daddy in my arms and on my shoulders, kissed and spanked him and watched him learn to walk. I don't know if you've known anybody from that far back; if you've loved anybody that long, first as an infant, then as a child, then as a man, you gain a strange perspective on time and human pain and effort. Other people cannot see what I see whenever I look into your father's face, for behind your father's face as it is today are all those other faces which were his. Let him laugh and I see a cellar your father does not remember and a house he does not remember and I hear in his present laughter his laughter as a child. Let him curse and I remember him falling down the cellar steps, and howling, an I remember, with pain, his tears, which my hand or your grandmother's so easily wiped away. But no one's hand can wipe away those tears he sheds invisibly today, which one hears in his laughter and in his speech and in his songs. I know what the world has done to my brother and how narrowly he has survived it. And I know, which is much worse, and 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 destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it. One can be, indeed on must strive to become, tough and philosophical concerning destruction and death, for this is what most of mankind has been best at since we have heard of man. (But remember: most of mankind is not all of mankind.) But it is not permissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime…
You can only be destroyed by believing that you really are what the white world calls a nigger. I tell you this because I love you, and please don't you ever forget it.---James Baldwin
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