James Baldwin's Confrontation Withracist Terror in the American South

Abstract

The memory of Jesse, James Baldwin's protagonist in “Going to Meet the Man,” channels a flow of impressions that both dramatizes his psychic and sexual wounding and provides a useful perspective into the distorted reality growing out of Southern history of racist violence. Baldwin's experiments with perspective, time handling, and revealing reflect his interest in style as exposé of harmful delusions. His treatment of point of view functions to analyze culture myths about sexuality that justify violent rape of Black women and castration and live burning of Black men. Validated as ethical norm, these myths serve as the altar on which the community sacrifices its capacity for self-examination. They supply the energy that keeps in motion cycles of barbarity against which the perpetrators claim, ironically, to be defending their enlightened selves. Inevitable, therefore, is the tragic undermining of individuals'humanity and warping of the social character.