Nobody Knows My Name Book

Baldwin should be read by anyone and everyone. Any commentary I could make would do poor service to his writing and his ideas, but the more and more I read this book the more I appreciate his voice, reasoned, calm, pleading of an understanding to the issue of race which even the most "liberated" of us only poorly grasp.

Even more, knowing this collection of essays was written nearly fifty years ago, it is hard to imagine how deeply we have sunk back into a sense of complacency regarding race issues and discrimination. Of course, now it isn't black people we fear, but brown people, an even more insidious adjective of difference. There are Mexicans who are "stealing" our jobs and taking our money; there are Muslims who "hate us for our freedoms", who we cannot see as anything other than terrorists in turbans dedicated to blowing themselves and us up, even though Islam was one of the more liberal ideologies in regards to women's rights. How sad it is that we cannot get past our stereotypes we have of others, that we cannot devote ourselves to truly changing the world. I can only imagine what is ultimately wrong with us, and whether we can overcome ourselves, or if there is any hope for us. We can only dream and keep trying, and perhaps one day, we will.