Baldwin, Individualism, and the Means of White Self-Empowerment

Abstract

In his essay “Faulkner and Desegregation,” published in Nobody Knows My Name, James Baldwin clarifies William Faulkner’s two vocal perspectives written in separate essays, one against segregation and the other “just as strongly against compulsory integration” (86). There can be no doubt as to the impact of Baldwin’s contribution in his brief critique of Faulkner’s apparent double mindedness, that Faulkner “means everything he says, means them all at once, and with very nearly the same intensity” (Nobody 121). Faulkner’s now-famous utterance during an interview that he would “fight for Mississippi against the United States even if it meant going out into the street and shooting Negroes” (Lion in the Garden 261) still rests uneasily alongside his previous vocal support of the NAACP. It is clear from Baldwin’s essay that he takes no issue with Faulkner’s seemingly contradicting viewpoints; rather, Faulkner’s “in the middle” pathology and his daring suggestion to “Go slow now” are the provocation for Baldwin’s formulation of a moderate white positioning toward race politics. The publication dates between Faulkner’s gradualism presented in his September 1956 Ebony publication “A Letter to the Leaders in the Negro Race” and Baldwin’s Partisan Review essay published in winter of the same year further suggest the place of Baldwin’s essay as a response to Faulkner’s own manifestations of white self-empowerment, individualism, and double mindedness. Scholars have drawn attention to the importance of Baldwin’s claim that Faulkner is not exceptional but rather archetypal of white Southern race ideology in his defense of the South against the United States. Baldwin’s critique of Faulkner is an essential intertextual complement and case study in relation to Baldwin’s other writings which disassemble white identity in America. Our reading of Baldwin’s essay is also greatly enriched by an understanding of his overall approach to literary critique, which is to illuminate the oversimplification of racism within the protest novel (Williams 56). In the example of Faulkner, Baldwin points