Dialectic of Protest: James Baldwin’s No Name In The

DIALECTIC OF PROTEST:
JAMES BALDWIN’S

NO NAME IN THE STREET

On the surface, No Name in the Street is a look at the stormy sixties, but its real object is the deceitful design which architects of empires strive to impose between themselves and their labourers, and how, in time, that design will work out. Baldwin has elected for exposure a potpouri of exasperating and tragic incidents of black life in America and abroad and has formulated frightening conclusions based on the reactions of blacks to these incidents. The titles of the book’s two sections - “Take Me to the Water”, “To be Baptized” – suggest a rite of passage. In the first section, we see Baldwin in Paris or New York, identifying with Algerians, or giving a friend the black suit he wore to Martin Luther King’s funeral, or going to the American South to pay his dues; in the second section, we see Baldwin against a drop of racial violence; King, Malcom X and Medgar Ever murdered, so many deaths, so many funerals, or Baldwin trying to get a friend out of jail and simultaneously struggling with a filmscript based on Malcom X’s Autobiography. The latter juxtaposition puts the revolutionary against the artist. That Baldwin is, perhaps, a true revolutionary, is expressed by James Campbell: “... he believes that an act of oppression does not end with the cowing of its victim. On the contrary, for an energy to have to be suppressed by force means that the enforcer does not understand that energy and therefore cannot control it.”¹

No Name in the Street is an impressionistic assessment of various personalities interspersed with narrative links that serve as foils to the portraits presented. The essay opens with a familiar autobiographical reference to Baldwin’s childhood but here the clear intention is to establish the essayist’s identity. Baldwin’s underlying theme is the search for identity and for a means to shape that identity into a viable form, that it may survive the social and historical conditions forced on it from without. The suitability of Baldwin’s intention for the purpose of identity is expressed by Stanley Macebuh: “…..he is not only black and therefore qualified to pass judgement on America, but he was also born in Harlem: both by virtue of his race and of his class origins; he is doubly dispossessed and therefore the eminently authentic voice of disbelief in a civilization that prides itself on its democratic and egalitarian mission.”²

Having established his identity, Baldwin reveals that at some point of his life he came to review the judgement on the nature of human life. This judgement is specified in the last pages of the essay, where he flaunts the curse of destruction and holds no shred of hope for salvation, the only question being how long this imminent catastrophe can be postponed: “There will be bloody holding actions all over the world for years to come: but the Western party is over, and the White man’s sun has set.” ³ The intervening space presents many of the reasons, that are significant and representative, which led to his altered judgement.

The book embodies Baldwin’s boldest excursion into the arena of specifically political analysis. In terms of psychosocial perspective of the behaviour of the western man, his remarks are as significant and valid as those of more overtly political polemicists. It is instructive to observe the manner in which Baldwin’s world view encompasses the entire panorama of the politics of oppression. He draws the necessary distinction between the predicament of the Algerians in France and that of the black Americans in the D.S.A. The Algerian struggle was one of tragic dignity, particularly because they were fighting for their land. Reviewing and comparing the Algerian situation with that of the Negro. Baldwin asserts his discovery of what history has made of Blacks. The political oppression itself being similar, the situation differs in that the Algerian does not accept France as his home and thus withholds a certain part of himself which he would never surrender, whereas the Negro situation was far more poignant as he has surrendered himself completely to the only place he knew to be ‘home’. Baldwin’s discovery of the significance of the territorial perspective, did not, however, prevent him from recognizing the fundamental similarity between the Negro dilemma and that of the Algerians. The Algerian after all, was part of Africa, and France a part of Europe. They were victims of the same history for, though the Negro had been carried out nearly four hundred years ago, he was still a part of Africa.

To be sure, No Name in the Street provides sufficient implicit evidence of a progressive radicalization. The historical, socio-political, circumstances made this almost inevitable. The conditions in both Europe and America had led him to the conclusion that his sojourn in Paris was a “fadish exhibition” of “elegant despair”. “everybody else was paying his dues,” he concluded, “and it was time I went home and paid mine” (NNIS, 50). Walter Meserve rightly observes: “The confusion and despair that Mr. Baldwin now feels is reflected in the form in which he has chosen to cast his material... (He) is paying his dues; but, in so doing, trying to link his past as a writer to his future role in the Black Movement.” ⁴

In more ways than one, it is Baldwin’s record of the dues he had to pay when he returned home from self-imposed exile and joined the Civil Rights Movement. He is no longer concerned with reserving a non-racial or non-political space for himself. He has come to discover that the problem is not really one of color or race but chiefly of white in-humanism. He states: “What we call a race problem is not a race problem, at all: ... The problem is rooted in the question of how one treats one’s flesh and blood….” (NNIS, 159). Baldwin has further summarized his break with the past in the following despairing terms:

…. whereas white men have killed black men for sport...or out of intolerable excess of terror called hatred, or out of the necessity of affirming their identity as white men ... it is not necessary for a black man to hate a white man, or to have any particular feelings about him at all, in order to realize that he must kill him. Yes, we have come, or are coming to this, and there is no point in flinching before the prospect of this exceedingly cool species of fatricide … which prospect white people ... have brought on themselves ... people who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating to them, poisoned. (NNIS, 1963 - 164)

This deliberated conclusion elicits a rational consideration while at the same time involving the emotions, with the intention to alert the reader to the fact that violence is a logical consequence to social injustice, having little to do with the emotions of those who engage in it. The abstractness of such violence makes it repulsive yet compelling. Baldwin’s hesitations and deflections suggest a certain anxiety and a desire to postpone the catastrophe while at the same time absolve him and his race of any responsibility when the ultimate doom shall inevitably descend.

The black-white confrontation is obviously crucial, containing the shape of the American future and the only potential of a truly valid American identity - an identity arrived at by virtue of experience and learning. To be called is no longer a ‘perjorative’ term but a badge ofhonour and pride. It is the white man’s turn to live in terror ofa people he thought to ‘co, chain or murder into submission’. The historical wheel has come full circle and only when the moment has passed will the outcome be clear.

This, then, is a vivid account ofthe pious American’s inhumanism. Baldwin has come a long way from The Fire Next Time to No Name in the Street. The veil is rent and he has finally awakened to the reality of the black situation. The White American’s chance to heed warning is lost for the inevitability of his impending room has cast its heavy shadow, driving out the serene atmosphere of love and integration. There is absolutely no hope to save him from perishing other than a bit of relief, perhaps, through a temporary postponement.

Notes and References

¹ James Campbell, “Sun of the Preacher Man: The Baptizm of James Baldwin.” in London Magaziner, kn.s. Vol. 19, Nos. 9 & 10, Dec. 1979 & Jan., 1980, P. 108.
² Ibid., P. 103.
³ James Baldwin, No Name in the Street (London: Michael Joseph, 1972), P. 168. Hereafter referred to as NNIS with page number in parentheses.
⁴  Walter Meserve, “Misconnections,” in The Times Library Supplement No. 3661, 1972,
P. 469.