The Discovery of What It Means to Be an American

5 Pages 1319 Words

Truth In Distance
In his essay, “The Discovery of What It Means to Be an American”, James Baldwin writes about how he personally came about discovering his true identity. One of the first things he says is,
“I left America because I doubted my ability to survive the fury of the color problem here. I wanted to prevent myself from becoming… merely a negro writer. I wanted to find in what way the specialness of my experience could be made to connect me with other people instead of dividing me from them” (Baldwin 46).
Baldwin thinks he hates America. I think that he is instead blinded by the constant discrimination he faced growing up in 1950’s New York. During all those years he just listened, and he was never taught how to deal with it all. When he realizes that putting distance between himself and the country he hates is a good idea, then he has started the road to recovery. At this point he is about to undergo a big psychological change, much like I’ve been doing during these past six months. I think that this change I have made, while a good distance away from home, is similar to the one Baldwin experienced before discovering his identity.
Baldwin couldn’t take the growing racial tensions in 1950’s America. “I was as isolated from negroes as I was from whites, which is what happens when a negro begins, at bottom, to believe what white people say about him” (46). He left for France in hopes of finding inspiration in a less discriminating place. I think that if he had remained in America, the country that he thought he hated, then it would destroy him before realized the deeper attachment he had to his country. I think there is an important lesson right here: You’ve got to live for the moment, otherwise you’ll never know what big opportunities you could miss.
Baldwin says,
“I found my experience was shared by every American writer I knew in Paris. Like me they had been divorced from the...