James Baldwin, essayist, novelist, playwright, and searing social critic, has been enjoying a resurgence of interest recently due, at least in part, to the Baldwin documentary,I Am Not Your Negro(美国,2017)。毫无疑问，鲍德温的思想在今天，在“黑人的生命很重要”的时代，就像在20世纪中期一样重要。可悲的是，还有很多东西没有改变。鲍德温有一种不可思议的能力，能准确地诊断出是什么在困扰着美国和美国人民。

His prescription to ameliorate “the Negro problem,” however, I find puzzling. Take, for example, “My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation,” (1963) where he says:

你没有理由试图变得像白人一样，也没有任何理由让他们鲁莽地认为他们必须接受你。真正可怕的是，老伙计，你必须接受他们，我是认真的。你必须接受他们，带着爱接受他们，因为这些无辜的人没有别的希望。

Why must black people accept their oppressors “with love”? And how can he call racist Americans who uphold systems of white supremacy “innocent”?

Of course, Baldwin is not alone in preaching love and tolerance during the Civil Rights era. Martin Luther King Jr. famously said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that,” and, “I have decided to stick to love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.” But King was a deeply Christian man, a theologian, a preacher, so you’d expect this kind of message from him. While Baldwin was raised as a Christian, he rejected religion as an adult, so this overly conciliatory tone is more surprising coming from him.

这不仅是给他侄子开的处方，他应该“爱”和“接受”白人，而且进一步声明他们是“无辜的”，这才是真正引人注目的。显然，鲍德温并不是对白人受压迫的现实视而不见，那么他为什么说白人是无辜的呢?他是否认为他们是不完全了解他们对黑人造成的恐怖的小孩子?

“Innocence,” as Baldwin means it, is an interesting concept. He thinks of it as a kind of prison. He says that whites are “trapped in history,” by which he means that they’ve created this illusion of white supremacy. They think of themselves as superior, as separate from “the negro.” And segregation was instituted to maintain that illusion.

So, why call this “innocence”? Aren’t whiteswillfullyself-deluded? White Americans benefit from white supremacy, so it pays to not be aware, it pays to be ignorant of the long history of oppression, discrimination, and marginalization that blacks have suffered and continue to suffer at the hands of whites in this country. That way we whites can fool ourselves into thinking that we are entitled to any benefits that come our way, in virtue of our “hard work” or “personal responsibility.”

It’s difficult to see how white Americans who are not actively trying to dismantle racist systems of oppression deserve any kind of love and acceptance from black Americans. A more appropriate response, it seems to me, would be anger—righteous anger! Granted, Baldwin doesn’t see love as some empty sentiment that simply lets people off the hook. On the contrary, he sees love as a transformative project, which is why he says in the letter to his nephew, “We cannot be free until they are free.” Whites must be freed from the “traps” of history, from their self-delusions of supremacy, from their self-debasing need for “the negro,” before blacks will be truly free. And this tough love is what will free whites.

When Baldwin says, “I am not your negro,” what he means is that he refuses to be the negro that the white supremacist imagines, the negro incapable of love and dignity. And with that act of defiance he throws the burden of transformation back on the white man. It iswewho must have a change of heart, it iswewho must look inwards to understand the source of our need to dehumanize others, it iswe谁必须变得更好，谁必须对自己诚实。We must recognize that these racist institutions that uphold white supremacy actually say more aboutusthan they do about black people.

I Am Not Your Negroseems to be aimed more at white Americans than black. Baldwin asks us to consider the fundamental question: why is it that we needed to invent “the nigger”? This is an act of love on Baldwin’s part. He is helping us to understand and come to terms with the history of racism and white supremacy in this country, and what it says about us. For that, we should be grateful. But at the same time, I can’t help from having a niggling feeling that Baldwin is letting whites off the hook a bit too easily. Why does the burden always fall to black Americans to educate white Americans about their own history?