What Baldwin Knew, and What We Must Do
There are few essays I return to as often—or with more urgency—than James Baldwin’s White Man, Hear Me! First published in Ebony in 1965 and later collected in The Price of the Ticket, it’s not just a critique; it’s a diagnosis. And for those of us engaged in the work of resistance history—honest history—it remains one of the clearest, most blistering statements of what we’re up against.
Baldwin doesn’t pull punches. He doesn’t hedge or negotiate. He names what many still won’t: that white Americans are “impaled on their history like a butterfly on a pin,” suffering not because they were lied to, but because they need the lie to live. The myth of moral purity, of inherent virtue, of historical inevitability—that’s what Baldwin tears open, not with the aim of healing, but with the aim of truth.
That’s the project. That’s the work. That’s what fuels the Patriot Myth. It’s not simply about correcting the historical record; it’s about dismantling a national narrative meticulously constructed to protect whiteness, and about fiercely reclaiming the lives and stories of those who were deliberately excluded because their truths threatened that very foundation.
We sometimes speak of resistance history as if it were merely a genre of academic study. It’s not. At least not any longer. It’s an act—a deliberate and often dangerous confrontation with established power. Because, as Baldwin so acutely understood, telling the unvarnished truth about the past is a direct assault on the power structures that have been painstakingly built upon its fictions. That’s why even our supposed allies sometimes flinch at the implications. That’s why institutions so readily panic, why crucial content gets relegated to the shadows, why financial support mysteriously disappears. Because the truth, unlike comfortable lies, doesn’t coddle, doesn’t readily sell, and certainly doesn’t trend.
Baldwin wrote with chilling prescience:
“People believe that they deserve their history, and when they operate on this belief, they perish.”
That ingrained belief—that history serves to validate who you are and affirm the privileges you’ve inherited—is precisely the bedrock that must be shattered. Because history isn’t a source of easy comfort, isn’t a nostalgic retreat, and certainly isn’t a birthright to be passively claimed. It is, instead, a fiercely contested battleground. And one of the most insidious weapons wielded against us in this struggle is the pervasive white savior myth: the comforting lie that meaningful resistance has always required white leadership, that Black, Indigenous, and other marginalized peoples only achieved progress when whiteness benevolently permitted it.
Every time we reflexively place a white figure at the center of a story that was never theirs to begin with, we actively reenact that damaging lie. We grant them an unearned significance, often subconsciously, to make white readers feel a sense of familiarity, inspiration, and ultimately, safety. Baldwin knew this self-serving impulse intimately. “They do not want to be reminded,” he wrote with characteristic sharpness, “of the record which is there for all to read.”
But that is precisely what resistance history is: a potent act of reminding. It deliberately re-centers marginalized voices and experiences. It tenaciously restores narratives that have been deliberately erased or distorted. And this crucial work is not, and can never be, a popularity contest. It’s not a performance staged for approval. If you are engaged in this work primarily for metrics, for fleeting social media clout, or for the seductive proximity to established power, you have, in essence, already lost the thread. Resistance history that subtly seeks applause from the very audience it must indict is not genuine resistance; it is merely a form of self-promotion, a carefully curated branding exercise.
This work isn’t safe. It’s rarely lucrative. It’s not always immediately “effective” in conventional terms. It can be profoundly exhausting, often isolating, and frequently thankless. But it remains utterly necessary. Because, as Baldwin so unequivocally tells us, the alternative to actively engaging with this difficult truth isn’t some neutral middle ground—it’s a descent into complicity, a gradual but certain transformation into the very lie we claim to oppose.
My book isn’t crafted for comfortable consumption. It’s not aimed at the heritage tourism crowd seeking easy affirmations. It makes no attempt to rehabilitate the reputations of flawed founders or sanitize the inherent contradictions within the American narrative. It is written for those who already possess an intuitive understanding that something is fundamentally wrong, who are weary of being perpetually told to wait for justice, who desperately need access to the unvarnished record—not the carefully constructed myth. It’s for those who resolutely refuse to be confined within the gilded cage of someone else’s self-serving fable.
And so, we persist. We tell the truth, fully, relentlessly, and without a shred of apology. We name the architects of the lie, even when they occupy positions of perceived authority or align with us politically. And we honor those who bravely resisted, not with hollow statues or fleeting hashtags, but by actively continuing the vital work they began—demolishing the edifice of the lie, piece by painstaking piece, until what ultimately remains is something authentic, something that cannot be easily commodified, cannot be conveniently co-opted, and cannot, ultimately, be undone.
That’s the unwavering commitment. That’s the urgent charge. And James Baldwin, with his enduring wisdom, showed us the profound and irreversible cost of our collective failure.
