Page 100 - The Language of Composition 4e Teacher Edition Sample.indd

someplace else to make it. That’s all. They were menaced — intolerably menaced — by a lack
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Identity
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CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING
In paragraph 16, Baldwin brings up the
specter of communism. How does this
reference reinforce his argument? You
might want to remind students of the
historical context: Baldwin gave this
speech at the height of the Cold War, and
exactly a year after the Cuban Missile
Crisis of October 1962. You might point
out the connection, too, to the reference
to Khrushchev in paragraph 1.
CLOSE READING
In its dense line of reasoning, paragraph
19 is similar to paragraph 2, and, taken
together, the two paragraphs state many
of Baldwin’s central ideas. If you parsed
the claims in paragraph 2 with the class,
you could ask them to do so with partners
for paragraph 19. You could then ask them
to describe how Baldwin’s line of reason- 206
ing through the essay connects the two
paragraphs.
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05_sheatlcte4e_46921_ch04_170a_315_2pp.indd 206
hungry, they were poor, they were convicts. of vision.
Those who were making it in England, for exam- It is inconceivable that a sovereign people
ple, did not get on the Mayflower. That’s how the should continue, as we do so abjectly, to say,
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country was settled. Not by Gary Cooper. Yet we “I can’t do anything about it. It’s the govern-
have a whole race of people, a whole republic, ment.” The government is the creation of the
who believe the myths to the point where even people. It is responsible to the people. And the
today they select political representatives, as far people are responsible for it. No American has
as I can tell, by how closely they resemble Gary the right to allow the present government to say,
Cooper. Now this is dangerously infantile, and it when Negro children are being bombed and
shows in every level of national life. When I was hosed and shot and beaten all over the Deep
living in Europe, for example, one of the worst South, that there is nothing we can do about it.
revelations to me was the way Americans walked There must have been a day in this country’s life
around Europe buying this and buying that and when the bombing of the children in Sunday
insulting everybody — not even out of malice, School would have created a public uproar and
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just because they didn’t know any better. Well, endangered the life of a Governor Wallace. It
that is the way they have always treated me. happened here and there was no public uproar.
They weren’t cruel, they just didn’t know you I began by saying that one of the paradoxes
were alive. They didn’t know you had any of education was that precisely at the point
feelings. when you begin to develop a conscience, you
What I am trying to suggest here is that in must find yourself at war with your society. It is
the doing of all this for 100 years or more, it is your responsibility to change society if you think
the American white man who has long since
of yourself as an educated person. And on the
lost his grip on reality. In some peculiar way, basis of the evidence — the moral and political
having created this myth about Negroes, and the evidence — one is compelled to say that this is a
myth about his own history, he created myths backward society. Now if I were a teacher in this
about the world so that, for example, he was school, or any Negro school, and I was dealing
astounded that some people could prefer with Negro children, who were in my care only a
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Castro, astounded that there are people in few hours of every day and would then return to
the world who don’t go into hiding when they their homes and to the streets, children who
hear the word “Communism,” astounded have an apprehension of their future which with
that Communism is one of the realities of the every hour grows grimmer and darker, I would
twentieth century which we will not overcome try to teach them — I would try to make them
by pretending that it does not exist. The political know — that those streets, those houses, those
level in this country now, on the part of people dangers, those agonies by which they are sur-
who should know better, is abysmal. rounded, are criminal. I would try to make each
The Bible says somewhere that where there child know that these things are the result of a
is no vision the people perish. I don’t think any- criminal conspiracy to destroy him. I would
one can doubt that in this country today we are teach him that if he intends to get to be a man,
he must at once decide that he is stronger than
An American movie star during the mid-twentieth century, most
5 known for his roles as cowboys in westerns. — Eds. 7 George Wallace (1919–1998) was an American politician and
6 Fidel Castro was the leader of the communist regime in Cuba from governor of Alabama when Baldwin wrote this speech. Wallace was a
1959 until his death in 2016. — Eds. fervent believer in racial segregation. — Eds.
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CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING
Paragraph 19 uses the word criminal. Con-
sider asking students to unpack that word as
we usually use it and compare it to how Bald-
win uses it in its various senses. Are there
other words he could have substituted while
maintaining the meaning? Do these substitu-
tions maintain the impact? How does it con-
nect to his use of the word in paragraph 8?
You could ask students to create a definition
of “criminal” that fits Baldwin’s usage.
chapter 4 / Identity
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