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The essay includes this, as potent in 2021 as it was then, in 1962:
"There is no reason for you to try to become like white people and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent assumption that they must accept you. The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them. And I mean that very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love. For these innocent people have no other hope. They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it. They have had to believe for many years, and for innumerable reasons, that black men are inferior to white men. Many of them, indeed, know better, but, as you will discover, people find it very difficult to act on what they know. To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger."
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Nahr asks Bilal: "Do you think Baldwin would say that we should love Israelis?"
And Bilal, broken yet whole, weakened yet resilient says: "I don't think that's necessarily what Baldwin is saying. I think he just means that we should fortify ourselves with love when we approach them. It's more about our own state of grace, of protecting our spirits from their denigration of us; about knowing that our struggle is rooted in morality; and that the struggle itself is not against them as a people, but against what infects them--the idea that they are a better form of human, that God prefers them, that they are inherently a superior race, and we are disposable." (Against the Loveless World, 300)
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So it's one thing, in my shoes, in my skin, to know what racism is, or even how systemic racism works. (Or homophobia, for that matter, or heterosexism or mysogyny.) It's quite another to act on what I know, to follow the path into resistance, justice, solidarity and new life. To use the language of my own tradition, acting on what I know means discipleship, the way of the cross, losing life, sacrificing ideologies and privileges and all the rest. "To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger." It's not only a break from business as usual, it's a radical choice for danger over complacency, for agape/love over enlightenment.
And what my Black friends need from me right now, and what my Palestinian friends need from me right now, and what the indigenous Jesus asks of me right now is this: to hear their cry for justice as love, to hear their anger and rage as love, to hear their defiance as the only love and the only hope that can heal us. To hear this, to cherish this, to honor this is to act. To act on this is to be committed. And to be committed in this way, in the way they insist, is to be in danger.
What would the church look like, what would the community of disciples look like--if we looked at the gospel through Baldwin's lens? How would our life together shape up, how would our worship sizzle and transform--if we sang our Alleluias in Baldwin's key?
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I want to recommend Against the Loveless World to my friends of all faiths, of no faith, of any and all political perspectives. It's especially relevant this month, as the ethnic cleansing of Palestine is again in the mainstream news, and the terrible war against Palestinian life and culture is visible and audible again. But whatever's in the news, this story of love and commitment in the midst of devastation and violence, in a world of racism and bigotry, is urgent...and will be urgent wherever the nightly news goes next. It's about what's most human, and most holy, and most extraordinary. It'll break your heart, as it's broken mine. But it'll make you want to heal too. Even if that means danger around the bend.
