27 pages • 54 minutes read
A Talk to Teachers
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Themes
The Educator’s Role in the Fight Against Racism
James Baldwin’s “A Talk to Teachers” remains potent and relevant to modern readers primarily because one of its major themes is racism, a facet of America that has yet to be fully grappled with or resolved. Though Baldwin does not immediately mention racism, it is nevertheless the guiding theme of the essay. In the first paragraph, when he speaks about how so many generations of Americans have operated with bad faith and cruelty, he stresses that this bad faith and cruelty exists in both the classroom and the world at large, and that it stems from racism. He also makes it clear that anyone trying to combat racism in America must prepare for brutal resistance.
Baldwin views the classroom as a sort of front line in the fight to eradicate racism and ensure equality. However, there is resistance even here. One of the many paradoxes of education is the fact that education stimulates the ability and desire to analyze the world and ask questions. Baldwin argues that this process of questioning is how people attain their identity. However, this type of questioning runs counter to what society wants out of its citizenry: compliance with the status quo. This tension between the natural urge to question, and society’s tendency to stifle such lines of thinking, partly underlies Baldwin’s claim that Black students feel confused about identity and allegiance. As they mature and discover the nature of identity in America, Black students recognize that America is, at its core, a racist nation because it does not want students to analyze the society and social structures that perpetuate racism. This proof is in their environment, and they are confronted with this reality daily. They observe it in the racist caricatures and stereotypes that service the white narrative that Black Americans enjoy their status as subordinate citizens; they observe it in their parents, who hustle to the back of the bus because that is their place.
Though children don’t have the vocabulary to articulate their recognition of the inequalities borne of racism, they still understand that the world treats them and their families differently, and they sense that the world is structured to perpetuate this inequity. As Baldwin writes, “What societies really, ideally, want is a citizenry which will simply obey the rules of society” (Paragraph 2). Resistance, then, is key to change. As leaders in classrooms, sites of knowledge and learning, educators are uniquely poised to teach students how to resist, question, and challenge social ills like racism. In Baldwin’s view, racism cannot be defeated if it is not broken down and analyzed, and that work starts in the classroom.
Identity, Equality, and Liberation
Baldwin scaffolds the theme of identity onto the theme of racism throughout the essay. Indeed, they are inseparable and intertwined, mostly because racist prejudgments shape how white society perceives Black identity. Skin color acts as a type of rubric, one that determines worth and purpose, and informs social rules, like where one sits on a bus.
Baldwin explains that man “is a social animal. He cannot exist without a society” (Paragraph 2). It is society that helps him craft an identity, helps him establish a place in the wider world and in his local community. But for Black students, that identity is fraught with uncertainty, and this is further complicated when educators do nothing to challenge the domineering racist ideology that white is superior to Black. Black identity thus becomes skewed and contorted, shaped by myths and stereotypes based in prejudice and fear.
Specifically, Baldwin writes that “to ask questions of the universe, and then learn to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his own identity. But no society is really anxious to have that kind of person around” (Paragraph 2). As Baldwin notes, society would prefer its citizens to be obliging and grateful, regardless of truths. This is why he appeals to educators: When the education system does not support student questions and challenges, then it smothers their identity into accepting stereotypes. When educators arm students with knowledge of history and critical thinking, however, this allows them to stipulate their identity on their own terms—and to resist the racism baked into society and social institutions. According to Baldwin,
What is upsetting the country is a sense of its own identity. If, for example, one managed to change the curriculum in all the schools so that Negroes learned more about themselves and their real contributions to this culture, you would be liberating not only Negroes, you’d be liberating white people who know nothing about their own history (Paragraph 12).
Identity, then, is a liberating force. When all are free to establish their own identities and senses of self, then all are liberated.
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