We are our history

excerpts from James Baldwin’s “I Am Not Your Negro”

photograph by A.B. Godfreed

In this country
for a dangerously long time
never seen any genuine confrontation
so fat and so sleek, and so safe, and so happy,
and so irresponsible, and so dead.

God forgives murder
in some bizarre way, to be a milestone
has made them criminals and monsters
dreaming of anything like “the final solution.”

I am speaking as a member of a certain democracy
from a public point of view,
great esteem which is not easily distinguishable
has no moral authority
if it is distinguishable, from love.

This problem, which they invented
has no moral justification
part of my responsibility — as a witness —
for whom they gave their lives.

History is not the past.
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It is the present
would not be an eccentric patriot
but a raving maniac.
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We are our history.