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A review by purplemuskogee
No Name in the Street by James Baldwin
challenging
dark
medium-paced
5.0
The most chilling thing about this book - apart from the theme, obviously - is that it was published in 1972 and yet it could have been published in 2024 and I would not necessarily notice.
So much that is still current: James Baldwin in Paris, describing how Algerian men are victims of police violence - "I had watched the police, one sunny afternoon, beat an old, one-armed Arab peanut vendor senseless in the streets, and I had watched the unconcerned faces of the French on the café terraces, and the congested faces of the Arabs". "And in fact, Algerians were being murdered in the streets, and corralled into prisons, and being dropped in the Seine, like flies".
On 27 June 2023, a young French-Algerian boy - Nahel - was shot dead (at point-blank range) by a policeman for a traffic violation, the police initially saying they had no choice as the young boy was using his vehicle as a weapon. A video proved this was not the case and that the police had lied about the circumstances of the killing. Two fundraisers were started on GoFundMe in the following days: one to support Nahel's family - raised about €200,000 - and one to support the policeman's family, which raised over €1.6 million.
This tells you all you need to know about how sadly accurate James Baldwin's observations still are in 2024.
Before the terms systemic racism and "white racism" became mainstream, James Baldwin writes that "The powerless, by definition, can never be 'racists', for they can never make the world pay for what they feel or fear, except by the suicidal endeavor which makes them fanatics or revolutionaries, or both; whereas, those in power can be urbane and charming and invite you to those homes which they know you will never own. The powerless must do their own dirty work. The powerful have it done for them".
On landlords, and capitalism: "There is no pressure on the landlord to be responsible for the upkeep of his property: the only pressure on him is to collect his rent; that is, to bleed the ghetto. (...) Buying cheap and selling dear is what made this country great".
And finally, on police brutality and police impunity, where too often the killers are not charged, or charged much later after public outcry, and on the police working together to cover their tracks (I could not help thinking of Breonna Taylor, murdered at 26 in her own home):
"The white cop in the ghetto is as ignorant as he is frightened, and his entire concept of police work is to cow the natives. He is not compelled to answer to these natives for anything he does; whatever he does, he knows that he will be protected by his brothers, who will allow nothing to stain the honour of the force. When his working day is over, he goes home and sleeps soundly in a bed miles away from the [N word], for that is the way he really thinks of black people. And he is assured of the rightness of his course and the justice of his bigotry every time Nixon, or Agnew, or Mitchell - or the Governor of the State of California - open their mouth".
I received a free copy of his book via Netgalley; it was published in 1972.
So much that is still current: James Baldwin in Paris, describing how Algerian men are victims of police violence - "I had watched the police, one sunny afternoon, beat an old, one-armed Arab peanut vendor senseless in the streets, and I had watched the unconcerned faces of the French on the café terraces, and the congested faces of the Arabs". "And in fact, Algerians were being murdered in the streets, and corralled into prisons, and being dropped in the Seine, like flies".
On 27 June 2023, a young French-Algerian boy - Nahel - was shot dead (at point-blank range) by a policeman for a traffic violation, the police initially saying they had no choice as the young boy was using his vehicle as a weapon. A video proved this was not the case and that the police had lied about the circumstances of the killing. Two fundraisers were started on GoFundMe in the following days: one to support Nahel's family - raised about €200,000 - and one to support the policeman's family, which raised over €1.6 million.
This tells you all you need to know about how sadly accurate James Baldwin's observations still are in 2024.
Before the terms systemic racism and "white racism" became mainstream, James Baldwin writes that "The powerless, by definition, can never be 'racists', for they can never make the world pay for what they feel or fear, except by the suicidal endeavor which makes them fanatics or revolutionaries, or both; whereas, those in power can be urbane and charming and invite you to those homes which they know you will never own. The powerless must do their own dirty work. The powerful have it done for them".
On landlords, and capitalism: "There is no pressure on the landlord to be responsible for the upkeep of his property: the only pressure on him is to collect his rent; that is, to bleed the ghetto. (...) Buying cheap and selling dear is what made this country great".
And finally, on police brutality and police impunity, where too often the killers are not charged, or charged much later after public outcry, and on the police working together to cover their tracks (I could not help thinking of Breonna Taylor, murdered at 26 in her own home):
"The white cop in the ghetto is as ignorant as he is frightened, and his entire concept of police work is to cow the natives. He is not compelled to answer to these natives for anything he does; whatever he does, he knows that he will be protected by his brothers, who will allow nothing to stain the honour of the force. When his working day is over, he goes home and sleeps soundly in a bed miles away from the [N word], for that is the way he really thinks of black people. And he is assured of the rightness of his course and the justice of his bigotry every time Nixon, or Agnew, or Mitchell - or the Governor of the State of California - open their mouth".
I received a free copy of his book via Netgalley; it was published in 1972.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism, Violence, and Police brutality