Black people were already natally exiled within America before any departure

Evidence

Baldwin sometimes used the language of exile when talking about his living outside of the country. But he never used the word in a straightforward manner. “As an exiled American…I am faced with a choice of exiles,” he told John Hall when asked about his extended stays abroad. What did he mean by “a choice of exiles”? It was a way of suggesting that he, like all black people, was already exiled from birth, because the country believed that white people mattered more. We were, in a sense, natally exiled. Because of the lie, black people were relegated through law, public policy, and social norms to the margins of American society; they were forced to struggle daily to keep from believing all that the country said about them in order to hold off madness and rage, and to resist soul-crushing sycophancy. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again, 404

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces ‘natally exiled’ and ‘choice of exiles’ — key terms for the reader’s late-Baldwin argument.
• XREF: Connects to Baldwin’s own phrase ‘in but not of’ America, echoing the reader’s core thesis that the lie relegates black Americans to permanent natality-exile.