White supremacy makes black identity politics necessary yet insufficient

Evidence

“Color,” as he wrote in 1963, “is not a human or personal reality; it is a political reality.” Color does not say, once and for all, who we are and who we will forever be, nor does it accord anyone a different moral standing because they happen to be one color as opposed to another. But, again, Baldwin is not naïve. He understands history’s hold and the politics that make it so. As he wrote in The Fire Next Time, “as long as we in the West place on color the value that we do, we make it impossible for the great unwashed to consolidate themselves according to any other principle.” It makes all the sense in the world, then, that black people would look to the fact of their blackness as a key source of solidarity and liberation. White people make black identity politics necessary. But if we are to survive, we cannot get trapped there. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again, 321

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The single best formulation of Baldwin’s double move — naming why black identity politics is both necessary and a trap — dense and tension-bearing, worth sitting with.
• XREF: Speaks directly to current debates on race-conscious identity politics; echoes Ta-Nehisi Coates vs. Baldwin debates.