Mind You Baldwin By James Baldwin

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Recommended: Racial Discrimination in Literature

Violence has such a very negative impact on people as well as communities. Violence has the very power to negatively impact people as well as their identities. Violence can divide families, change people, end lives, and affect lives. The past couple of weeks we spent reading and analyzing these African American passages; a few of these stories had strong instances of violence. Violence is both a mode of expression as well as oppression. No one can understand or even experience the horrible violence African Americans were endured with. Not just with the violence that took place during slavery or even segregation but the modern violence we do face. The violence of police brutality and the fact that the very people who are suppose to protect citizens …show more content…

This bitterness he speaks of is a bitterness that he says had a hand in his father's death. This bitterness comes from the segregation situation as well as the treatment of African Americans in this time period. Baldwin speaks throughout the essay about how he doesn't want to obtain this bitterness. In this essay, Baldwin has a moment where he obtains this bitterness. He and his white friend had gone out to a movie and to get a few drinks after. Mind you Baldwin was in New Jersey which was a new place which had rules that Baldwin was not as accustomed to. When they go to a few restaurants his friend is able to be served because he’s white but Baldwin is unable to be served due to the segregation rules in the town. Baldwin feels some frustration as well as some bitterness towards the treatment as well as white people including his friend. This makes him take off to another restaurant. But while Baldwin was headed to another restaurant so many violent thoughts were rushing through his mind. In this scene from his essay Notes of a Native Son, he starts to think with such violent thoughts as well as …show more content…

I wanted to do something to crush these white faces, which were crushing me” (Baldwin, 593). Baldwin heads to another restaurant and sit down to be served. He informs the waitress of his order and she refuses to serve him and repeats this. Now this doesn't resonate well with Baldwin and puts him in a very dark state of mind changing his character. In this scene from his essay Notes of a Native Son, he understand as well as sense the bitterness that his father obtained. “Somehow with the repetition of that phase, which was already ringing in my head like a thousand bells of a nightmare, I realized that she would never come any closer and that I would have to strike from a distance. There was nothing on the table but an ordinary water mug half full of water, and I picked this up and hurled it with all my strength at her. She ducked and it missed her and shattered against the mirror behind the bar” (Baldwin, 594). He was filled with so much anger as well as hatred and resentment he did something that was out of his character. Even afterwards one of the male white folks in the restaurant grabbed him by the neck and started to kick him. Baldwin kicked him back in the face and ran

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