James Baldwin's Violence: A Cycle Of Violence

A Cycle of Violence It is not always easy to right about unpopular topics, especially ones that go against not just the grain, but the majority of a nation. There are few authors who have been successful about writing from behind the walls of oppression and minority inequalities due to the lack of support they get from the overwhelming public. While many others feared the opposition, James Baldwin embraced it with open arms. His writings openly challenged the way people, specifically African Americans, were treated. Raised in Harlem and being a black homosexual man, Baldwin was all too aware of the social injustice and hatred toward minorities. In fact he even left America in 1948 for Paris, to escape the “murderous bitterness that was eating the life around him”
(Baldwin 424). In his essay “Report From Occupied Territory,” Baldwin openly challenges police brutality, as he writers about the inhumane way African Americans are being treated.
Although this was written half a century ago in 1964, the relevancy to life in America today is uncanny, as day after day a new story breaks on police brutality. James Baldwin was the one of the first writers to openly report the truth during the civil rights era, as he wrote to inform readers that these were more than news clips, but actual occurrences involving real people. This article’s purpose is to give its readers a glimpse of what it felt like to be beaten for no reason other than the color of one’s skin. The irony is that although this was published fifty years ago, could have been written yesterday, as it appears in today’s society that racism never went away. In the article published by The Nation titled “Report From Occupied Territory,” author James Baldwin is reporting about the gruesome violence police officers are showing minorities in the streets as he writers from first and third person. The subject and also the narrator in this article is a humble and ordinary salesmen who becomes a victim after coming to child’s aid. One of the first things that Baldwin addresses in this piece that is a common occurrence is that African Americans,
adults as well as kids, who are unarmed are being beat senseless. He writes “Then the salesman noticed that two of the policemen were beating up a kid: So I spoke up and asked them, ‘why are you beating him like that?’ Police jump up and start swinging on me” (Baldwin 1). Baldwin goes on to write that although the salesmen is handcuffed, he is still beaten as if he poses a threat and eventually he loses his eye. This what is called excessive force, and this hot topic has been all over news each week as more and more innocent African American men and kids are being killed and beaten for no apparent reasons. These beatings and killings are savage in nature as there is no remorse for the life at stake. Due to the media coverage, police violence has never been higher as outrageous cases are continuously being made. Although this is large portion of what Baldwin was addressing in 1964, this is not the theme of this work. No, the theme that is here in this article, is what lies at the core of all the violence, the inability to see one race as equal to another. This is Baldwin’s main idea to get across, as he was in the middle of the fight for equality during this time. This fight was for more than just black people, but for any one of color was being mistreated by their white counter parts. In “A Report from Occupied Territory” Baldwin even writes of an “elderly Puerto Rican seamen” who was also beat senseless just for inquiring about the situation. It is evident that America has not evolved and grown too far in the past fifty years as racism against minorities is still felt, even if its just by a judging glance. James Baldwin was one of the most successful writers when it came to challenging the social norm in order to fight for what he felt was right. However, he was not aggressive with his writings, but merely gave insight as to how he saw the world around him. In the article “A Report from an Occupied Territory” Baldwin gives the reader a glimpse of what he has seen living in Harlem as police brutality and racial inequality where at their peaks. Unfortunately, this article applies to today in America just as much as it did fifty years ago. If America does not address the problem at hand, as history has shown, things will get worse before they get better.