Notes of a native son

This is the reflection story of James Baldwin's book: Notes of the native son. James Baldwin is a very talented writer and growing up, he never quite understood why his father was always angry and bitter towards the world :why he never seen to trust anyone, why he was always miserable, and why everything to him always had do with racism?

In the 19th century its was very tough time to be a black person in American or anywhere else in the world. Black people were discriminated, humiliated, cast out of society, they were seen as this disease or viruses in which white people did not want to associate themselves with. There we places for white people only and for black people only, the same with apartheid South Africa.

James Baldwin had always been a true admire of blackness and on page 588 on the last paragraph we see this, when describing how his father looked “ It had something to do with his blackness, I think-he was very black-with his blackness and his beauty and with the fact that he knew that he was black but did not know he was beautiful”. Baldwin paints a picture of how his father felt and how America made him feel, that he knew that he was black but did not see black is beautiful. This is the story of every black person who grew up in racist America. You were constantly dehumanize and embarrassed that you're black.

Baldwin starts his story on the day his father dies, which was the 29th of July in 1943, and that when he started to see the place in which a black persons occupies in America. His father growing up was a pastor, a very handsome, proud and ingrown person according how other people saw him. However to him he was different " but he looked to me, as I grew older like pictures I had seen of African tribal chieftains: he really should have been naked, with war paint and barbaric mementos, standing among spears". That is the descriptions which he remembers of him. He saw him as a bitter and cruel person he has ever met and has a result of that he does not share that much personal relations with him. His father was not a likeable man and he makes a example of this on page 598 "when he took one of hiss children to knee to play with, the child always became fretful and began to cry: when he tried to help one of us with our homework the absolute unabating tension which emanated from him caused our mind and tounges to become paralyzed, so that he scarcely knowing why, flew into a range and the child not knowing why, was punished". James show that what many people saw has a quite and handsome man, to them he was the opposite they could not understand why he was like that. They liked to be around him. On pages 591 he tells a story of how his father reacted when he came back from school with her white school teacher, that his father got angry, despised, and suspicious, he never saw her as having an interested in James Baldwin talent. He was very skeptical of her.

One page 591 after his father had died and was no longer in his protection, he tells the story of he discovered why he father was angry, bitter, filled with hatress and never wanting to associate with people. Being a black person that something which he knew he was and how they were treated he was also familiar with that, however when that discrimination come out and aimed at him he was shocked. He says " I learned that in New Jersey to be a negro meant precisely, that one was never never looked at, but was simply at the mercy of the reflexes of one's skin cause in other people". The reason for this shock is because throughout his high school years he had always had white friends at school and had never treated him differently, but now is discovering how society treats black people. He felt in this new environment unwanted, hated and constantly discriminated, to the extent that he felt angered. When he went to a restaurant or bars with his Princeton friend's he would never get served, he was always been forced or being told to leave the place.

They were always meant with the same response" We don't serve negroes here" which he saw himself growing a glass mug and her, but likely it missed her.

The story of Mr. Baldwin take us on a journey of how racism could end up changing a person behavior and character. It can drive a person to a point of destruction or in his fathers case isolate himself from the world. Racism has happened around the world and even here in South Africa it was a pandemic. There were whites and black only places, and in the whites places you were made to feel that you were not wanted, you did not belong here, because of your skin color. However, here in South Africa after apartheid the Truth and reconciliation commission was established to try and mend the scars of white racism and to some extent we can say it worked in terms of making the people who caused and experiencing massive harm to heal for the moment. This story by Baldwin is a very painful one and he could have also been thrown to jail by throwing that weapon to that lady. We tend to pretend to forget about racism and hardships, until one is released into the outside world. Racism is real and even though we have made strives in fighting it we still have a long way to go. Even today many of us black young people have experienced racism even though now its no longer spoken.