Henry Louis Gates Jr., writing in 1997, delivers a sharp rebuke to the then emerging dogma that black people cannot be racist.
The essay takes writer James Baldwin to task for his capitulation to and appeasement of the black militant successors who disdained him.
The insta-revival and veneration of Baldwin in recent years is a bit odd, given that “the connoisseur of complexity” was correctly judged by those who wanted an ideologue to be so ill-suited for the role, and who did all they could to ruin him while he lived.
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