While surveying James Baldwin’s career in “The Divided Mind of James Baldwin,” author C.W.E. Bigsby discusses Baldwin’s common use of the self in argumentation and problem solving despite “the peripheral role, which seems its social fate” (327). In fact, Baldwin favors “replac[ing] the authority of social and metaphysical dictat with an authority of the sensibility” meaning analysis of the self should be placed over that of social conventions and society-wide views. In “Race and Existential Commitment in James Baldwin,” Bruce Laperson agrees that the self is Baldwin’s driving force in his thought process, stating that Baldwin “comes to the realization that he must individually take on the reality and responsibility of race in America” and that he therefore comes from a tradition of existentialists (202). Baldwin advocates the use of the “creation of an autonomous self” as “a key to truth” and a tool to combat racial prejudice and struggles in race relations…show more content… In “Many Thousands Gone,” Baldwin uses first-person plural pronouns instead of first-person singular pronouns. The “we” he is speaking of does not actually include him, but is all white Americans. By doing this, Baldwin is bringing the self into the issues of race he writes about for every white reader. “Notes of a Native Son” is for all intents and purposes a personal essay, it is not explicitly outlining the problems with race relations in America like “Down at the Cross” or “Many Thousands Gone.” It is still making a statement on those issues by looking into Baldwin’s self through his personal past. Baldwin draws conclusions on how his past experiences with racism have affected his mindset, like the realization that a black parent must “prepare [their] child for the day when the child would be despised” (“Native Son” 78). The self is everywhere in Baldwin’s examination of racial
