become human or irrelevant

This panic proves that neither a person nor a people can do anything without knowing what they are doing. Neither can anyone avoid paying for the choices he or she has made. It is savagely, if one may say so, ironical that the only proof the world - mankind - has ever had of White supremacy is in the Black face and voice: that face never scrutinized, that voice never heard. The eyes in that face prove the unforgivable and unimaginable horror of being a captive in the promised land, but also prove that trouble don't last always: and the voice, once filled with a rage and pain that corroborated the reality of the jailer, is addressing another reality, in other tongues. The people who think of themselves as White have the choice of becoming human or irrelevant. 

- Notes of a Native Son (1953), from the preface of the 1984 edition, James Baldwin  

Photo: Smithonian National Porait Gallery in Washington D.C., September 2025.Title: 'James Baldwin - writer, 1975, by Anthony Barboza'