“I’m not interested in anybody’s guilt. Guilt is a luxury we can no longer afford. I know you didn’t do it, and I didn’t do it either, but I am responsible for it because I am a man and a citizen of this country and you are responsible for it, too, for the very same reason: as long as my children face the future they face, and come to the ruin that they come to, your children are very greatly in danger, too. They are endangered above all by the moral apathy which pretends it isn’t happening. This does something terrible to us.

Anyone who is trying to be conscious must begin to be conscious of that apathy and must begin to dismiss the vocabulary which we’ve used so long to cover it up, to lie about the way things are. We must make the great effort to realize that there is no such thing as a Negro problem – but simply a menaced boy. If we could do this, we could save this country, we could save the world.”

James Baldwin