Ban Ki-moon, former Secretary General of the United Nations, believed that “Defeating racism [...] and all forms of discrimination will liberate us all, victim and perpetrator alike.” Like Ki-moon, James Baldwin’s personal narrative Notes of a Native Son also concludes that the average black person strives to conquer racism, but has an inherent hatred against whites that when manipulated wrongly, may prevent him or her from fighting racism effectively. Baldwin suggests that for black people, hatred can be used as a vehicle for opposing injustice, but is ultimately self-destructive.
Hatred can be fostered as a means of opposing injustice when it isolates and causes people to see the maltreatment involved. Baldwin describes the dissension of the black community during the 1940s when he walks around town and speaks
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Their uneasiness translates into the looting and destruction of shops during the Harlem Race Riots of 1943, caused by police brutality towards African Americans. According to Baldwin, while the riot itself did not accomplish much, it was a “chronic need” for the citizens of Harlem, implying that the hatred and anger brewing within the black community needed to be expressed somehow as a means of showing that they will not accept more oppression (PAGE).
A black person’s hatred of white people, while justified, can consume the person and become self-destructive the more the person acts upon the impulse to hate. Baldwin introduces the deeply rooted hatred of black people towards white people through his father, who “had lived and died