James Baldwin's A Letter To My Nephew

People have always been judged since the beginning of time. From the pitch of their voice all the way to the way they walk. It is sometimes a first instinct for many people and appearances can also be the determining factor for many positions. Although, the most common way people are judged is by their appearance, which is completely inhumane since nobody is perfect. So it obviously isn’t fair to judge by physical appearances alone.

When you first see someone the first place your eyes travel to how a person looks in the face. I took a survey at my school asking 65 students “what was the first thing they noticed when they first notice someone?” 75% of them said they noticed what the person looked like in the face first before anything else.

From the short story “A Letter To My Nephew” is about James Baldwin warning his nephew James about the life of a young African American boy. Through out the story the author tells his nephew that in order to survive in such an environment, his nephew James and the other African American kids in his generation will have to be strong, and to not let how the white people treat them effect them. Baldwin asserts that because his nephew "is black, and for no other reason," American society has deemed him worthless, set limits to his ambitions, and conditioned him to "make peace with mediocrity." The establishment has placed boundaries on what he can do, where he can live, and whom he can marry. Though these assertions will no doubt be called exaggerations by white America, every African American needs to only focus on themselves and to not let how others judge them by the color of their skin destroy their ego. A more present version of this situation is the Black Lives Matter movement. Ever since the injustice that happened to the families of Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown African Americans have been trying to prove to others that it is not okay to judge someone and assume that they are doing something bad based on how they look. But you shouldn’t let what others say about change that you already are. The Black Lives Matter movement and “A Letter To My Nephew” demonstrates how being judged because of your ethnicity isn’t