In Princes and Powers, an essay Baldwin wrote after the First Congress of Negro Writers in Paris, France on September 1956, Baldwin records his recollections and remarks of the event. He gives his response to the speeches and conversations that were produced out of the culmination of the conference. Some of the conference focused on colonialism, Black identity, culture and what unifies Black people globally to one another. Black intellectuals all over the African diaspora from different fields and backgrounds all over the world gathered to discuss problems affecting the Negro Artist and Writer. Culture and identity were among some of the speeches and each speaker spoke from his respective vantage point. It was interesting to see the different interpretations of Black identity and to see how the African perspective can cause tensions in accordance with the Black or African-American perspective. Baldwin throughout the essay shares what he agrees and disagrees with as a Negro man. One of the critical questions centered around the conference was “what is a culture? (Princes and Powers 152).” One of the most difficult parts of the conference was having all these Black intellectuals from Africa, United States and the Caribbean together and discovering that they are all more different than they expected. By the end of the conference these Black intellectuals could agree on:
What they held in common was their precarious, their ununtterably painful relation to the white world. What they held in common was the necessity to remake the world in their own image, to impose this image on the world, an no longer be controlled by the vision of the world, and of themselves, held by other people. What, in sum, black men held in common was their ache to come into the world as men. And this ache united people who might otherwise have been divided as to what a man should be” (Princes and Powers 153).
I think they struggled with defining what a culture would be for them because there only similarities had to do with pain and longing to be seen as men. They were puzzled with how to create a culture that is not only dependent upon a history of oppression. I think it is fascinating that this conference was held in Paris, France in the midst of the cold war. W.E.B DuBois was denied a passport by the United States of America and was unable to attend the conference in person. By this time W.E.B DuBois was a communist and his political views changed much from his youth now that he had seen so much political and cultural ebbs and flows in America. A lot of the issues and questions that rose from the conference are still on the table today concerning Black people. Baldwin's work thinks about issues of race, gender, policy and the list goes on. He forces us to think about the ways in which we think about ourselves, beliefs, culture and identity. Baldwin questioned if the Black intellectuals at the First Congress were thinking about culture from a colonial perspective and reproducing the same oppression that oppressed them. What does it mean to have a culture aside from colonialism? How does a Black person even begin to think about "a" "Black culture?" Baldwin comments on Aime Cesaire speech remarking:
What had this colonial experience made of them and what were they now to do with it? For they were all now, whether they liked it or not, related to Europe, stained by European visions and standards, and their relation to themselves, and to each other, and to their past had changed. Their relation to their poets had also changed, as had the relation of their poets to them. Cesaire’s speech had left out of account one of the great effects of colonial experience: its creation, precisely, of men like himself” (Princes and Powers 158).
Baldwin's remarks are profound and really delve deeper into what these Black intellectuals are cultivating as they gather and discuss their own futurity and that of Black people. He was acknowledging how colonialism has gave access to some Black people at the time who became intellectuals and scholars. They may have wanted to get rid of colonialism, but must also examine how they are complicit in the perpetuation of colonialism. What are your thoughts?
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