A Talk to Teachers

James Baldwin’s “A Talk to Teachers” remains potent and relevant to modern readers primarily because one of its major themes is racism, a facet of America that has yet to be fully grappled with or resolved. Though Baldwin does not immediately mention racism, it is nevertheless the guiding theme of the essay. In the first paragraph, when he speaks about how so many generations of Americans have operated with bad faith and cruelty, he stresses that this bad faith and cruelty exists in both the classroom and the world at large, and that it stems from racism. He also makes it clear that anyone trying to combat racism in America must prepare for brutal resistance.

Baldwin views the classroom as a sort of front line in the fight to eradicate racism and ensure equality. However, there is resistance even here. One of the many paradoxes of education is the fact that education stimulates the ability and desire to analyze the world and ask questions. Baldwin argues that this process of questioning is how people attain their identity. However, this type of questioning runs counter to what society wants out of its citizenry: compliance with the status quo. This tension between the natural urge to question, and society’s tendency to stifle such lines of thinking, partly underlies Baldwin’s