Sensual
The word “sensual” is not intended to bring to mind
quivering dusky maidens or priapic black studs.
I refer to something much simpler and much less
fanciful. To be sensual, is to respect and rejoice in
the force of life, of life itself, and to be present
in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the
breaking of bread.
Something very sinister happens to the people of a
country when they begin to mistrust their own
reactions as they do here, and become joyless
as they as they have become. It is this individual
uncertainty on the part of white American men and
women, this inability to renew themselves at the
fountain of their own lives, that makes the discussion,
of any conundrum—any reality, so supremely difficult.
The person who distrusts himself has no touchstone
for reality— for this touchstone can only be oneself.
Such a person puts between himself and reality nothing
less than a labyrinth of attitudes, historical and public,
that do not relate to the present any more than they
relate to the person. Therefore, whatever white people
do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely what they
do not know about themselves.
by James Baldwin
from The Fire Next Time
Dell Publishing, New York, 1962
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