A kiss is to the lips, much as ignorance is to hatred and racism. George Orwell and James Baldwin both experience the ugly face of hatred and racism in a personal way. When a waitress says to James Baldwin in "Notes of a Native Son", "We don't serve Negros here" you have to ask yourself: "What do you serve? ignorance?" Baldwin discusses his being the object of hatred in an urban setting. He talks about living a life where his father was even more subjected to this hatred. As his father goes through the process of death, he tells us that "one hate is gone,... they will be forced to deal with pain." George Orwell writes in "Shooting an Elephant" that despite being stationed on the opposite side of the globe, he encounters the same hatred from the local Burmese people. He brought none of the anger with him from England to Burma, yet he is jeered at by Buddhist priests standing on a street corner.
Our first encounter with racism and James Baldwin occurs when Baldwin is a young boy living in Harlem. His father had been born the son of a slave and young James was told never to trust white people by his father because "white people would do anything to keep a Negro down." He never quite understood this teaching until he was older. Once a nice young, white schoolteacher offered to help young Baldwin. She offered to take him to see a play, a genuinely nice thing to do. Baldwin's mother offered the highest praise for the teacher, calling her a "christian."
Young George Orwell finds himself in a similar situation as the victim of hatred in Burma. Orwell is the subdivisional police office for the town. Although it is an important job, he is hated by many people. The Buddhist priests would jeer at him from street corners. White women ftom Europe would have betel juice spit on them if they were in a bazaar. One day, Orwell is playing soccer with the local people. He is tripped by a Burmese man but the referee never calls a foul. He never quite understood this hate of English people throughout this youthful stage. Because in his mind he stuck between "the hatred of the empire" and its recipient. Toward the end of this stage, the abuse "got badly on my nerves."
One might think that Orwell being tripped by a Burmese player on the football field is bad,but Baldwin acts out his anger in a much more overt way. He decided that he will not accept this racism and decides to eat at a local restaurant. He walks in, finds the first available seat, and takes it. Baldwin waits to be served, and waits, and waits. But the first comments from the waitress are "We don't serve Negros." She even has to repeat it because he "pretended not to have understood her." Baldwin's anger is building. He promptly responds by tossing a pitcher of water into the face of the waitress. He has reached a point where he can "never be really carefree again."
Orwell is faced with a similar situation when an elephant has gone into "must." He must decide in this same action phase what he is going to do. The elephant has killed a local coolie and Orwell is being called to handle the situation. But the elephant is no longer a menace, the attack of "must" has passed, and he is "peacefully eating." But Orwell notices the flock of people behind him watching. He must do something. "The people expected it of me and I had to do it." Many shots rang out from his rifle, and Orwell could not stand it any longer. He wanted the elephant to die but the elephant wouldn't.
In the resentment stage both men are beginning to act out their fears and frustrations outwardly. We find Baldwin has grown up and is living in New Jersey. He has been going to a local restaurant and serving himself. It is not until the fourth visit that he realizes he has never been served. "Nothing had ever been set before me. I had simply picked something up." Black people were treated differently than whites, and we begin to see the racism that Baldwin talks about in "Notes of a Native Son". His father warned him, "...none of them were to be trusted and most of them were not even nice." When he realizes that he has been the object of racism, Baldwin "can never be carefree again." At this point he felt "a physical sensation, a click at the nape of my neck as though some interior string connecting my head to my body had been cut."
Orwell travels through the same resentment stage as Baldwin. This experience occurs for Orwell in Burma. Orwell enjoys soccer like many young people. He is tripped by a Burmese player, yet the referee decides not to call a foul on him. Why? It showed young Orwell clearly that the English imperialism is bad. But, he wonders why he is made the object of an "intolerable sense of guilt," when, in fact, he agrees with the local Burmese people. He thinks of the British Raj as an autocrat "upon the the will of prostrate peoples."
Both, Baldwin and Orwell finally reach a realization phase where each settles down to the reality of their respective situations. Baldwin comes to appreciate an immu-table law: "Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated." Orwell eventually leaves the dying elephant. He "could not stand it any longer." Afterwards there was debate among the old European men about whether Orwell been right to shoot the elephant. Legally he had done the right thing. But, he wonders if others realize that he shot the elephant merely to avoid looking like a fool in the eyes of the native people. James Baldwin, after his father's death and witnessing a mob riot, realizes the following: "They preferred the invention because this invention expressed and corroborated their hates and fears so perfectly."
Baldwin and Orwell are two individuals on opposite sides of the globe, but the reader can understand that hatred knows no bounds. Hatred and racism can be found on the streets of Orwell's Burma and in the "American Diner" restaurant where Baldwin sits waiting for service.
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