James Baldwin, and Why You Should Have a Creative North Star
We all need someone to look up to, even if they’ll never know it.
Hi! Welcome back to Productivity, Without Privilege. I’m your host, Alan Henry, author of Seen, Heard, and Paid: The New Work Rules for the Marginalized, which I hope you’ve read, but if not, grab a copy! This is also where I beseech you to help make sure I’m fed and watered by supporting this newsletter by sending it to a friend, dropping me a tip if you find it useful, or subscribing to my Patreon for early access and other goodies. Make yourself comfortable!
There’s a quote attributed to James Baldwin that’s been in my head for weeks—maybe months now—that goes something like this: “The place in which I will fit won’t exist until I make it.”
The story goes that Baldwin was speaking to Sol Stein, a close friend of his, who then published the conversation in his own book, Native Sons, in 2004. But the reason it’s been stuck in my head is because it’s a good, constant reminder that finding space to truly be yourself isn’t passive. It’s real work, work that you have to get up in the morning dedicated to, that you have to spend energy on, and that you have to be actively involved in. Otherwise, you’ll simply drift from place to place, from one set of arms that accepts you to another, never truly feeling at home.
I’ve probably mentioned it before, but James Baldwin is my creative north star. Not because I want to be like him, or because I think my writing could possibly compare to his, but I draw inspiration from the way he was able to both speak profoundly and truthfully about the things that mattered to him and to so many others. He was able to communicate difficult topics in a way that cut them open and laid them bare for everyone to see and interpret. His books were formative for me, and I’ll never have the words to thank the 10th-grade English teacher who introduced me to both his work and the writing of Richard Wright.
That kind of inspiration is, sometimes, what keeps me going. Especially on those days where I’m struggling, where I read the news and I want to go back to bed, when I’m sitting in front of my computer working on an article I don’t think anyone will read, or even when I’m working on a book proposal that’s been shelved because of the pushback against “DEI” at publishers. There’s still truth to tell, and there always will be.
I asked some friends and my followers on Bluesky, and the responses ran the gamut from historical figures to fictional characters to historical figures who played fictional roles (Bruce Lee, in one amazing example). Some of the artists I follow mentioned characters they love and other artists they look up to for telling their own, authentic stories. A number of my journalist friends mentioned other journalists and writers, some of whom came long before us, or who blazed the trail that we all follow today. In one case that I particularly loved, a good friend of mine mentioned the author of a manga and novel series that made a huge impact on her, her art, and her way of looking at the world.
I love it when that happens. I love it when someone finds some piece of media or creative work that really resonates with them on a deep and personal level, and as soon as they dig into the person who created it, they find someone they look up to on a level they didn’t know they would before. Don’t get it twisted: I’m not talking about the kind of hero worship that’s so common in American politics and pop culture. I mean seeing another human being for who they are, as much as you can, not just through the lens of the work they produced that matters to you, but continuing to perceive them through reading more of their work, reading their own words and commentary, reading interviews and stories about them from people who knew them, and so on. To truly be seen and considered, and, hopefully, remembered. Isn’t that what we all want?
No better way to learn that for ourselves than to study the real, flawed, amazing, complete human beings that we look up to.
So I want to recommend that to you in this edition. Sit down and think about who your creative north star is, in whatever field or form that matters to you. They don’t have to be alive, active, or even a perfect person (because we all know that killing your heroes is part of the creative process). Whose work gets you up and inspired to speak your truth and tell your story when you feel the weight of the world on your shoulders?
If you feel like sharing with me, just hit reply! I do read every message I get, even if I don’t have time to reply to all of them (but I’ll still try!)
It Has Never Been Easy to Be Both Black and American, by Keenan Norris: One thing that’s been painfully obvious in recent months, particularly during this administration and its wholesale attempt to sell America on a myth about who its neighbors are and who “real Americans” are, is that it’s never been more dangerous in this country to be a Black American. The sometimes subtle (sometimes not so subtle) deletion of the presence of, history of, and impact of Black Americans on our collective history, life, and culture has always been a priority for the far right, but it’s only expanded in recent years, playing into fears and fantasies held by white Americans of all walks of life that Black people are dangerous, monstrous threats to the American way of life, when in reality the American way of life is, in a not insignificant part, thanks to those same people.
We’ve seen this administration and its cronies instruct the Smithsonian Institution to downplay the impact of chattel slavery and to effectively rewrite history to pretend that it wasn’t the horror that it was (which the Smithsonian was willing to do, which is problematic to a degree I can’t explain). We’ve seen them ignoring the social and systemic issues that continue to oppress Black Americans of all backgrounds, and exacerbate them in public. It’s not beyond the pale to say that we’re living under a white supremacist government, but then, that’s always been the case, if you’ve been paying attention.
Wikipedia Editors Adopt ‘Speedy Deletion’ Policy for AI Slop Articles, by Emanuel Maiberg: I wish I could say it was funny that Wikipedia is one of the last bastions of objective truth on the internet, but it’s not terribly surprising. After all, the site that anyone can edit and contribute to had to have high standards for factual accuracy and a process for upholding them. It’s come a long way from the days of “Wikipedia is not a source to be cited,” which I think is still true, if only because all of the sources cited by Wikipedia are way better.
Today, it, like other forms of fact-based media, has become a target of right-wing interests who are in the middle of a campaign against objective reality and evidence-based information. Luckily, Wikipedia editors have been trying to hold back the tide, and their stance against AI-generated articles and topics is another peg in their favor in my book. Granted, I don’t trust platforms in general, but it’s nice to see Wikipedia say, “if someone can ChatGPT something completely false and upload it as an article, we should be able to remove it just as quickly as they generated it.”
The Subtle Art of Email Forensics, by Matthew Guay: This is a fun one, and it just happens to be published on the Buttondown blog, you know, the platform that I’m using to produce this newsletter. I’ve always been a fan of diving into email headers and whatnot to discern whether a message came from a real human or some automated system, where the email actually originated, and so on. Call it a hobby.
It’s always been a fun little exercise to do in my spare time or when something particularly intriguing lands in my spam folder, but the skills are even more important now considering (and more on this another time) we’re living in a time and in a country where consumer protections have been purposefully eroded to make it easier for scammers and grifters to operate. So take a little dive into the process of how your email lands in your inbox and how you can trace it back to see whether or not it’s actually legitimate. Don’t use your newfound powers recklessly, though. Having the knowledge doesn’t exempt you (or me) from practicing good email hygiene and opting to protect yourself and your data by default.
It’s not lost on me that the moment I sent out my last newsletter and recommended the Retro Commercials channel on Twitch, it ended up suspended for one reason or another. Twitch’s moderation is pretty fickle and fairly arbitrary, despite how much they claim otherwise, so there’s no way to know why the channel is gone. I suspect it might be the fact that they were monetizing their channel by essentially looping content they didn’t own, which could have gotten them in trouble with the actual copyright holders. But I think it might be more that some of the video compilations of those commercials and old products may have been pulled from YouTube, where they were published under fair use for archival purposes, and well, monetizing content that someone else has published for fair use, even if they’re monetizing it, without actually transforming it in a way that makes your content fair use, may have been the issue.
Either way, instead of the channel, I’ll point you to some of the YouTube channels that host the retro TV compilations that you can watch anytime, or subscribe to and get new uploads as soon as they’re published. A couple of my favorites are:
Dave’s Archives (which also has a Twitch channel)
You’re probably noticing a theme in the naming, so you can probably find more on your own. These are just a few that I subscribe to and recommend, especially Dave’s Archives. He’s out here digitizing VHS tapes people send him, so he’s doing the lord’s work when it comes to archiving information that could otherwise easily be lost. So take a dip into the past with me and look back at a time that was no less complicated, but definitely a cloudier lens to the world.
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That’ll do it for me this time around. I wanted to do something a little more chill for the holiday weekend, and I hope you enjoyed it. If you love what I’m doing here, send this newsletter to a friend and tell them to subscribe! If you really love what I’m doing, feel free to support me by dropping me a tip here or by subscribing to my Patreon here for early access to this newsletter, as well as some other treats.
Take care of yourselves, and I’ll see you back here soon.