The Evidence of Things Not Seen is a poignant analysis of the Atlanta child murders, a series of killings perpetrated against Black children throughout 1979-1981. In this essay, James Baldwin offers a scathing critique of the city’s response to the killings, confronting larger notions of White supremacy and perpetual nationwide failures to confront injustice. While the killings did not unfold within the context of a conventional civil war, analytical frameworks from the discipline of political violence prove useful in analyzing Atlanta’s circumstances and Baldwin’s interpretations of them. This essay will synthesize Baldwin’s critical essay with leading scholars’ conceptions of peace and violence, particularly Johan Galtung’s foundational writings regarding static societies and negative peace. This synthesis will illuminate the parallels present between Baldwin’s analysis and existing theoretical frameworks. Most notably, however, Baldwin’s novel perspectives on the interplay between structural and direct violence challenge scholars’ traditional assertions that they are empirically independent.
According to Galtung, a founder of the peace and conflict discipline, a static society can be defined as one where direct, personal violence is largely absent. Personal violence is registered when it does occur, but structural inequities are rampant, operating largely unnoticed or unaddressed (Galtung 1969). Baldwin characterizes the United States as a static society throughout his analysis. There is a low enough level of personal violence in the country that explicit displays of violence, such as the Atlanta child murders, register as abnormal on a national level. However, Baldwin is adept at exposing the structural factors that contextualize these low levels of personal violence. Notably, he comments on the pervasive lack of community that exists in the dominant social group of American society, arguing that concepts of care and connection are only embraced within marginalized groups (Baldwin 1985). This notion exemplifies a static society: lower levels of direct violence take place, but an overarching absence of collective responsibility across racial boundaries by the dominant social group creates a situation in which structural inequities continually manifest.
Baldwin provides several robust examples of how structural violence can be observed in America. He argues that performative actions, undertaken in the interest of the elusive “American Dream,” serve to bolster White dominance by continually extolling the values of democracy and crafting the illusion of agency in the Black community. Baldwin provides the deliberate, calculated construction of housing projects in New York City in the 1940s, and subsequent white flight from the city, as an example. Following this, Black Americans in the city were forced from their homes by gentrification and systematically excluded from new housing developments in what Baldwin (1985) describes as a process intended to serve “…the interests of democracy and social peace.” Here, Baldwin demonstrates several connections to Galtung’s conceptions of peace and violence. First, the notion that American values are inextricably linked to White power demonstrates the presence of negative peace in America. According to Galtung (1969), negative peace is characterized by the absence of direct, personal violence; however, structural violence is deeply ingrained and often unregistered by dominant social groups. Baldwin’s assessment of Atlanta also mirrors Galtung’s framework of a “law-and-order society,” a static society in which personal violence becomes evident when the current system disintegrates. White America struggles to keep structural inequities intact, protecting the conscience of the dominant social group in doing so. Creating geographic boundaries to confine Black Americans dispels White Americans’ fear of both retribution from the oppressed, and a loss of power more generally, maintaining an absence of direct violence perpetrated against dominant groups within the system. In essence, White America’s fear of losing its historical power is so pervasive, their only psychological solace stems from the subjugation of their Black counterparts. This affirms the United States’ standing as a static society, in which direct violence registers as abnormal in the view of the dominant social group and marginalized groups are continually oppressed via structural factors.
The complexities of this performative behavior in America extend beyond what took place in New York, and into more sinister, covert dynamics observable in Atlanta. Many prominent political figures in Atlanta at the time of the child murders, including the mayor, were all Black. This, along with the pervasive idea that Atlanta is bustling, modern, and ideologically independent from the otherwise stagnant racism present in the American South, would suggest a lack of bias in the administration of justice for the murders (Baldwin 1985). However, Baldwin (1985) argues that the presence of a Black mayor in Atlanta is merely “…a concession masking the face of power.” In his view, a Black mayor is not an arbiter of justice, nor a servant to the community, but a circumstance that White America deliberately cultivated; a tool advancing an illusion of social peace. The presence of Black leadership in Atlanta did nothing more than “…set in motion a complex legal and political machinery designed to camouflage and maintain the status quo” evidenced by city leadership’s lackadaisical attitude and consistent inaction surrounding the murders (Baldwin 1985).
More broadly, Baldwin argues that racial integration was a performative act, conducted under the guise of democracy, and it bore devastating consequences for Black institutions. He states that the only institution untouched by the push for integration was the church (Baldwin 1985). This reveals that the sanctity and superiority of the White race are ultimately reaffirmed via the continued segregation of religion, arguably the most foundational aspect of life for much of the country, specifically the South. This demonstrates yet another means by which negative peace and structural violence operate in America.
Baldwin’s analysis of the violence perpetrated in Atlanta, and the country at large, reveals not only the presence of structural violence, but the specific mechanisms that serve to perpetuate it. In this way, his analysis further supports Galtung’s observations regarding the intricacies of structural violence. According to Galtung (1969), where structural violence occurs, six factors allow for the unequal distribution of power. Factors most clearly observable in Baldwin’s analysis include acyclical interaction patterns, correlation between rank and centrality, and system congruence. In an acyclical interaction pattern, all actors in a system are fundamentally linked, with only one “correct” method of interaction between them (Galtung 1969). In Atlanta and the country at large, the systematic destruction of Black institutions and spirit creates a climate where Black Americans are unable to accumulate enough power to threaten the status quo. Only one avenue of interaction manifests as acceptable in White America’s eyes. Black Americans are expected to want to be White, to chase the elusive power of the dominant social group, and yet, never achieve it (Baldwin 1985). Baldwin also demonstrates the relationship between rank and centrality, as the idea of whiteness as a “gold standard” is the mechanism allowing White Americans to hold massive influence in the greater social interaction network of the country. This allows them unchecked control over the behavior, movement, and opportunities available to Black Americans. Lastly, in exploring the intersections of Black oppression, idealized Whiteness, and the broader European propensity towards colonization and capitalism, Baldwin demonstrates system congruence, in terms of race and socioeconomic status. He asserts that the disenfranchisement and land dispossession resulting from Manifest Destiny created lasting consequences for the nation at large. Baldwin further underscores that Manifest Destiny itself was ultimately rooted in “motives of profit and plunder,” capitalistic ideals and notions of cultural superiority (1985). These values persist in modern contexts, sustaining the oppression of Black Americans. Racially motivated displacement and segregation tangibly impact their present economic outcomes, concurrently hindering their ability to accumulate generational wealth. Baldwin provides ample evidence for this observation in his work. He discusses how middle-class Black Americans find themselves geographically confined between lower-income Black individuals in the inner city, and their wealthy, White counterparts in distant suburbs (Baldwin 1985). This constrains the social, physical, and economic ability of the Black middle class, fostering a sense of isolation—yet another mechanism of oppression. Thus, Baldwin is able to demonstrate the intrinsic parallels between poverty and race in America, underscoring system congruence in the present context.
In contrast to these parallels, a notable dichotomy emerges when examining the administration of justice in Atlanta that contradicts Galtung’s conceptions of peace and violence. In Atlanta, the state actively repressed efforts to halt direct, personal violence, thus, manifesting as structural violence. Officials attempted to prosecute Camille Bell, the mother of a deceased child, for violating laws surrounding charitable organizations when she attempted to seek justice via the creation of the Committee to Stop Children’s Murders. According to Baldwin (1985), there was no valid justification on the part of the state for incriminating her. The state keeps a watchful eye over the administration of justice, ensuring that it continues to exist in the matrix of White domination over society. This contradicts Galtung’s holding that the absence of personal violence and the presence of structural violence are mutually exclusive.
Furthermore, Baldwin argues that in many cases, the brutality that Black cops inflict upon other Black citizens, is a direct effect of the oppression they face: “This self-perpetuating rage and anguish is because the man who wishes to bless is forced to curse, and the hand that would caress is forced to strike” (Baldwin 1985). In Baldwin’s view, structural factors induce Black Americans, men in particular, into committing acts of personal violence, directly contradicting Galtung’s assertion that personal and structural violence are empirically independent (1969). Furthermore, the apathy and defeat demonstrated by the Black community in the face of the murders simultaneously affirm and challenge the conceptualization of the United States as a static society. Baldwin observes that within the Black community in Atlanta, personal violence
does not register as abnormal in the way that it does for White America (1985). Their lived reality is of concurrent personal and structural violence. Thus, Baldwin’s analysis serves to reveal an important fallacy in Galtung’s theory, in demonstrating that the mutual exclusivity of personal and structural violence may only apply to the dominant social group.
Baldwin’s words in The Evidence of Things Not Seen prove timeless, mirroring many of the same conversations sparked during the nationwide racial reckoning of 2020; the current controversy over Cop City in Atlanta. His ideas are particularly resonant in the context of the American South, a region with a lengthy history of racialized political violence. Thus, the contextualization and analysis of the essay in a political violence framework allows for important, novel interpretations of this foundational work. This may prompt academics and activists nationwide to catalyze novel, creative solutions to oppressive systems. Most importantly, Baldwin’s work serves as a compelling call to question the true extent of the nation’s current progress in achieving racial justice and equity. Baldwin’s wisdom is a powerful mandate for all Americans, calling the nation to confront all systems of oppression meaningfully and consistently.
References
Baldwin, J. (1985). The Evidence of Things Not Seen. Macmillan.
Galtung, J. (1969). Violence, Peace, and Peace Research. Journal of Peace Research, 6(3), 167 191. http://www.jstor.org/stable/422690
