Baldwin, Gaza, and Venezuela: “Open Letter to the Born Again,” 1979

Posted on September 6, 2025 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

“The people who call themselves “born again” today have simply become members of the richest, most exclusive private club in the world, a club that the man from Galilee could not possibly hope—or wish—to enter.” — James Baldwin, 1979

The passage above is from “Open Letter to the Born Again” by writer, philosopher, and activist James Baldwin. It was written in September of 1979 and first published in The Nation.

Here’s another quote from the same letter:

“But the state of Israel was not created for the salvation of the Jews; it was created for the salvation of the Western interests…Finally: there is absolutely—repeat: absolutely—no hope of establishing peace in what Europe so arrogantly calls the Middle East (how in the world would Europe know? having so dismally failed to find a passage to India) without dealing with the Palestinians.”—James Baldwin

His words are 46 years old as of September 2025. And for your edification, the terms “Middle East” and “Far East” were/are geographic names created by and assigned to these areas by Great Britain based on these areas’ geographic proximity to Great Britain. I bring this up for two reasons.

First, there are people out there that think what is happening in Gaza is relatively new. While the genocide happening in Gaza now is far more horrific than in the past, Palestinians have been battling abuse and state-sponsored murder for decades.

The second reason I quoted Baldwin is because I met a 50-year-old white man some weeks ago who was a college graduate but who said he had not heard of James Baldwin until a couple of years ago. He was embarrassed by that. He told me so. He could not, for the life of him, explain why he had never heard of Baldwin. I knew why.

His identity as a white man did not require him to look any further than his whiteness for validation. It is one thing to have never read a particular author; after all, we cannot read everything. Yet, it is quite another thing to not even be able to identify an author that was an activist who was so public with his opinions for decades.

(James Baldwin (1924 – 1987) reads a book with a group of children, Durham, North Carolina, 1963. Photo by Steve Schapiro/Corbis via Getty Images)

I have listened to so many white co-workers who describe their families as in complete disarray and disagreement about Felon 47 and his many renewed atrocities. It is not that every white American wishes harm and abuse on peoples of color, but rather, as Christopher Ortiz so brilliantly noted in his essay The Empty Trauma of Whiteness: How Colonialism Stole Europe’s Soul, that, “People racialized as white aren’t the colonizer. They too have been colonized, and we’ve got to talk about it.” I strongly, strongly urge you to read Ortiz’s analysis.

People classifiable as “white” rarely identify themselves collectively as victims unless they can rationalize that their victimization is coming from or due to a person or a group of people that are not typically categorized as “white.” And if their victimizers are indeed classifiable as “white,” then the victimizers are defined by something other than race. If said victimizer has a different religion, then that difference often works in these instances.

Every white person, from the Neo-Nazi to the bleeding-hearted white liberal, to all those folks in between, know one fact that they typically cannot say out loud: The hatred and virulence of white racists and the white liberal guilt (and embarrassment) about those white racists are all rooted in a single foundation, a foundation that is no more than a sand castle on a beach. Any forceful wave will destroy it.

Many white folks are stumbling in the dark because they cannot (or will not) pinpoint the source of their betrayal. They and their ancestors have spent generations and entire lifetimes believing several sets of assumptions that were never true, and in this current political climate, those assumptions are now on life support.

The “colored” peoples of this world that whites see as “other,” never entirely believed in these same assumptions even when we pretended to believe. For peoples of color, the requirement of our assimilation into the “mainstream” (code for “white”) is/was, to mimic, at least on the surface, the ideas and values of whatever dominant group that is/was oppressing us in order to be accepted by the dominant group. Assimilation never works because inequity is built into the entire process.

Baldwin told everyone back in the mid-1980s that “the world is not white.” It never has been. Not unlike the character “Dorothy” in the film “The Wizard of Oz,” the captains of industry never told white folks that they could go home and join the rest of humanity if they clicked those Ruby slippers together.

The oligarchs have counted on you white folks to believe (and you have believed) in the Wizard of Oz who hides behind a curtain and who is no more than a snake oil salesman whose purpose is to sell you his wares, empty your pockets, and convince you of his omnipotence (that he never had) rather than of your shared humanity with the rest of the world.

Baldwin’s critique of white Christians in 1979 is no different than current critiques of white evangelicals who believe/d they are chosen by the Creator to plunder and control land and resources and people wherever they see fit.

If still alive, Baldwin would know that Western interests are after that 1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves in Gaza that would make Palestine energy independent. That road to energy independence for Palestine was interrupted when Hamas struck Israel in a surprise attack in October of 2023; an attack that Israel uses to justify its deliberate and coordinated genocide of the people of Gaza.

When Baldwin wrote his Open Letter to the Born Again, Israel was then selling oil to Apartheid white-controlled South Africa; Nelson Mandela was still in prison and would remain there for another 11 years. And none of the above kept Jews safe anywhere in the world.

Now we have the savage-in-chief ordering the strike of a Venezuelan ship that was allegedly carrying narcotics when what Felon 47 and his empire-addicted crew wants is access to and control of Venezuela’s oil. Venezuela’s fighter jets flew over America’s Naval ships as a show of military strength. The stoking of fear is deliberate, the villainizing and “othering” of people who are not white is deliberate.

So, consider this. Latin America is mineral and resource rich. Gaza is mineral and resource rich. Venezuela’s allies are China, Russia, Cuba, Iran, Turkey, with additional allies on islands in the Caribbean that receive Venezuela’s subsidized oil. What you have been taught to assume/believe about being classified as “white” will lead you down a dark alley that neither you nor the entire nation of America will walk out of. You and many soldiers, however, might exit in body bags.

What so many white people fear is that other people they have never fully trusted might be correct in their analyses; the “others” might know something that they don’t know after having lived their entire lives believing that there was nothing they could not know or access. The captains of industry have always used you and made you their accomplices. This did not start with Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos. It started well before the pilgrims on the ship called the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock.

Baldwin once wrote that, “You must embrace what you fear.” I will add that you cannot embrace what you fear if you are unwilling to name it. Without claiming it or acknowledging it, you remain bound to a script that you believe you wrote knowing in your subconscious that something or someone else wrote it for you.

©️ Leslye Joy Allen

The Loophole, the Farmer and the Lobbyist

Posted on May 13, 2025 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

by ©️Leslye Joy Allen

When I read comments by many people who express their shock and disgust at Felon 47, I share their pain. Yet, I am reminded of what they have not paid much attention to.

(In the year 2000, prisoners pick cotton at the Ferguson Unit in Texas in the prison’s cotton fields, Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein, Getty Images)

I taught my History students to think outside the box, and connect the dots. After establishing that American Chattel Slavery was an enormous agricultural enterprise that literally funded and built the United States, I would have my students read the 13th amendment to the U.S. Constitution which allegedly ended slavery in the United States:

“Section 1: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2: Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

First, it was always possible to abolish slavery without it ever being justified as a punishment for a crime. The loophole stands out because it was deliberately placed there.

Second, Congress had the power to enforce the 13th amendment through further legislation. So, if Congress was silent about abuses of this amendment, one might get away with imprisoning and/or forcing the labor of just about anyone. Ava DuVernay’s documentary 13th brilliantly examines the loophole in the amendment, but I want to go just a bit further.

Now, how many of you on the Left have recently complained about Democrats in Congress not fighting hard enough against the policies of Felon 47? We can cherrypick the most vocal Democrats, can’t we?

That leads me to something writer Carlyn Beccia wrote in her brilliant investigative essay “Don’t Tell MAGA, But Trump Plans to Increase Immigrant Labor.” (I highly, highly recommend reading this “free” essay ASAP.)

(Field of mid-growth grain Corn plants near England, Arkansas. Stock photo at Alamy)

Beccia noted that these days I.C.E. rarely shows up at American farms even though “six in ten agricultural workers are noncitizen immigrants.” She argued that Felon 47 is deporting Brown immigrants as a ruse to throw raw meat to his racist, stupid ass base.

He pretends that he is cleaning up the country by putting alleged criminal riff-raff out of the country, while he capitalizes on a different type of immigrant status, namely H-2A visas that have been in use for years.

Here’s the rub as Beccia points out— Felon 47 did not start any of this. Mega agribusinesses like BayerAg, Syngenta, AcreTrader, Archer Daniels Midland Co., CHS, Inc., Freight Farmers, Heinz Seeds, Seedo Corporation, Sakata Seed Corporation, DOW, Rijk Zwaan and many others will reap in the profits while American farmers (many of whom are MAGA supporters) will still struggle financially.

By using immigrants with H-2A visas, there is less money to be paid out, no pressure to guarantee permanent employment, and no negotiations to be made for poor immigrant workers if they are mistreated.

Unless you have your own garden and grow your own food, the French Fries you ordered at McDonald’s (made from a corn product, not a potato), and the food that sits on your table was produced by slave labor. Sidebar: H-2A visas allow businesses to hire foreign workers on a temporary basis when there are not enough American workers to fill the jobs.

(Salinas, CA, USA—June 19, 2015: Seasonal farm workers pick and package strawberries)

Agribusinesses are so brutally profit-driven that the countries of Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe have made it illegal for native and neighboring farmers to trade seeds with each other.

Under pressure from agribusinesses to insure that the “intellectual property rights” of their seeds are not violated, agribusinesses pressured various African governments to eliminate farmers’ traditional farming methods in order to force farmers to purchase seeds rather than allowing them to trade their own. Their lobbyists threaten, cajole, and promise money to political parties and politicians in order to ensure these companies make a profit.

So, students/readers as we think about all of this on our way out the door of my classroom, let’s consider the following. It would be fair to say that the average civic-minded American citizen would do well to contact their representatives to make their grievances and requests known. Many of us can and often do lobby our representatives to encourage them to represent our interests.

At the same time, multi-billion dollar businesses employ and pay lobbyists. The average citizen does not have that kind of wealth. So, here’s a few questions students/readers: Why is lobbying even legal? Have you figured out yet why some Democrats are just going along with the program as if nothing is happening?

Class dismissed.

©️Leslye Joy Allen

I am an Independent Historian, Oral Historian and Dramaturge. Please consider supporting my work with a few bucks for Coffee and Eggs via my CashApp.

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Revisiting “The Color Curtain”

Posted on April 22, 2025 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

by ©️Leslye Joy Allen

The Bandung Conference was held in April of 1955. It was a meeting of representatives from 29 nations that then contained 65 percent of the world’s population, which were peoples of color that had been colonized or interfered with by European powers.

This conference was commonly known as the Asian-African Conference. Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Burma and Ceylon organized it and then invited 25 more countries to send representatives and observers. The invited countries were (in alphabetical order here): Afghanistan, Cambodia, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana (then called “The Gold Coast”), Iran, Iraq, Japan, Jordan, Laos, Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, Nepal, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Thailand, Turkey, Vietnam Democratic Republic, South Vietnam, and Yemen.

After World War II ended, the only two military superpowers were the United States and the U.S.S.R. which competed with each other for influence in the Third World. The United States was initially invited to the conference but refused to send a representative. The USA denounced this conference. While these newly independent nations did not want to align with the Eastern bloc or the West, the Soviet Union (U.S.S.R.) did gain considerable influence in the region. Black Americans Richard Wright, and US Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., however, did attend.

Black novelist Richard Wright recorded what he witnessed at this conference where Africans, Asians, Black Americans, East Indians, Indigenous Peoples and other peoples of color met in Bandung, Indonesia to figure out a way forward in the new post-colonial era. No European nations were invited.

The conference allowed newly independent nations to assert their sovereignty. European colonialism’s oppression and exploitation and interference in African and Asian countries engendered a need for these nations to meet so that they could successfully deal with each other.

The outcome of this conference was the Non-Aligned Movement which discouraged countries in attendance from aligning with First World and Second World nations. It also produced an agreement called “The Ten Principles of Peaceful Coexistence” which emphasized cooperation, respect for boundaries and sovereignty, non-interference in each country’s affairs, and resistance to any aggression from the Western World.

I encourage everyone to read author Richard Wright’s observations about Bandung and recognize that not only are all of these nations of color much more geopolitically complex than they were 70 years ago, they are also more heavily populated today with much younger populations than Europe.

Referred to now as The Global Community, people of color now make up roughly 85 percent of all the people on this earth. Felon 47 and his yes-people know what these numbers mean which is why they want to stave off the inevitable by attempting to occupy and place Canada and Greenland under the US umbrella. Yet, the United States is disadvantaged in numerous ways.

Even though the USA still has perhaps the most skilled military in the world, China has the largest military. The USA is now seen as a pariah by most of the world courtesy of the person sitting in the Oval Office and his inept Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who may soon be replaced. Even worse, most of the US population is unilingual whereas many individuals in The Global Community are multilingual. That does not bode well for this nation that is slowly becoming isolationist to the point where we could lose allies, or worse, we lose knowledge about what the rest of the world is planning.

It would be interesting if another Asian-African conference, such as the one held in 1955, were held today or sometime in the near future. I also wonder which nations would not be invited.

I am an Independent Historian, Oral Historian and Dramaturge. Please consider supporting my work with a few bucks for Coffee and Eggs via my CashApp.

You can also subscribe to my writings on Substack and stay in the loop with the best new research, history, journalism, prose, poetry, and etcetera.

The 13th Amendment and El Salvador

Posted on April 17, 2025 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

The first time I taught a US History class, I had my students study the wording of the 13th Amendment of the US Constitution and debate whether or not slavery had actually been abolished or had it simply been reconstructed:

“Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

By the time master filmmaker Ava DuVernay finished her documentary 13th, I was salivating with anticipation. She did not and never does disappoint. She traced the origins of that loophole in the 13th Amendment that allowed for servitude to be imposed for crimes well into the 21st century.

Slavery had/has gone away in some form. Yet, one of my favorite Black judges, the late New York Supreme Court Judge Bruce M. Wright noted the awful way Black and Brown defendants were treated. Wright earned the nickname “Turn ‘Em Loose Bruce” because he had witnessed one too many Black men and women end up in court because they stole something trying to feed their families only to be sentenced to anywhere from 10 to 20 years in prison. So, Wright gave them some minimal punishment, but he often turned them loose.

I remember his description of a case where a Black man had an extremely sick wife. Neither he nor his wife could afford her medicine. So, in desperation, the man stole a television set from the hotel where he worked. He pawned the television to purchase his wife’s medications. This man had never committed a crime before in his life, but he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Now here’s the next rub. For people old enough to remember, the only thing we knew for sure about prisoners when we were growing up was that prisoners pressed license plates. Well, folks that isn’t true anymore. Now American prisoners make…Clothing, Computers, Electronics, Furniture, and all that discounted stuff you find at Walmart and Target. US prisons generate anywhere from 2 to 5 billion a year in profit while prisoners who do the work never earn the standard minimum wage.

So, as you rightly fight for and ponder the fate of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an American citizen who sits unlawfully in a jail in El Salvador, think about Felon 47 and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele giving each other a high-five and talking about not returning individuals who are wrongfully detained while they also discuss building more prisons in El Salvador. I’m going to leave it right there.

I am an Independent Historian, Oral Historian and Dramaturge. Please consider supporting my work with a few bucks for Coffee and Eggs via my CashApp.

You can also subscribe to my writings on Substack and stay in the loop with the best new research, history, journalism, prose, poetry, and etcetera.

Normalizing Evil

Posted on April 15, 2025 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

In the past week or two there have been doctors saying how healthy Felon 47 is, along with Fund Managers openly wondering if he is insane. I have another hypothesis.

I don’t really think Felon 47 is insane, I think he is evil and crazy (there is a difference). I still remember when the late Dr. Frances Cress Welsing wrote that we have never scientifically studied “Evil.” She noted that at the Nuremberg Trials of Nazis where they were tried for “Crimes Against Humanity,” where they exterminated millions of Jews, Gypsies, Afro-Germans, LGBTQIA, and the Disabled, those Nazis were ruled to be perfectly sane by the world’s leading psychologists.

Now, I don’t want to make light of anyone’s mental health or this nation’s severe mental health crisis. Yet, every time some man does something horrible, particularly if he’s a white man, people speculate about his mental health instead of calling him the evil son-of-a-bitch that he is. I feel the same way about these school shooters who are overwhelmingly white and male who try to kill everybody they can, all because they can’t get a girlfriend.

Felon 47 is trying his best to get rid of every brown skinned person who migrated to the USA without giving any of them due process as he shreds all the basic tenets of our Constitution. He’s sending a majority of people who are not criminals off to other countries while his sycophants explain these actions as a part of keeping America safe. Short of putting them all into ovens to get rid of them the way Nazis would, he has ordered them all to an uncertain fate somewhere else in the world.

Everything Felon 47 is doing to immigrants and legal citizens, who happen to not be white, is going to make this nation a hundred times less safe. Go piss off the world and you will find out that the world is not majority white; it never has been.

People who voted for Felon 47 are also crazy and evil too—and dumb. Did this previous italicized sentence upset you a bit? Did it sound like I was unfairly vilifying an entire segment of the US population without giving them an opportunity to explain their choices or even redeem themselves? Well, I don’t give a damn because that is exactly what Felon 47 and his supporters are doing to immigrants, women, Black folks, Latinos, LGBTQIA, and the Disabled.

Felon 47 supporters voted for this; and even if some of them can prove they didn’t think Felon 47 would do all of this harm, no self-respecting Black or Brown person with half a brain is going to try to weed out who might be on their side from those who would kill or harm us. We have never had that kind of time to deal with anyone or anything that normalizes evil.

I am an Independent Historian, Oral Historian and Dramaturge. Please consider supporting my work with a few bucks for Coffee and Eggs via my CashApp.

Leslye Joy Allen

Social Commentary, History, Theatre, Jazz, and the Environment

Category Archives: International History