James Baldwin and the “Lie of Whiteness”: Toward an Ethic of Culpability, Complicity, and Confession

This article is an attempt to draw on James Baldwin’s depiction of white identity as the “the lie whiteness” tease out a nascent ethics that centers role genuine, honest confrontation with this so-called “lie.” In order connect dots between excavation whiteness and provinces religious ethics, we will explore truth-telling plays in form something like notion confession, limiting our engagement confession genuine encounter culpability responsibility through truth-telling. The analysis be guided by several questions: how might reckoning reality prevalence what Baldwin intimately describes about its connection anti-black racism understood morally? How truth relation concept defined above? Finally, process further expose machinations “lie and, so doing, offer ethical response includes complicity? seeks begin sketching struggle against evils racism, direct description whiteness.”