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This country 🇺🇸 is changing in the intimate spaces of our lives.

Henry Johnson LR
5 min readJul 22, 2019

James Baldwin famously said, “I love America more than any other country in this world, and exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” When Baldwin spoke of “love,” he understood precisely that the amount of degree of love will be misunderstood as hate. Love, in times, has not solely existed without hate. With that being said, I want to convince you that President Donald J. Trump did not start America’s racism.

Baldwin: Picture art by me.

The complex interaction between racial and national identity has always been a prominent theme throughout American history. But, we have come this far as a nation, but in-depth, it seems like yesterday, and the paintings on the wall give away this feeling that we have been nowhere. Baldwin explains this idea of a nation that’s not going “anywhere,” only when it comes to accepts its history, when he famously stated, “The American soil is full of corpses of my ancestors, through 400 years and at least three wars. Why is my freedom, my citizenship, in question now? What one begs American people to do, for all sakes, is simply to accept our history.”

Baldwin: Picture art by me.

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Henry Johnson LR
Henry Johnson LR

Written by Henry Johnson LR

I am a Liberian-born American writer with great ideas to impact lives and leave this world a little better than I found it.

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