Calvin Baker discusses race, integration with Skidmore community
Prominent chronicler of the African American experience and Skidmore faculty member Calvin Baker read from his newest book and characterized the current moment of activism for racial justice as a unique historical moment in the struggle for equality in the United States.
Baker, distinguished writer-in-residence in the English Department, spoke with Skidmore students, staff and faculty on Sept. 22 about “A More Perfect Reunion: Race, Integration and the Future of America,” published this summer by Bold Type Books.
Kirkus Reviews has called the book, which makes a forceful case for the continuing need for integration in the United States, “required reading for any American serious about dismantling systemic racism.”
“One of the animating questions of this book for me was can this country ever be whole?” Baker said during the online gathering. “Could America, which is a uniquely combined space — one free and liberal and just and one massively unjust — ever be whole?”
Baker also commented on current protests and nationwide demands for racial justice,
describing the current moment as one of only four unique periods in the struggle for
civil rights in the United States. The first period, according to Baker, happened
in prerevolutionary U.S. history when people questioned whether slavery should be
legal or not. The second coincided with the U.S. Civil War and the emancipation of
slaves, which Baker noted continued to leave lingering questions about integration
in the United States.
“Late in that war Frederick Douglass told Abe Lincoln, ‘You know, Abe, when the fighting is done, the work is just starting, because the question is, how do you integrate people in this country?’” Baker said. “We have, in fact, been deadlocked since that war.”
The third phase was the civil rights movement of the 20th century, which also failed to integrate the United States.
“The fourth moment is now,” said Baker, who noted that, unlike previous periods, the current moment uniquely combines multiple generations of activists: young people, individuals in positions of power who can assert influence over institutions, and an older generation of activists who can draw on their own experience.
“There are now three generations of us here who are committed to universal democracy,” he said.
President Marc C. Conner, who in September launched Skidmore’s Racial Justice Initiative, was one of several community members to join the conversation with Baker.
“As I think about those four moments, it strikes me that each is a moment of enormous hope and promise and of simultaneous failure of that hope and promise,” observed Conner, a widely published scholar of English literature. “That’s how (author Ralph) Ellison describes America: as this contradiction of great promise and the failure to live up to that promise.”
Skidmore’s Racial Justice Initiative is a yearlong series of projects that seek to address the realities of racial injustice locally, nationally and globally and put Skidmore on a path to creating a community of trust in which all members feel welcome, represented safe and supported.
The author of the novels “Naming the New World,” “Once Two Heroes,” “Dominion” and “Grace,” Baker has previously taught at Yale University, Columbia University and the University of Leipzig. “A More Perfect Reunion” is the acclaimed novelist’s first book of nonfiction.
“Calvin’s gifts as a novelist remain on impressive display here and are essential to the historical argument he makes,” Professor of English Mason Stokes said in opening remarks. “Calvin’s capacity for both radical empathy and impressive leaps of imagination, his careerlong investment in helping us understand who we are, where we’ve come from and where we go from here, his encyclopedic knowledge of the twists and turns of American history — these are the tools that drive Calvin back to the past as he helps us to understand that most radical and misunderstood of ideas: integration.”
A recording of the Sept. 22 event is available online.
