In this essay, I will analyze the connections between domination and sexuality in “Going to Meet the Man” by James Baldwin, arguing that Baldwin creates an inextricable link between sex and power through the narrative voice of the white Southern racist. Throughout the story, black bodies are overly objectified and sexualized by the narrator Jesse, which is made evident from the very beginning. After failing to perform sexually with his wife, Jesse thinks about “the image of a black girl,” which causes “a distant excitement in him, like a far-away light” (1750). Jesse associates black females with sex, viewing them not as individuals with specific identities, but as a general image, as bodies that exist just to please him. Jesse is aroused not…
Jesse’s cruelty towards and hatred of black people is, to him, validated because of his view of them as “animals, they were no better than animals” (1751) that he has to “tame” and subjugate. His description of the lynched man’s skin as “black as an African jungle cat” (1759) suggests that he thinks of blackness as foreign and animal, and his view of the man’s body as a “most beautiful and terrible object” (1760) implies that he cannot even see him as a human being. Jesse’s focus on the black body reveals that he views black people not as people, but as flesh, as body parts that he is free to assert his own humanity over. Jesse truly seems to believe that he is morally right in his beliefs and actions, as he still conceives of himself as a “good man, a God-fearing man” (1750). By inhabiting the mind of a white racist, Baldwin attempts to construct some psychological explanation for the senseless brutality against black people at the hands of white people. He argues that the hypersexualization and objectification of black people not only allowed white people to claim and assert dominance, but also made it seem justified and acceptable in their minds. The narrator’s memories are also used to pinpoint the moment that his racism takes form. By tying Jesse’s current ideology to this joyous childhood memory of the lynching, Baldwin portrays racism as a product of…
