" The confusion in this country that we call the Negro problem has nothing to do with the Negroes. And this is a fact. It has to do with the actual level of American life. And when I say this, I don’t mean the life that we have in the headlines, and that is celebrated in rhetoric, which fools only us. I mean the lives, the actual private lives, being led here on this continent as we sit here, from coast to coast. It is astonishing that in a country so devoted to the individual, so many people should be afraid to speak. It is astonishing that in a country so wealthy, and with nothing to fear in principle, everyone should be so joyless, so that you scarcely meet anyone who hasn’t just come from a psychiatrist, or isn’t just running off to one. "

― James Baldwin , The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings