I feel I need to re-read this little book to even begin to get to the heart of it.
What I did get most of all on my first reading was a kind of quiet sadness that, "this is how the word is, and it doesn't need to be this way." It's almost acceptance, but it isn't because Baldwin is unrelenting in his assertion that things must change.
More than 40 years on, some things have changed, superficially at least, but it is a sad indictment of our society that so much of this book remains directly relevant today.
(This book also made me want to know more about James Baldwin, and also about the Nation of Islam.)