"Previos Condition" from last Friday has been my favorite short story in Baldwin's book Going to meet the man and one of my favorites from the first quarter all together. I had the privilege of being a student discussion leader when we discussed the story in class. I wanted to expand on some of our discussion from class and bring back some of the topics  to the forefront because I was intrigued by the conversation we had. In particular, I wanted to address the title of the story "Previous Condition" and perhaps try and better understand what it means and why Baldwin might have chosen it. Second, I wanted to dig into Peter's character and try to understand why Peter is feeling so miserable as we started to discuss before class ended last Friday. 

In class, Timmy brought up the point that " Previous Condition of Servitude" appears in the Fifteenth constitutional amendment which directly states "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." Baldwin might not have intended to draw this direct connection to the fifth amendment but the link seems strong. Even though the story has nothing to do with voting, in the story, Peter is denied a place to live by the Landlady who ends up evicting him simply for his color and race. She acknowledges that even if Peter causes no trouble, acts friendly, and follows the rules, that people will fear him because he is black. Servitude implies slavery but I think Baldwin is getting at something slightly different. Previous condition might just refer to his inherent race. He can't change who he is and even by living with white people and having white friends, he is truly black as that is part of his identity. Someone in class brought up, I think it was Alissa that this same sort of thing happened in another book (I can't remember the name of the book) where we see an African-American character trying to escape his people and integrate into white society but is turned down and pushed away.

In a sense, I feel like Peter embraces the white ideas and racist notions towards black people. He blames his race for the all the misery he goes through in his life and he says that he doesn't like the way African Americans live. I even recall him saying that he isn't fond of the idea of playing a black man in one of his plays. His actions show us that Peter is a black man who wants desperately to be a white man as he associates with white people, and only goes to segregated places. As we see in the book, white society don't embrace Peter. In his apartment, he is scared. He can't sleep and doesn't feel comfortable. Peter is trying to escape his African- American roots because he is ashamed and humiliated, but he doesn't escape the fear and humiliation that he inflicts upon himself by trying to integrate into white society. He gets rejected when the landlady kicks him out and only has shame and more misery when he has nowhere to sleep.