James Baldwin's View On Freedom

Freedom has always been a right in my eyes. I was born and raised in the United States where for as long as I can remember I was taught about how truly grateful I should be for living in a place that offers all the freedoms it does. Living here I was brought up believing that all freedoms were rights and everyone should have them no matter what. However James Baldwin brings a different view into play saying that freedom should not be looked at as a right but rather something that needs to be obtained through work. This view however only applies to some places but not others.

Baldwin entertains the fact that nobody really has freedom. He thinks that until they attempt to secure it for themselves they don’t have it. He believes that freedom cannot be obtained just by being birthed into a society that believes they are free, he thinks that an individual can only be free if they take it for themselves. He says, “Freedom is not...given; freedom is something people take...”. This statement, in most cases, is not true however there are some cases where it is. For example in the United States there are freedoms that are absolute givens and any citizen has guaranteed freedoms as rights. The citizens of North Korea however definitely don’t have the same right to freedoms like U.S. citizens do which would be an example of where Baldwin’s statement applies.
This statement again only applies to a small amount of cases. The example of the United States comes in again because it’s a place where every citizen has the right to certain freedoms because they are considered legal citizens of that country. Now a place controlled by a brutal dictatorship or something of that nature the citizens would then have to fight for their freedom yes, however in most places this doesn’t