Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.

James Baldwin wrote this line in the early 1960s, amid the intensifying U.S. civil-rights struggle and his own sustained effort to diagnose the moral and psychological costs of American racism. It appears in an essay that reflects on the necessity of confronting painful truths—about oneself, one’s society, and one’s history—rather than evading them through denial or comforting myths. Baldwin, who had lived both in the United States and abroad, repeatedly argued that personal and national transformation depends on honest reckoning: with fear, guilt, and the realities of power. The sentence distills that larger project into a compact ethical imperative: face what is real first.

Baldwin draws a hard distinction between recognition and control. Some realities—loss, entrenched injustice, the limits of human nature—may resist immediate change, so “facing” them does not guarantee victory. Yet he insists that avoidance guarantees stagnation: denial preserves the status quo by keeping problems unnamed and therefore unaddressed. The second sentence turns the first from resignation into a call to action: even when outcomes are uncertain, moral and political agency begins with truthful confrontation. In Baldwin’s work, this applies both inwardly (self-knowledge, accountability) and socially (acknowledging historical violence and present inequities). The quote’s force lies in making candor the precondition of any genuine reform.

1) “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
2) “Not everything that is confronted can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is confronted.”