But the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power.

Baldwin is distinguishing brute force or institutional dominance from legitimate, enduring authority. “Power” that severs itself from moral responsibility may still coerce, but it loses the qualities that make power meaningful—credibility, consent, and the capacity to build a livable common world. The line reflects Baldwin’s recurring argument that political and racial hierarchies in the United States depend on moral evasions (self-deception, denial of others’ humanity) that ultimately corrode the society that wields them. In this view, morality is not decorative; it is constitutive of real power, because without ethical grounding power becomes mere violence and, in the long run, self-defeating.