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This article examines James Baldwin’s late text The Evidence of Things Not Seen (1985) as one of his substantial attempts at “forging a new language,” which he tentatively mentions in his late essays and interviews. As an unpopular and difficult text in Baldwin’s oeuvre, Evidence carries the imprint of a new economy of time, casting the past into the present, and a new economy of space, navigating across other geographies in appraising the serial killings of children in one of Atlanta’s poorest Black neighborhoods. This article suggests that a new economy of time emerges earlier in No Name in the Street (1972), as a result of Baldwin’s self-imposed exile in Europe. The article then analyzes his spatiotemporal logic in the specifics of Evidence with reference to a Black middle class, urbanization, the ghetto, gentrification, and other colonized spaces.
which circumscribe black related themes and images in crime fiction’ could be considered to be ‘inherently racist’ (Pines, 1995: 68). Pines did discover some signs of progress in the representation of marginalised ethnic groups within North American series such as Hill Street Blues (1981–87) and NYPD Blue (1993–2005) and in the British series The Bill (1984–). As Pines acknowledges, the tendency to more ethnically integrated casting in such shows may have been related to the emergence of a significant black middle class, which provided a new marketing opportunity for
African political practices. Whilst the play contrasts the experiences of an oppressed White couple, Len and Joan (Ronald Lacey and Eileen Atkins) with the charmed lives of the liberal, Black, middle-class couple, Mark and Joan (Thomas Baptiste and Barbara Assoon), the harsh oppression of Whites was paramount. Concerns of its impact were so disconcerting that the BBC delayed transmission until after a key by-election in East London involving a candidate who had previously run a racist campaign in Birmingham. Concerns arose that the programme would frighten viewers into