James Baldwin, speaking about the double projected onto him as a Black man in the United States, observed that it had everything to do with the person doing the projecting. What was a white man seeing when he saw Baldwin? “It wasn’t me,” he said, “it was something he didn’t want to see. And you know what that was? It was ultimately, yes, his own death. Or call it trouble. Trouble is an excellent metaphor for death.”

XREF: Connects to theories of projection in psychology and how prejudice functions as displacement of self-anxiety. SEED: Potential essay angle on how we project our own mortality fears onto others, especially in racialized contexts.

Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, loc. 1057