本文以非裔民權作家鮑德溫（James Baldwin）在七零年代早期的三部作品為基礎，分析他如何透過作品反映並抨擊民權運動結束之後，美國都會區的貧困非裔非但社經地位未見改善，反而被官方及主流媒體型塑為各式罪犯，日後更被大量逮捕入獄的情況。本文主張鮑德溫出版於1972年的回憶錄《無人知曉》（No Name in the Street）大致勾勒了他對種族自由主義貌似開明進步，實則姑息白人資本家壟斷社會資源，並且對非裔反對陣營進行人格謀殺的觀點。鮑德溫同樣在1972年出版的劇本《迷途羔羊》（One Day When I Was Lost）則饒富深意地改編了馬爾孔‧X（Malcolm X）口述的自傳，將這個同時受到國家強烈譴責與民間非裔讀者愛戴的政治領袖刻畫為一個終生反抗美國新舊種族隔離制度的凡人，並以此立體化現黑人民族主義的理性與限制。1974年的小說《畢爾街悲歌》（If Beale Street Could Talk）一方面清晰呈現了保守派當道時代的警察暴力，另方面似亦藉由其中底層非裔彼此扶助支持的圖像向讀者傳遞希望的能量。在鮑德溫這三部作品中，非裔貧民在種族隔離時代的美國生為次等人當中的次等人，在後民權運動時代則往往被國家預設為隨時可能危害社會安全的罪犯。

With James Baldwin’s three books published in the first half of the 1970s, this essay looks into how this acclaimed African American writer and civil rights advocate critically presents how lower-class black civilians continue to struggle financially and socially after the landmark passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, while at the same increasingly fall prey to rekindled discourse of “black criminality” and find themselves subject to mass incarceration. This essay reads Baldwin’s memoir No Name in the Street (1972) as a critique of racial liberalism that centers on its token inclusion of self-made black elites and its cruel disregard, if not deliberate criminalization, of their disadvantaged counterparts. Furthermore, by positioning One Day When I Was Lost (1972) as an attempt to counter both the governmental condemnation and subcultural celebration of Malcolm X, this essay argues that Baldwin is keen to reveal the material basis of Black Nationalist sentiment among the most oppressed African Americans at the time, and his engaging reflections on the limits of such pathos. Finally, this essay reads If Beale Street Could Talk (1974) not only as a realist literary text that exposes the racist terror of police brutality in the post-civil rights era, but one that reveals compelling pictures of love between lower-class black Americans across familial and conventional social frames.