The difference in assumed responsibility as a writer from a lecture and a letter standpoint is stark. When Baldwin writes to his nephew, he follows his claims with supplements about how people will likely tell James contradicting things in his lifetime, acknowledging that they will say “you exaggerate.” In response to this, Baldwin urges his nephew to “take no one’s word for anything, including mine, but trust your experience.” He takes this approach, which accounts for James’ youth and therefore impressionable naivety, because in this letter format Baldwin must also take on the responsibility of being the one who has sought out James’ attention in a direct letter — as opposed to a lecture, which is not addressed to any particular person but rather the group of teachers in general — and therefore obliges Baldwin less, on a personal level, to account for the doubts that the individual reader may face. Additionally, the letter to his nephew is of emotional significance given the close familial ties, and therefore Baldwin takes on a gentler, and in some ways kinder, rhetoric. For example, whereas in the lecture Baldwin bluntly sums up the stereotypes involving African Americas in America as “happy, shiftless, watermelon-eating darkies who loved Mr. Charlie and Miss Ann,” in his letter to his nephew, he states that “these innocent and well meaning people, your countrymen, have caused you to be born under conditions not far removed from those described for us by Charles Dickens in the London of more than a hundred years ago.” The depiction of those who have brought about their oppression as “innocent and well meaning” sounds nearly sarcastic when read directly after the lecture. However, it is evident that in the letter format, especially when addressed to a child, Baldwin’s diction is more forgiving and accounts for the variability of individuals’ experiences, as opposed to blanket statements addressed to a general demographic. Whereas the letter format allows Baldwin to address more of the individual contradicting experiences that may come to mind when reading a personal address, the lecture format allows Baldwin to make more sweeping, and often scathing observations derived from his own experience and research.