 Baldwin, in his essay "The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy" for "Esquire" (May 1961) called "The White Negro" "impenetrable", and wondered how Mailer, a writer that he saw as brilliant and talented, could write an essay that was so beneath him.For Baldwin, Mailer's essay simply perpetuated the "myth of the sexuality of Negros" while attempting to sell white people their own innocence and purity.Baldwin showed great respect for Mailer's talent, but aligned "The White Negro" with other distractions — like — that Baldwin saw as beneath Mailer and distracted him from his real responsibility as a writer.