By listing the various institutions and entities that exist to distract us from “all the beauty of our lives,” Baldwin shows just how many preoccupations humankind has invented to give the illusion that one can “deny the fact of death.” This wide-ranging array—coupled with Baldwin’s sudden and lofty rumination on life’s fleeting nature—puts the pettiness of race, dangerous as it unfortunately is, into perspective. How wasteful and silly it is, Baldwin seems to be saying, that people spend so much time arguing about race and throwing themselves headlong into “steeples” and “mosques” and “nations” when they could be focusing on…