James Baldwin Debates William F. Buckley (1965)

[Music] the following program is from n ET the National Educational Television Network debate James Baldwin versus William Buckley subject as the American dream been achieved at the expense of the American Negro this debate was held recently at the Cambridge Union Cambridge University England and was recorded for use by n et in the debating hall of the Cambridge Union hundreds of undergraduates and myself waiting for what could prove one of the most exciting debates in the whole 150 years of the Union history it rarely I didn't have ever seen the Union so well attended their undergraduate everywhere there on the benches are on the floor but on the galleries and there are lot more outside of clamoring to get in well the motion that has drawn this huge crowd tonight is this that the American dream has been achieved at the expense of the American Negro the debate will open with two undergraduates speakers one from each side and then we shall have the first distinguished guest mr. James Baldwin the well-known American novelist who's achieved a worldwide fame with his novel another country then opposing the motion will be mr. William Buckley also an American very well-known as a conservative in the United States I'm the stress of conservative in the American sense author of a book called up from liberalism and editor of the National Review one of the early supporters of Senator Goldwater well this is the setting of the debate at any moment now the president will be leading in his officers and his distinguished guests he'll take his chair and the debate will begin [Music] [Applause] [Applause] the motion before the house tonight is the American Dream is at the expense of the American Negro we prepared to mr. David Hickok of Pembroke College and our pleasure mr. Jeremy barefoot of Emmanuel College mr. James Baldwin will speak third mr. William F Buckley Jr will speak for mr. Haycock is the heir of the house [Applause] mr. president it is the custom of the house for the first speaker in any debate to extend a formal welcome to any visitors to the house I can obviously say however that is a very great honor to be able to welcome to the House this evening mr. William Buckley and mr. James Baldwin mr. William Buckley has the reputation of possibly being the most articulate conservative in the United States of America he was a graduate of Yale and he first gained a reputation for himself by publishing a book entitled God and man and Yale since then he has devoted himself to the secular and this has included Norman Mailer Kenneth Tynan Mary McCarthy and Fidel Castro none of whom have come out of their confrontations unscathed at present his principal occupation is editing a right-wing newspaper in the United States and titled the National Review mr. James Baldwin is hardly need of introduction his reputation both as a novelist and as an advocate of civil rights is international its third novel another country has been published as a paperback in England today mr. Baldwin and mr. Buckley are both very welcome to the hostas evening [Applause] imagine mr. president a society which above all values freedom and equality a society in which artificial barriers to fulfilment and achievement are on hurdle a society in which a man may begin his life was a rail splitter and end it as president a society in which all men are free and every sense of the world free to live where they choose free to work where they choose equal in the eyes of the law and every public authority and equal in the eyes of their fellows a society in fact in which intolerance and Prejudice are meaningless terms imagine however mr. president but the condition of this utopia has been a persistent and quite deliberate exploitation of one-ninth of its inhabitants but one man in nine has been denied those rights which the rest of that society takes for granted but one man in nine does not have the chance for fulfillment or realization of his innate potentiality that one nine and nine cannot promise his children a secure future and unlimited opportunities imagine this mr. president and you have what is in my opinion the bitter reality of the American dream a few weeks ago Martin Luther King had to hold a non-violent demonstration in Selma Alabama in his drive to register Negro voters by the end of the week of his demonstrations he was able to write quite accurately in a national fundraising letter from Selma Alabama jail there are more Negroes in prison with me when there are on the voting rolls when King wrote that letter 335 out of thirty two thousand seven hundred Negroes in Dallas had the vote 1% of the Dallas population after a mass marched to the courthouse 237 Negroes king among them were arrested the following day four hundred and seventy children who had deserted their classrooms to protest against King's arrest what charged with juvenile delinquency thirty-six adults on the same day were charged with contempt of court for picketing the courthouse while state circuit court was in session on the following day 111 people were arrested on the same charge despite their claim but they merely wanted to see the voting registrar 400 students were arrested and taken to the armory when any often spent the night on a cold cement floor the following day the demonstrations spread to Marion Alabama in Merriam Negroes outnumber whites by 11 and a half thousand to six thousand people and yet only 300 are registered to vote Negroes in Marion were anxious to test the public accommodations section of the civil-rights law they entered a drugstore and there they were served with coca-cola laced with salt and were told that hamburgers had risen to five dollars each after the arrest of fifteen Negroes for protesting against this treatment 700 Negroes boycotted their classes next day and marched in orderly fashion to the jail there they sang civil rights songs until they were warned by a state trooper that they would be arrested if they sung one more song of course they sang another song and of course all 700 were arrested American Society has felt fit to use Negro labor it has felt fit to use the blood of the Negro in two world wars there's no trick to listen to his music and has felt fit to laugh at his jokes and yet as far as I'm concerned it has never felt fit to give the American Negro a fair deal and for this reason mr. president I would beg leave to propose the motion but the American Dream is at the expense of the American Negro [Applause] I now call went to Jeremy barefoot of Emmanuel College to oppose the motion now have mr. Jeremy Burford of Emmanuel College who is the first undergraduate a personal mission James Baldwin is well known as one of the most vivid and articulate writers about the Negro problem in America mr. Baldwin had a difficult childhood and he has personally himself suffered discrimination and ill treatment in the south of America but I would like to say at this time that it is not the purpose of this side of the house to condone that in any way at all it is not our purpose to oppose civil rights it is our purpose to oppose this motion [Music] thank you sir come and collect your fee afterwards this side of the house denies that the American Dream has in any way been helped by this undoubted inequality and suffering of the Negro we maintain that in fact this it has hindered the American Dream and if there had been equality if there had been true freedom of opportunity the American dream would be very much more advanced than it is now if the American Dream has made any progress and I think it has it has been made in spite of the suffering and inequality of the American Negro and not because of it now it is also I implied from this motion that the American Dream is encouraging and worsening the suffering of the American Negro this is emphatically not the case the American dream the American economic prosperity and respect for civil liberties has been the main factor in bringing about the undoubted improvement in race relations in America in the last 20 years and Professor Arnold Rose who is the author of the Negro in America which has perhaps the definite of work on the subject and who is also a contributor to what was called a freedom pamphlet so I should imagine that if he has any bias - told his in favor of the negro he said that this improvement in race relations will be seen in years to come as remarkably quick and he has put it down to three main causes increased industrialization technical advance the increased social mobility of the American people and the economic prosperity and I would put it to this house that that industrialization and economic prosperity are two of the main ingredients of the American dream and at the same time again I do not want to say that the American the Negro in America is treated fairly but at the same time the average per-capita income of Negroes in America is exactly the same as the average per-capita income of people in Great Britain now I found that absolutely amazing and I understand I understand that some of you do as well so I have got the reference here from the United States News and World Report of July the 22nd 1963 in Richard points out this will have to be the last interruption I take because time is running short of information is the speaker talking of real income or money [Applause] to disguise that there are only five countries in the world where the income is higher than that of the American Negro and they do not include countries like West Germany and France and Japan now there are in America um thirty five Negro millionaires there are Negro $6,000 now I do not by saying this wish to emphasize but the Negro is fairly treated I merely wish to try and convey a more realistic and objective account of the situation of a negro well I agree that there are um Negroes who are very poor indeed such as me such as the old gentleman in the south who who was talking about some of his wealthier brethren and he was saying yes some of these rich Negroes they put on airs they like the bottom figure of a fraction the bigger they try to be the smaller they really are I would repeat mr. president sir in the last minute I have the Vista page is not where the civil rights would be extended to American Negroes or not if it were it would be a very easy motion to argue for and a very easy motion to a vote for the debate tonight that concerns whether the American dream is at the expense of the American Negro that is well the American Negro has paid for the American dream with his suffering or whether the American Dream has furthered Negro inequality and I would deny both those two research I would say that Negro inequality has hindered the American dream and I would say that the American Dream has been very important indeed in furthering civil rights and in furthering freedom for the American Negro mr. president sir I beg the author's permission it is now with very great pleasure and a very great sense of honor that I called mr. James Baldwin to speak third to this motion [Applause] now we have mr. James Baldwin the star of the evening who has been sitting listening attentively getting a wonderful reception here in the Cambridge Julian tremendous enthusiasm from all sides with the house mr. Baldwin who has been listening to the arguments now we'll bring the voice of actual experience to the debate good evening I I find myself not for the first time and the position of a kind of Jeremiah for example I don't disagree with mr. Burfoot that the the inequality suffered by the American liberal population of the United States has hindered the American dream indeed it has our quarrel with some other things he has say the other deeper element of a certain awfulness I feel has to do with it has to do with one's point of view I had to put it that way one serves one sensor one system of reality it would seem to me the proposition before the house I put it that way is the American dream at the expense the American Negro all the American dream is at the expense the American Negro is a question hideously loaded and that one's response to that question one's reaction to that question has depend on effect an effect on where you find yourself in the world what your sense of reality is what your system of reality is that is it depends on assumptions which we hold so deeply as to be scarcely aware of them a white South African or Mississippi sharecropper Mississippi sheriff or a Frenchman driven out of Algeria all has at bottom a system of reality which compels them to for example in case the French exile from Algeria to offend French reasons for having ruled Algeria the Mississippi or Alabama sheriff who really does believe when he's facing Negro a boy or girl but this woman this man this child must be insane to attack the system to which he owes his entire identity are calls for such a person the proposition of which which we try and discuss here tonight does not exist and on the other hand I have to speak as one other people who've been most attacked by what we must now here call the Western or the European system of reality what white people in the world the white cops of white supremacy I hate to say it here comes from Europe that's how it got to America beneath then what everyone's reaction to this proposition is has to be the question or whether or not civilizations can be considered as such equal or whether one civilization has the right to overtake and subjugate and in fact to destroy another now what happens when that happens leaving aside all the physical facts which one can quote leaving aside rape or murder leaving aside the bloody catalog of oppression which we are in one way to familiar with already what this does to the subjugated the most private the most serious thing this does to the subjugated it's destroying his sense of reality it destroys for example is that his father's authority over him his father can no longer tell him anything because the past had disappeared and his father has no power in the world this means in the case of an American Negro born in that glittering Republic and in the moment you are born since you don't know any better every sticking stone in every face is white and since you have not yet seen a mirror you suppose that you are - it comes as a great shock around the age of five or six or seven to discover the flag to which you have pledged allegiance along with everybody else has not pledged allegiance to you it comes as a great shock to discover the Gary Cooper killing off the Indians when you were ruling for Gary Cooper that the Indians were you it comes as a great shock to discover that the country which is your birthplace and to which you owe your life and your identity as not in its whole system of reality evolved any place for you the disaffection the demoralization and the gap between one person and another only on the basis of the color of their skins begins there and accelerates accelerates throughout a whole lifetime so that presently you realize you're 30 and are having a terrible time managing you trust your countrymen by the time you were 30 you have been through a certain kind of mill and the most serious effect of the mill you've been through is again not the catalogue of disaster the policemen the taxi drivers the waiters the landlady the landlord the banks the insurance companies the millions of the tales 24 hours of every day which spell out to you that you are a worthless human being it is not that is by that time you've begun to see it happening in your daughter or your son or your niece or your nephew you are 30 by now our nothing you have done has helped you to escape the trap what is worse than that is that nothing you have done and as far as you can tell nothing you can do will save your son or your daughter for meeting the same disaster and not impossibly coming to the same end now we're speaking about expense I suppose there's several ways to address oneself to some attempt to define what that word means here let me put it this way that from a very literal point of view the harbours and the ports and the railroads of the country the economy especially of the southern states could not conceivably be what it has become if they had not had and do not still have indeed and for so long so many generations cheap labor I am stating very seriously it is not an overstatement I and I carried its market and I built the railroad under someone else's with for nothing for nothing the southern oligarchy which has until today so much power in Washington and therefore some power in the world was created by my labor and my sweat and the violation of my women and the murder of my children this in the land of the free and the home of the brave and no one can challenge that statement it is a matter of historical record in another way this dream and we'll get to the dream in a moment is at the expense of the American Negro you watch this in the deep south in great relief but not only in the deep south in the deep south you are dealing with a sheriff or landlord or landlady or the grill of the western union desk and she doesn't know quite who she's dealing with by which I mean that if you're not part of the town and if you are a northern [ __ ] it shows in millions of ways so she simply knows that it's an unknown quantity and she once had nothing to do with it but she won't talk to you or to wait for a while to get your telegram okay we all know this we've been through it and by the time you get to be a man it's very easy to deal with but what is happening in the poor woman the poor man's mind is this they've been raised to believe and by now the helpless he believed that no matter how terrible their lives may be their lives have been quite terrible and no matter how far they fall no matter what disaster overtakes them they have one enormous knowledge in consolation which is like a heavenly revelation at least they are not black now I suggest then of all the terrible things that can happen to a human being that is one of the worst I suggest what has happened to white Sutherlands is in some ways after all much worse than what has happened - what to Negroes there because sheriff Clark in Selma Alabama cannot be considered you know no one is can be dismissed as a total monster I'm sure he loves his wife his children I'm sure that no likes to get drunk you know he's after all one's got to assume and he is visibly a man like me if he doesn't know what drives him to use the club to Menace with the gun and to use a cattle prod something awful must have happened to a human being to be able to put a cattle prod against a woman's breasts for example what happens to the woman is ghastly what happens to the man who does it is in some ways much much worse this is being done after all not 100 years ago but in 1965 in a country which is best with what we call prosperity where do you won't examine too closely with a certain kind of social coherence which calls itself a civilized nation in which espouses the notion of the freedom of the world and it is perfectly true from the point of view now simply of an American Negro any American Negro watching this no matter where he is from the vantage point of Harlem which is another terrible place has to say to himself in spite of what the government says the government says we can't do anything about it but those are white people being murdered in Mississippi work forms being carried off to jail those are white children running up and down the streets the government finds some way of doing something about it we have a civil rights bill now we are an amendment the Fifteenth Amendment nearly a hundred years ago I hate to sound again like an Old Testament prophet but if the amendment was not honored then I don't have any reason to believe in the civil rights bill will be honored now and after all one's been there since before you know a lot of other people got there if one has got to prove one's title to the land isn't four hundred years enough for of years at least three wars the American soil is full of the corpses of my ancestors why is my freedom of my citizenship am i right to live there how would they conceal their question now and I suggest further that in the same way the moral life of Alabama sheriffs and poor Alabama ladies white ladies their moral eyes have been destroyed by the plague called color but the American sense of reality has been corrupted by it at the risk of sounding excessive what I always felt my family left the country found myself abroad in other places and watched Americans abroad and these are my countrymen and I do care about them and even if I didn't there is something between us we have the same shorthand I know I look at a girl or a boy from Tennessee where they came from in Tennessee and what that means no Englishman knows that no Frenchman no one in the world knows that except another black man who comes from the same place well watches these lonely people denying their only kin they have we talk about integration in America as though it was some great new conundrum the Parliament America so have been integrated for a very long time put me next to any Africans and you will see what I mean and my grandmother was not a rapist what we are not facing is the results of what we've done what one breaks the American people to do for all our sakes instantly to accept our history I was there not only as a slave but also as a concubine one knows the power after all which can be used against another person if you had absolute power over that person it seemed to me when I watched Americans in Europe but they didn't know about Europeans was what they didn't know about me they weren't trying for example to be nasty to the French girl or rude to the French waiter they didn't know they hurt their feelings they didn't have any sense this particular woman this particular man though they spoke another language in a different manners way was a human being and they walked over them the same kind of bland ignorance condescension charming and cheerful with which had always patted me on the head and called me shine and were upset when I was upset what is relevant about this is that whereas 40 years ago when I was born the question of having to deal with what is unspoken by the subjugated what has never said to the master I'm never having to deal with this reality it was a very remote very remote possibility wasn't no one's mind when I was growing up I was taught in American history books but Africa had no history and neither did I but I was a savage about whom the less said the better who had been saved by Europe and brought to America and of course I believed it I didn't have much choice those are the only books there were everyone else seemed to agree if you walk out of our ride out of Holland downtown the world agrees what you see is much bigger cleaner wider richer safer than where you are they collect the garbage people obviously can pay their life insurance the children look happy say you're not and you go back home and it would seem there of course that it's an act of God that this is true that you belong where white people had put you it is only since the Second World War there's been a counter image in the world and that image not come about to any legislation in the part of any American government but through the fact that Africa was suddenly on the stage of the world and Africans had to be dealt with in a way that never been dealt with before this gave an American Negro for the first time a sense of himself beyond the Savage or a clown it is created and will create a great many conundrum one of the great things that the white world does not know but I think I do know is that black people are just like everybody else when I used the mists of Negro on the mists of color to pretend and to assume that you were dealing essentially with something exotic bizarre and practically according to human laws are known alas that is not true we are also mercenaries dictators murderers liars if we are human to what is crucial here unless we can manage to asset there'd be some kind of dialogue between those people whom I pretend has paid for the American dream and those other people who have not achieved it we will be in terrible trouble I want to say at the end the last is that that is what concerns me most we are sitting in this room and we're all least would like to think we are relatively civilized and we can talk to each other at least on certain levels so that we could walk out of here assuming that the measure of our enlightenment or lease our likeness has some effect on the world it may not I remember for example when the ex Attorney General mr. Robert Kennedy said that it was conceivable that in 40 years in America we might have a Negro president let's sounded like a very emancipated statement as opposed to white people they were not in Harlem when this statement was first heard I did not hear and possibly will never hear the laughter and the bitterness and the scorn which is taking was greeted and the point of view of the manners in Harlem barbershop Bobby Kennedy only got here yesterday and now he's already on his way to the presidency we've been here 400 years and now he tells us that maybe in 40 years if you're good we may let you become president what is dangerous here is a turning a way from the turning a way from anything any white American says the reason for the political hesitation and spike to the Johnson landslide is the one has been betrayed by American politicians for so long and I am I'm a grown man and perhaps I can be reasoned with I certainly hope I can be but I don't know and neither does Martin Luther King none of us know how to deal with those other people whom the white world is a long ignored who don't believe anything the white world says and don't entirely believe anything I or Martin saying and one can't blame them you watch what has happened to them in less than 20 years it seems to me that the city of New York for example this is my last point which that knee goes ahead for a very long time the city of New York for a button has indeed been able the last 15 years to reconstruct itself tear down buildings and raise great new ones downtown and for money and has done nothing whatever except build housing projects in the ghetto for the Negroes and of course the Negroes hate it presently the property doesn't deteriorate because the children cannot bear it they want to get out of the ghetto if the America pretensions were based on most solid a more honest assessment of life and of themselves it would not mean for Negroes when someone says urban renewal that Negro is simply gonna be thrown out into the streets what it does mean now it's not an act of God we're dealing with society made and ruled by men if the American Negro had not been president America I am convinced of history the American labor movement would be much more edifying than it is it is a terrible thing for an entire people who surrendered to the notion that one ninth of his population is beneath them and until that moment until the moment comes when we the Americans we the American people are able to accept the fact that I have to accept for example of my ancestors both white and black that on that continent we are trying to forge a new identity which we need each other and that I am NOT a ward of America I'm not an object of missionary charity I am one of the people who built the country until this moment there is scarcely any hope for the American Dream because the people who are denied participation in it by their very presence will wreck it and if that happens it's a very grave moment for the West thank you [Music] Mendeley moving moment now the whole of the Union standing and applauding this magnificent speaker game ballroom never seen this happen before in the Union in all the years that I have known it always smiling obviously life here by his reception Dennis Lee moved by I am not very grateful and very pleased to be able to call mr. William F Buckley Jr to speak forth to this motion [Applause] now we have mr. william barclay who will need all his skill to establish a sentence a of his audience which is fairly have been so deeply blank you miss probably Ellen Connors and all her smile experience the preceding sweet huh take heart miss preferred gentlemen it seems to me that of all the indictments mr. Baldwin has made of America a here tonight and in his copious literature protest the one that is a most striking involves in effect the refusal of the American community or to treat him other than as a Negro the American community has refused to do this the American community almost everywhere he goes treats him with the kind of unction of the kind of satisfaction at posturing carefully for his flagellation of our civilization that indeed quite properly are commands the contempt which he so eloquently showers upon us it is impossible in my judgment but to deal with the indictment of mr. Baldwin unless one is prepared to deal with him as a white man unless one is prepared to say to him the fact that your skinnin is black is utterly irrelevant to the arguments that you raise or the fact or that you sit here as is your rhetorical device and lay the entire weight of the negro ordeal on your own shoulders by his irrelevant to the argument that we are here to discuss the bravoman of mr. Baldwin's charges an area of against America or not so much that our civilization has failed him and his people that our ideals are insufficient but that we have know our ideals that our ideals rather or some sort of a superficial coating which we come up with that any given movement in order to justify whatever commercial and a noxious experiment we are engaged in a loss of mr. Baldwin can write his book the fire next time or in which he threatens America but he didn't in writing that book speak with the British accents that he used exclusively tonight but in which he threatened America with the necessity for us do our cherishing for us to jettison our entire civilization the only thing that the white man has the Negro should want he said his power and he has treated from coast-to-coast nine United States mr. Pell with a kind of Amin doesn't use her give way and he has done that her up till now sceptile goes beyond anything that was ever expected from the most most servile Negro preacher bias other family I've proposed to pay him the honor this night of saying to him mr. Baldwin I am going to speak to you without any reference whatever to those are surrounding protections which you are used to in virtue of the fact that you are a negro and here we need to ask the question what in fact shall we do about it mr. president what's how we are in America try to do for instance or to eliminate those psychic humiliations which I joined mr. walk Baldwin in believing are the very worst aspects of this discrimination are you found that our source of considerable mirth to laugh away the statistics of my colleagues River I don't think they are insignificant but they are certainly not insignificant in a world which a attaches a considerable importance or to material progress or it is in fact the case of that 7/10 that 7/10 of the white income of the United States is equal to the income that is made by the by the average me but I don't think this is an irrelevant statistic ladies and gentlemen but it takes a capitalization about fifteen sixteen seventeen thousand dollars per job in the United States this is a capitalization that was not created or exclusively as a result of Negro travail my great-grandparents work to presumably yours worth all so I don't know if anything that has ever been created without the expense of something all of you who hope for a diploma here are going to do that at the expense of a considerable amount of effort and I would thank you oh please not to pillai the fact that a considerable amount of effort went into the production of a system which grants a greater degree of material well-being to the American Negro as an added that is enjoyed by 95% of the other peoples of the human race but even so to the extent that your withering laughter are suggested here that you found this a contemptible observation I agree I don't think it matters that there are 35 millionaires among the Negro community if there were 35 there were 20 million millionaires among the Negro community of the United States I would still agree with you that we have a dastardly situation but I'm asking you not not to make politics as the Pro flies to use the fleeted praise of Professor Oak's shot but rather to consider what in fact is that we Americans ought to do what are your instructions that I am to take back to the United States library I want to know what it is that we should do and especially I want to know oh well though it is time in fact to abandon the American dream as it has been defined by mr. Hickok mr. Burfoot what in fact is that we ought to do for instance or to avoid ooh humiliations mentioned by mr. Baldwin as had as being a part of his own experience during his lifetime at the age of 12 you will find on reading his book he trespassed outside the ghetto of Harlem by endless was taken by the scruff of the neck by a policeman on 42nd Street Madison Avenue and said here you [ __ ] go back to where you belong or 15 20 years later or he goes in and asked for a scotch whiskey at the airport at Chicago and is told by the white woman that he is obviously underaged none of the circumstances cannot be served I know I know from your faces that you share with me the feeling of compassion and the feeling of our outrage that this kind of thing should have happened what in fact are we going to do to this policeman and what in fact are we going to do or to or to this bomb and how are we going to avoid the kind of humiliations that are perpetually visited on members of a minority rings obviously the first element is concerned we've got the care that it happens we have got to do what we can to change the warp and wolf of moral moral thought in society in such fashion is to try to make it happen less and less let me urge this point to you which I can do with authority my friends the only thing that I can tonight and that is to tell you that in the United States there is a concern for the Negro problem now if you get up to me and say [Applause] if you get up to me and say well now is there the kind of concern that we students of Cambridge would show if the problem were our own all I can say is I don't know it may very well be that there has been some sort of a sunburst of moral enlightenment that his hit this community so as to make it predictable that if you were the governors of the United States the situation would change overnight I'm prepared to grant this has a form of courtesy as president but meanwhile I'm saying to you that the engines of concern in the United States are working the presence of mr. Baldwin here tonight is in part a reflection of that concern you cannot go you cannot go to a university in the United States the University in the United States presumably also governed by the Lords Spiritual as you are in which mr. Baldwin is not the toast of the town you cannot go to a University of the United States in which practically all other problems of public policy are preempted by the primary policy of concern for the Negro I challenge you to name you know the civilization anytime anywhere in the history of the world in which the problems of a minority which have been showing considerable material or and political advancement is as much a subject of dramatic concern as it is in the United States oh let me let me just say finally ladies and gentlemen this all right there is no instant cure for the race problem in America and anybody who tells you that there is is a charlatan and alternately a boring man a boring bus I slay because he is then speaking in the kind of abstractions that do not relate to the human experience people in America where the Negro community is concerned is a very complicated one I urge those of you who have a who has an actual rather than a purely ideologized interest in the problem but to read the book beyond the melting pot by Professor Glaser also co-author of the lonely crowd a prominent Jewish our intellectual who points the fact are that the situation in America where the Negroes are concerned is extremely complex as a result of an unfortunate conjunction of two factors one is the dreadful efforts to perpetuate discrimination by many individual American citizens result of their lack of that final and ultimate concern which some people are truly trying to agitate the other is as a result of the failure of the Negro community itself to make certain exertions which were made by other minority groups during the American experience if you can stand a statistic not of my own making let me give you one which professor Glaser considers as relevant he says for instance in 1900 there were 3,500 Negro doctors in America in 1960 there were 3,900 an increase in 400 is this because there were no opportunities it has been suggested by mr. Haycock and also by mr. Baldwin implicitly no says professor quasar or there are great many medical schools who are by no means practice discrimination who are anxious to receive the trained Negro doctors there are scholarships available to put them through but in fact that particular energy of which he remarks was so noticeable in the Jewish community into a certain and lesser extent in the Italian Irish community for some reason is not there we should focus on the necessity to animate this particular energy but he comes to the conclusion which strikes me as plausible to the people who can best do it who can do it most effectively are Negroes themselves let me conclude by reminding you ladies and gentlemen that where are the Negro is concerned the dangers as far as I can see at this moment is that they will see to reach out for some sort of radical solutions on the basis of which the true problem is obscured they have done a great deal but to focus on the fact of white discrimination against Negroes they have break done a great deal to agitate a moral concern but where in fact do they go now they seem to be slipping if you will read carefully for instance the words mr. Bayard Rustin toward some sort of a procrustean formulation which ends up less urging the advancement of the Negro than the regression of the white people 14 times as many people in New York City born of Negroes are illegitimate as of whites this is a problem how shall we address it by seeking out laws that encourage the legitimacy and white people or this unfortunately tends to be the rhetorical momentum that some of their arguments are taking one thing you might do mr. Buckley is let them vote Mississippi I couldn't agree with you more on four well except the less tie I appear to ingratiating which is hardly my objective here tonight I think actually I think actually what is wrong in Mississippi sir is not that not enough Negroes voting but the too many white people are voting [Music] but Booker T Washington said both Booker T Washington said that the important thing when a bros are concerned is is is not that they hold public office but they be prepared to hold public office not that they vote but that they be prepared to vote what do we want to do with the Negroes having taught the Negroes in Mississippi to despise Barnett Ross Barnett shall we then teach them to emulate their cousins in Harlem and adore Adam Clayton Powell jr. it is much more complicated so than simply the question of giving them the vote if I were myself a constituent of the community of Mississippi at this moment what I would do is vote to lift the standards of the votes so as to disqualify 65% of the white people who were present ago they're not not simply not there they to give again that I say then that what we need is a considerable amount of practice all that acknowledges that there are two sets of difficulties the difficulties of the white person of wax as white people and brown people and black people or do all over the world or to protect their own vested interest so who has all of the races in the entire world have and suffer from a kind of a racial narcissism which to it which tends always to convert every contingency into such a way to maximize their own power that yes we must do but we must also reach through to the Negro people and tell them that their best chances are in a mobile society and the most mobile society in the world today my friends is the United States of America are the most mobile society the United States are in the world is the United States of America and it is precisely that mobility which will give opportunity to there goes which they must be encouraged to take but they must not in the course of their ordeal be encouraged to adopt the kind of cynicism or the kind of despair or the kind of iconoclasm that is urged upon by mr. Baldwin in his recent works because of one thing I can tell you I believe with absolute authority that where the United States is concerned if it ever becomes a confrontation between a continuation of our our own sort of idealism the private stock of which granted like most people in the world we tend to lavish only every now and then on public enterprises reserving it's so often for our own irritations and pleasures but the fundamental friend of the Negro people or in the United States is the good nature or and is the generosity and is the good wishes is the decency the fundamental decency that do lie at the reserves of the spirit of the American people these was not the last act and under no circumstances must they be laughed at and under no circumstances must have merica be addressed or an told that the only alternative to the status quo is to overthrow or that civilization which we consider to be the faith of our fathers or the faith indeed of of your fathers this is what must animate whatever Miller isn't must come because if it does finally come to a confrontation a radical confrontation between giving up what we understand to be the best features of the American Way of life which at that level is indistinguishable suppose I can see from the European Way of life then we will fight the issue or and we will fight the issue not only in the Cambridge Union but we will fight it as you were once recently called to do on beaches and on hills and on mountains mountains and on landing grounds and we will be convinced that just as you are won the war against a particular threat into civilization you were nevertheless waging a war in favor of and for the benefit of Germans your own enemies just as we are convinced that if it should ever come to that kind of a confrontation our own determination to win the struggle will be a determination to wage a war in our own for hypes but also for Negros [Applause] [Applause] [Music] when the tellers take their places please they voted in favor of the motion the motion being that the American Dreams at the expense of the Negro they voted in favor of that motion five hundred and forty four persons and against one hundred and sixty four persons the motion is therefore carried by three hundred eighty votes I declare the house to stand adjourned [Applause]

Channel: The Riverbends Channel

Views: 2,820,085

Rating: 4.8874087 out of 5

Keywords: Black History, Public Domain, Debate, Racism

Id: oFeoS41xe7w

Length: 58min 58sec (3538 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 27 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/mac_question]

I can't recommend enough Best of Enemies, about Buckley and Gore Vidal. Was also on Netflix somewhat recently.

[u/lyrelyrebird]

at approx 35 min in: "In 40 years, if you are good, we might let you become President"

thank you for posting this

[u/eao]

Such an interesting debate. Buckley is exactly the kind of person Baldwin had in mind when reminding everyone that African Americans are not wards of USA. Right after Buckley starts talking about the "generosity and good naturedness of the American people" towards the negro. Reminds me of current day pundits who say black athletes who kneel for the anthem are "ungrateful".

[u/bkwyrm]

This is amazing. The comparison of white treatment of blacks in their own country to the tourist's treatment of the French wait-staff etc. is a brilliant and still useful one, no?

[u/Citizen_of_RockRidge]

If you enjoyed this video, then you will certainly enjoy I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO in Netflix.

[u/[deleted]]

For those who aren't familiar with William F Buckley, Jr, he's not some ancient racist dinosaur. He led a very intellectually influential tv show called Firing Line and also founded National Review (now a bit of a joke, but in its prime it was very well respected). He was a classic NY Republican when the southern democrats were still in favor of segregation.

In my opinion, WFB, Jr.'s death was the worst thing that ever happened to American conservatism. Intellectual authority was replaced with Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Andrew Breitbart.

That's probably why I'm a Democrat, in truth. The left doesn't exactly have much solid intellectual leadership, but Jesus there is absolutely ZERO on the right.

[u/cmagnuson]

If you are a fan of debate, Intelligence Squared and Intelligence Squared US are two great podcasts to check out:

http://www.intelligencesquared.com/

https://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/

[u/[deleted]]

I hate buckley so much but I love to hear him speak