James Baldwin Discusses Racism | The Dick Cavett Show

near me master ball tonight I'm sure you still meet the remark that what are the Negroes why aren't they optimistic and I again I apologize and preface this by the phrase the Negro is because it lumps together an awful lot of people you and Floyd McKissick and Adam Clayton Powell and Hattie McDaniel and Jackie Robinson and it's impossible I supposed to eat but for want of a better phrase if you'll allow me they said but it's getting so much better they're a Negro mayors there's Negroes in all of sports there are Negroes in politics there they're even accorded the ultimate accolade of being in television commercials now I'm glad you're smelling it is it at once getting much better and still hopeless well I don't think it's much hope for it you know the truth well as long as people are using this peculiar language it's why I was running away before when I said it's not a question of what happens to the Negro here or to the black man here that's a that's a very good question for me you know but but the real question is what's gonna happen to this country I had to repeat that now if Negroes know don't seem to be very optimistic it's not because they suddenly all changed from happy shift you know shiftless dancing [ __ ] down on the levee people all that cotton and singing praises to the master they've not changed northern everywhere altima stood old ones got to do is listen swing low Sweet Chariot and ask yourself what that songs about or try to really listen about Ray Charles is really telling you we have lived under these intolerable conditions for how many years nearly four hundred years we evolved a certain kind of style to meet it and a lot of that has been involved with the lies we had to tell to you and the lies had to tell to you this compounds that has a stir you believed because you wanted to believe it but obviously obviously you knew everyone man knows that he did not he would not himself no lying track for nothing you were not himself like this child to be sold from him his over child rum you you not himself without himself not to have the autonomy of his own house in his own woman who cannot himself ego like cotton and carry it to market just because he loved white people we all know that and the word Negro in this country is it really is designed finally to disguise the fact and when I was talking about another man a man like you wants what you want and insofar as you married what probably want to think there has been progress it over the one very simple thing I don't want to be given anything by you I just want you to leave me alone so I can do it myself and it also overlooks another very important thing perhaps I don't think that this Republic is a summit of human civilization perhaps I don't want to become like Ronald Regan or like the personal General Motors perhaps have another sense of life which in fact my situation he has forced me to trust and perhaps I know more about you and your institutions then you know about me and times I have a judgment on them perhaps I don't want what you think I want and there's something you can give me perhaps there is something that I can give you where do you stand in relation to the Negro figures in our the media who we see who frighten us the most and maybe some of you the most the ones who want to burn it down demolish it the one who have totally given up I assume you haven't totally given it well I'm still alive a sir president even so as long as better than me I would never do that but if you think that rat Brown you referring to battery being Stoke stokeley up or something new you know I refer you back to the old old song nobody knows who wrote it and supposed to be spiritualist cause we about the Christian Church but it really is a slave revolt song that says I had my way if I had my way little children great God have had my way I tear this building down it is not new for me we've always felt that it is new for you and if we were white if we were Irish if you were Jewish who oppose if we had in fact in your mind a frame of reference our heroes be your heroes to not turn would be a hero for you instead of a threat Malcolm X might still be alive it is that you can face in some ways the discontent of white people when they rise their heroes and know everyone is very proud of brave will Israel stayed with against we have nothing don't be misinterpreted I'm not an anti-semite but you know when the Israelis pick up Gardens or the pose or the Irish or any white man in the world says give me liberty or give me death the entire wide world applauds when a black man says exactly the same thing word for word he is judged a criminal and treated like one and everything possible is done to make an example of this bad [ __ ] so there won't be any more like him now you can do this if you like no until until your party is over but I know after all who my heroes are in George Washington not one of my heroes for example neither is Booker T Washington what the American public has always tried to do is to accommodate me into a system which is always meant to my death they want me to become an accomplice to my own murder this is what you really mean by integration that's impressive I didn't understand it that last sentence so we Carmichael says and he's quite right the integration is euphemism for white supremacy the truth is that we've been integrated here since we got here that as long as the battle is at all if Negroes in his country arranged in every color under heaven from yours - mine people even blacker than me that gives away the history and tells us what happened I was no black woman once put it to me to sum it up she said white people don't hate black people if they did we'd all be what we'd all be black that's something you got to face I mean you the American Republic we are brothers no disown you disown brothers and sons and sisters and daughters you got to face that there's a sense in which I don't think you answered my question and we will be back in a moment stay with us mr. ballin I guess what I meant by not answering my question was this you get a kind of simple idea of what Stokely Carmichael and HR at Brown mean and it's maybe because we may not read their words in complete form but we see them for a minute on the news and they're yelling get guns burn so forth and all I was asking really was are you more moderate than that in your present mood and are they saying too much are they over making a point well the point that they're trying to make cannot be overstated how much older than rapid how much older than Stokely and to that extent I can be calm or moderate I suppose but on the other hand the difficulty here is this I can't mom of the King said this too in another way I can't really ask a black boy younger than let's say 20 years old all right 17 years old 25 years old there are two things I can't ask him to do I can't ask him to allow himself to live on the terms be questioned by the American white people in this country I cannot ask him to allow the forces which rule this country to emasculate him I cannot do that I won't do that I don't on the other hand want to will not either you know counselor generation no to go out into the streets to die but there is nothing in the evidence offered by the book of the American Republic which allows me really to argue with the cat who says to me they need to speak to cotton and now they don't need us anymore and I don't need us you're gonna kill us all off just like that did the Indians and I can say it's a Christian nation then with your brothers will never do that to you because the record is too long and too body that's all we had done all your very corpses now begin to speak I can't depend on the American moral credit to save some of the people whom I love but you don't have that moral credit no you told yourself yourselves and us for all these years nothing but lies now I want you to understand something I am NOT interested in making an accusation I'm not even talking about the past I'm talking about the present this is not an accusation it is a plea for the life of this country because no matter what I say no matter what Martin said the despair in the ghetto that are spared throughout the country are accumulates with every hour and people grow up much faster than you think they do people people are uptight about social now when he said black power no one is concerned about white powers now wiping out Southeast Asia no one's here at the white power which keeps my children in this in the ghetto which does not educate my children except to become in furious this is power and when the Republic reacts as it did to the linking of the two words power and black is a confession what the country has done with its power have you ever thought that there might be a basis for prejudice against Negroes specifically that is maybe deeper than anything anybody who said yet I don't mean that I'm about to say it but I mean by this is it possible that you always have to deal with the prejudice against Negroes separately from almost all other racial prejudices and has anyone ever offered a theory that it's something unraveled something sub rational some almost tribal irreducible fear of the color black or something that may agree that rigidus into another category the way many people have suggested that but I don't I'm not sure that I entirely by that I don't know I was lucky enough or desperate enough to the outside this country for a while and observed know that I walk down the streets of Paris or Stockholm Istanbul with no feelings for example nobody even noticed it the only people I know the only people who really get uptight when I see a black boy working with the white girl for example Americans and I've seen this a thousand times I see it once we walking down the street she and I talked to each other money our own business probably knows me by myself and here come to know somebody know with his girl and something happens in his eyes and he happens in his face I don't I don't want his girl I've really seen him you know I don't care what they're doing but something stiffens in him some trigger goes off in him as I'm gonna steal the girl well isn't because I'm black it's because you people pay for what they do it's not because I want to steal his girl he's uptight about me walking down the street or uptight about Phyllis and me walking down the street he's uptight because of some very cute knows what he's done people always know they pretend they don't but they know I don't want to rape no white with me but you know I know how many Milan would have been raped and I know by whom and so do you you know now I'd like that I don't think anything you know in the black program the black revolution really involved revenge or it's been victim at all you know it is the white imagination the guilty white imagination which makes it which makes this out of it and this is this which paralyzed us and all our social activities you know it's reasonable no insanity but the labor unions know the schools the situation's of people together and looking about the police you are very real menace to every black cat alive in this country and no matter how many people say no you're being paranoid you know about police brutality I know what I'm talking about I survived those streets those precinct basements I know and every black catalyst country knows what the policeman is really like and friends melting this I know what he was like when I was really helpless how many how many beatings I got and I know what happens now I was a not really helpless right no - but if he doesn't if I haven't got the presence of mind you know to do whatever I have to do he doesn't know that this is Jimmy Baldwin and not just some other [ __ ] you can't blow my head off just like he blows up all you look everybody else's head and this is done with the will of the stage and they can look like this cannot be overstated hmm I'm happened to my mother in the morning and my sister to my brother is only now beginning be born on using this happening to your heroes what has happened all these years to us for me this is only Billa violent country there's never been a democracy right I do get the feeling that you overstate for rhetorical purposes sometimes and when you say the thing about the policeman the simple phrase once come to my mind but there are some good policemen in the sense that you when you say I could never vote for the Republicans as long as Nixon is in the party or I could never vote for the Democrats as long as who shall I say senator eastland or but that leaves no door open there's no hope then you go to what I'm only I know I let me do let me trying to make it very clear what I'm saying maybe say that badly awkwardly but what I'm trying to say it cannot be overstated no tongue can overstated it takes you a long tall diamond stammering to state to state I agree there's no eloquence equal to the race problem and of course there are some good policeman yeah no doubt IIIi just think by you you risk being misunderstood by people who would be part of the expression sympathetic by what sounds like too broad a statement but you must understand you understand what a part of what has happened here is a tremendous gap between my experience of life illusion myself as a Batman right and yours dreams alive who is white man okay and you say sympathetic for example but you overlook no I hate to put it this way as I can always take me to that I saw every speaking Olivia with your sympathy now for a very long time it may have occurred to me now if I could live with your somebody as long as I had I can possibly live without it and I wanted sympathy or maybe they can't afford it anymore and I'm not talking about individual policemen no doubt Nixon loves his children I'm talking about the structure which is people work least known to get or not there no matter what liberal newspapers may say a lot they never take my life they're there to protect your property stay with us stay with us we'll be back after this message [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: The Dick Cavett Show

Views: 616,116

Rating: 4.9187555 out of 5

Keywords: James Baldwin, James Baldwin Interview, James Baldwin Dick Cavett, James Baldwin Debate, James Baldwin The Dick Cavett Show, James Baldwin 1969, Malcolm X, Talk Show, Chat Show, Interview, race, racism, black lives matter, civil rights

Id: WWwOi17WHpE

Length: 17min 9sec (1029 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 24 2020

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[u/GDeMarco]

Although Baldwin continued to work through the late 1980s, his canonical works were all published during the 1950s and ’60s, and he is seldom associated with the post–civil rights era.

. . . others believed his diminishment resulted from becoming bitter. Baldwin, they said, refused to acknowledge the progress the United States had made since the 1950s. As the New York Times’ Michael Anderson wrote in a 1998 review of Baldwin’s collected essays: “Little wonder he lost his audience: America did what Baldwin could not—it moved forward.” In a world of Black Lives Matter activism and the Trump administration, this triumphalist narrative of the United States’ racial progress looks especially naïve. And it is not surprising then that Baldwin’s words resonate for us yet again.

http://bostonreview.net/race/joseph-vogel-forgotten-baldwin

It's a travesty that he isn't more well known, that he isn't lauded the way his contemporaries are. He was an extraordinary man.

[u/weekendatbernies20]

Holy crap! This interview could be plucked out of its time and placed in 2020 and not a damn thing has changed....except white people, in cities anyway, have less problem with black men talking to white women.

[u/nodrog115]

He is absolutely one of the most brilliant - and still horribly relevant - thinkers and writers of the 20th century. More Baldwin everywhere, please.

[u/Glazkov1]

He is one of mine. A clip of him speaking about “moral monsters” is what got me into the streets in the first place. I’ve been posting clips of him on Instagram and Facebook for weeks.

His words are the closest representation of my opinions about race and America.

[u/Psych0Killer3]

Fun fact, James Baldwin wrote an entire book defending Wayne Williams, the Atlanta child killer. He was an overrated, pretentious writer.