James Baldwin - Take This Hammer (1964)

san francisco yeah oh man i'm gonna tell you about san francisco sometimes this point did a thing for me i mean ever since i got out of high school i had a couple of jobs i worked at a couple of hack companies and uh warehouses i mean after a while they say uh well i guess we're gonna lay you off for a couple of weeks you know all right they talk about the south the south is not half as bad as san francisco you want me to tell you about san francisco i'll tell you about san francisco the white man he's not he's not taking advantage of you out in public like they doing down in birmingham but he's killing you with that pencil and paper brother when you go to look for a job can you get a job can you get a job winkle this is the san francisco americans pretend does not exist i think i'm making it up national educational television presents take this hammer this is a film report on a visit to the city of san francisco by the novelist essayist and playwright james baldwin mr baldwin's guide on this tour of the city is the executive director of youth for service orville luster [Music] you tell them i'm gone you tell them i'm gone the drive from the airport into any american city looks pretty much the same you could be anywhere but for james baldwin this similarity goes deeper in the drive into san francisco baldwin began talking about the increasing bitterness demoralization and despair of negro use in northern cities and it was decided that we would explore the existence of such attitudes and conditions in the city of san francisco with its widely advertised liberal and cosmopolitan traditions baldwin also talked about his concept of dues paying or living up to one's responsibilities and commented that many northerners seem to feel that because they do not live in mississippi they are somehow paying their dues i think the truth is that everyone on the one hand is fundamentally capable of paying his dues but no one pays his jews willingly no and the white man like the black man like any other man on earth can pay his dues if he realizes that's what he's got to do as long as you think there's some way to get to life without paying your dues you're going to be bankrupt because the bill has come in it's not coming in it is in and the great question now is precisely what we've got in the bank this of course is everything we think we have everything and birmingham is an incident no you may become a shrine what is really crucial is whether or not the country the people in the country the citizenry are able to recognize that there is no moral distance no moral distance which is to say no distance between the facts of life in san francisco in the facts of life and burning up someone's got to call no one's got to tell it like it is and that's where it's at i imagine it'd be easy if any white person walking through san francisco to imagine that everything was at peace because it certainly looks that way on the you know on the surface which is much prettier than you all it's it's easier to hide in san francisco because you got the view you got the hills you got the san francisco legend too which is that it's a cosmopolitan and um forward-looking but it's just another american city and if you're a black man that means it's a very bitter thing to say children dying here because they are in new york for the very same reason [Music] this is somewhat better place to lie about it all it comes to nobody wants to destroy the image of san francisco [Music] i like to acquaint you with uh san francisco as a whole mr baldwin and i think mostly what that's being watched here today is something black and young people go to school together they graduate off the same stage and then when it comes to jobs the black phase is not qualified but they graduate then my daughter have to go clean up the same girl house that she graduates off the stage as i say the most thing that being watched is the black face we were talking about last night coming into the airport was the um the real situation of negroes of the city as opposed to the image san francisco would like to present yes well why don't you tell me a little bit about it i know a lot about new york i'm a stranger here let's just say i'm sure that i'm sure the uh principal holds i'm curious about the details well one thing about it in this particular area about 80 of the people in this area are a negro this is a real large housing project uh there's uh as far as delinquency is concerned we'll rank about four uh the job situation is bad this is a real black belt of san francisco i think that the lady over to your left mrs nichols is a good representative of one of the indigenous leaders in this area tell me something that sounds like may sound like a stupid question this question i have to ask myself all the time what precisely do you say to a negro kid to investing with a morale which the country um is in germany shan't have or to spell that much more specifically when dealing with a negro kid and trying to insist that he know that he can do anything he wants to do how do you make him believe it that's a difficult question i think that that one of the main things that we have to uh uh uh make them believe you know they say everybody could be the president of the united states and then and then then this boy uh grows up and he comes up by the time he gets 40 to 50 years old he begins to find out that that this this is not true and to make him uh face be able to face what's coming to him in the future you're gonna be a negro president in this country there'll never be any representation in this country why do you say that you can't get jobs how are we going to be a president but i want you to think about this there will be another president of this country but it will not be the country that we are sitting in now but if you say to yourself there never will be a negro president in this country and what you're doing is agreeing with white people who say you are inferior it's not important really you know whether there's a legal president i mean in that way what's important is that you should realize that you can become you can become the president there's nothing anybody anybody can do that you can't do well the truth is if you get them to get i don't i don't think it's an exaggeration i think the truth still is that even to get the remote the most meager opportunity you've got to be at least five times as good as anybody else around five times is good not only at the job but this is what's so dangerous i think you have to have a certain the boys i grew up with i go up the streets in harlem and other survivors one marks all the survivors is a certain ruthlessness which was absolutely indispensable when we're going to survive i can do it i can do it i can do it do i have to i [Applause] we're talking about now their real problem is they cannot find in the country any any reason to accept anything the country says and they're very young so they can't find anything else either and this is how they end up for example on the needle it's a crime committed by one section of the population of the populist against another section of the populace and it's a crime which really could destroy this country what do you think about the police i think they have a purpose but then again the way some of these people do you sometimes when they pick you up and stop you well like a couple of times you'd be downtown just walking around they they look at you if you look suspicious they would just stop you like i was going to show one night me and my wife and we just happened to go around marcus street and we seen this police car go by all right we could turn the corner the next corner they meet us and they stop us our show starts at 7 45 we were out there to nine o'clock but then they didn't have no excuse to stop us but they stopped us search the car and call in and this and that and what was the purpose of that we weren't doing anything wrong nobody was mad let me ask you one thing what the police do when they get mad does the police do a naked man i mean we ordinary citizens and we get mad and we can do things to hurt people and rob and still what what do they do when they get mad who they take this team off on i think you know the answer to that question well i couldn't answer that because the police has never bothered me in that way but i read newspapers and i they've been living around here all my life and i see things going on well when the policeman gets mad he's got a gun and he's got a club i mean yeah it's one thing that the different in san francisco and birmingham it is that um san francisco is whitewash yeah precisely yeah in white in san francisco it's under the rug yeah no it hasn't hit the headlines yet and everyone can everyone in san francisco every white person's ever just pretend they haven't got a negro problem everywhere i have been in this country we talked to a white person who says race relations are excellent and i get to find a single negro in this country who agrees with that and then if you like that the negro have a better opportunity um acts that negro be hired in a large firm they'll reach out in high one that's to shut your mouth and put him in the window well mr baldwin i'd like to also say that hunter's point seems to me in my opinion and my and my uh we are looking at at home is just like being in alabama right now and uh i feel that we don't some of the ones that can't go down or we can we can march on san francisco for the black man uh to help the black woman we can do that here because it has been stated that until we work on the this san francisco and other areas uh new york and all chicago and all around so we can get something done we can help our brothers in the south yes those uh the black people in alabama are my people yes primarily i'm from texas but anywhere in the south anywhere a negro a black man is involved i'm there i'm the mother of five kids the mother of a nine week old baby but if the time comes where i can't march in san francisco i certainly will beg barry a ticket to go to alabama and i am ready [Applause] i suppose no one in san francisco has any sense of what a dangerous area this is and i think this is one of the real troubles is that the nick rowe has in san francisco he doesn't really know his place because it hasn't been really spelled out i mean he's trying to to to find his place and it's so you know this is one of the problems you know i mean what place is it for me you know it came out to escape and then you you keep trying another prison that's right you know you find yourself and you find yourself facing the pacific ocean you know that's what the place has to go yes yeah yeah okay now you can see this is well more resident events i mean the apartment for coming down we will soon be to market street the great problem is how in the world one is going to invest these children with a new morale with some sense of their own worth because the countries are going to do it but he won't do it i suppose we could say at the moment the country can't do it to its own worth you have no race for themselves [Music] jumping on me and putting me in jail and everything you know where did that happen where right here in san francisco california tell me how it started i started yeah what do you mean hashtag tell me the first time you're arrested first time i was arrested yeah well that was all the first year i was in 19 48. i was in 1948 yeah what for well i don't know what they call it but i got caught in a bedroom with a little white girl where was that a little white girl yeah and you went to jail yeah when you were eight yeah in san francisco yeah look at you learn from the world you live in brother that's why i didn't teach you this but what you want to know you ain't gonna know nothing about it he's not even teaching me about the future of my people would you [Music] [Applause] guys sitting around here doing these cities and demonstrations and nothing people are not going to do anything how are we going to do it by violence violence rising having a revolution but there are 20 million of us 20 million that's enough not not not not not these days they're not in those chairs oh it's enough they're scattered it's 48 states 48 get to islam right the true religion you know get all the people together get out of believing one thing and then they can't help but stick together i mean we can't stick together not half of us christian the other has baptists you know some jews and all that and what good is that going to do us carefully so you think the opening we can do is get together have an armed uprising really just put blood you know letting everybody bleed a little bit that's the only way we're going to get in this thing what did that what happened to the people in birmingham well birmingham isn't over yet yeah it's over oh yeah it's over it's over they don't sit that's all over it now people they had a little old you know little show sunday night you know that's the only thing they did when he was marching around in them thousands and thousands wasn't that happening they got mad sunday jumped on a few of them sent a few of them to the hospital then what happened they said we're gonna give you what you want huh yeah that ain't nothing ain't gonna get natural now the negro teenager doesn't have any possibility as we sit here now i mean as of this moment this is not historical does not have any possibility of accepting american history we should say has no no way of learning it because it has not been and it is not being taught he has there is no possibility for him begin to begin to act on what we always like to think of is the american assumptions you know man's a man for all that and all that jazz it isn't that he wouldn't it's because there's no possibility of his doing so because the country intends to keep him in his place and still does so the only way a negro teenager can make it is a step outside that system you know to become an effective criminal on whatever level no to become an operator you know like ready to make it or to turn to malcolm x they kind of tear down our homes brother when the white man try to tear down your homes then it's time for you to do something but what can we do we don't know anything about what's going on i mean we try to go to the meeting of things like that we watch the television we watch all this about birmingham down there just like malcolm x said yesterday on television he said the white man he talked about uh truth and uh uh this man mr king he down there talking about uh yeah can we get some kind of uh can we get some kind of uh cooperation can we get some kind of truth down there oh what are they doing down there they're not doing anything i'm calling him a chump just like malcolm x caller he's a trump and uh and i think a black muslim is right in some of his doings and i think that uh a truce down there is impossible it's utterly impossible it's fantastic and it's unbelievable [Applause] wait wait let me tell you now they talking about better jobs jobs right here you all tell you what kind of job they're going to give us they're going to let us check out our own homes out here in hunter's point that's the job we're getting and you know what they're gonna fail let me tell you what they're gonna pay they're gonna pay you two dollars an hour they're gonna holler some kind of apprenticeship deal or something like that now whatever that gain in you it's not gaining you a thing you won't get anything they'll help you get your chat on your own homes it's a job temporarily and then what you gonna do where you gonna live you're not gonna live anywhere they're not even in the process of trying to tell you where you're going to live all they talking about is staying down how long have you been in san francisco well i've been in san francisco about 18 years ever since i was about a year too old and you live around you too no place when they get through lighten up bro we're gonna be living out on the streets make you feel bad yeah make you feel bad won't be no place to go we'd be living out here on streets in tents well what would you like to go if you could what part of san francisco would you like to build i ain't going to stay up here on top of the hill ever since i've been born and this is part of our redevelopment also what do you mean you say redevelopment removal of negroes in other words a lot of the negroes who came because the japanese were pushed out now being pushed out themselves that's right in effect san francisco is reclaiming this headline this property and trying to build it up which means negroes have to go that's right and and where are they going to go well they're going out to hunters point into the uh hate ashby area and also into ocean view wherever they can find reasonable rents yeah south of market and all the other places wherever they can find cheap rent in other words going from one ghetto to the other yes yes this is the negro housing project yeah as well as a few caucasians staying here you know uh well i know a lot about housing projects in new york but i'm sure this doesn't differ at all no how's there some of the same problems although the building the exterior looks like it's smaller it's the whole point yes but i know what goes on inside correct me if i'm wrong i'm sure that in the housing project i know the housing process in new york the kids are spies and you know you gotta have better housing in the ghetto is simply not about simply not possible yeah you can create you can build a few better plants but you cannot do anything about the um moral and psychological effects of being in the ghetto this this is the point everybody living in those housing projects is just as endangered as ever before by all the things they get all means about raising a kid in one of those housing projects i would still have at the front door or probably right next door in the household jack all the things that i was trying to escape and i mean such things as i mean even from such things as as dealing with insurance companies if i want fire insurance you know to the fact that in the playground my boy my girl will be exposed to to to the man who sells narcotics for example to a minion forces which are inevitably set in motion when the people are despised you can't pretend that you're not despised if you are you were saying yesterday the children can't be fooled i could be fooled you know be glad about you know having a through whatever it is you know smash battalion there of terrorism we're looking at a garage but my kid won't be it's my kids that are being destroyed that is fantastic about us now this is ilw housing project which will be interracial the people who are running it now 70 are caucasian 30 uh big blow [Music] then above that would be the ikla homes and so forth eichler's always letting ingross buy if they had the money although their apartments i mean their houses cost say from 22 after thirty two times so naturally this automatically eliminates yeah a lot of people i conclude that all this is something to do with money the land has been reclaimed for money and that the people are putting out the houses expect to make a profit it seems to me i'm not attacking what's called a profit motive there's something so important in profits i know new york city has been turned into a desert really for the same reason but it's happening in san francisco now it's as though one the society made the assumption that certainly acts on the assumption that to make money is more important than to have citizens we're paying to our price for this because this is only what it's doing to negro children which is god knows bad enough is what it does about children who grow up believing that it is more important to make a profit than it is to be a man and that's the way that society really operates i don't care what society says this is what it operates and these are the goals it says and these goals aren't worth the other man and adolescents know it are you working on david no i'm not well what has been some of the what has been some of your problems true faith as a negro in san francisco well my main problem is uh finding a job uh yesterday i talked to a guy a white fellow that worked at a field station he got a service two months and he got two jobs i've work and he told me from his own mouth who was on top he didn't come out and see it just like i'm gonna see it but he came out and told me that uh you got to know somebody in san francisco to get somewhere and by knowing somebody's got to be somebody with authority and nobody in science to school no colors man got no authority you know i mean no there are no negro leaders in san francisco did you feel that they're all with you there are a few do you know any no i don't know anything but the ones that get up there the ones that get up there they don't want to help nobody you know when there's no one no one has ever helped you no nobody would have thought it beside my parole officer well even the least damaged those kids would have to put it as mildly as it can be put at the moment we have to be a little sardonic a little sardonic about the um the things you see in television what the president says and um all those movies about being a good american and all that jazz and you look at this look over there look up here and he would despise the people you know who are able to have such a tremendous gap between their performance and their profession but the ball but the more damaged kids if somebody feel like blowing it up me feel like blowing it up it's reading only for myself you know that i feel i feel a little so darling i'm civilized i think but the time my life and i would have felt just like just like blowing it up what's more crucial what's more terrible is how since one's in the main left alone in terms of any help you can get from the country in this effort how you get through to the least damaged kids and now and i don't know what i could say which would make any sense to them because in fact this does not make any sense now with all of these beautiful buildings now they're going to be ringed in by hostile people just like right in new york hostile and frightened people because they don't they they walk down the street and wonder why the person who a boy they see looks and looks at them as though he wants to kill them and if he gets chance tries and it's because he can't go to asia you know he can't it's because he can't he hasn't there's no he has no ground to stand here the cat said yesterday i got my country i got no flank and it isn't because he was born paranoid that he said that it's because of the performance of the company for his 18 years on earth has proven that to him now how one manages to make these people this blind people begin to see so there's anybody about that that building it has absolutely no foundation and it really does not have any foundation it's going to come down one way or another either we will correct what's wrong or will be corrected for us and this is the what was that the saint mary's cathedral uh this bomb building here yeah i mean not bomb but i mean this uh it looks fine that was a fire but this is going to be torn down but this will not be the sight of the cathedral they're going to change it really it's horrible look at him oh yeah this was started one night they had a some of the kids were having a dance in the downstairs yeah it didn't take us very long they just got it the whole thing but as a result the catholic church was able to raise 15 million dollars to build another cathedral some people know how to make it i was raised a christian you know my daddy and my mama were very religious many of the white christians went on christians because of the way they treated black people and the christian church in this country has never in my experience never as far as i know being christian the record is much more than much more than shameful the recording the record proves that as we stand here as of this moment christian church is bankrupt it's not a single person i could turn to if i were trying to deal with one of those boys you were talking to yesterday if i tried to tell them to go to church or even suggested the name of jesus christ he spit in my face it's not because he doesn't like my face it's because it's because of what white christians have done and do and now deny all these churches are absolutely meaningless they're almost blasphemous if they don't mean it they should no they should um say so christianity become kind of social club you have to have a membership call to get in black people can't have a membership card actually christianity at the moment looks rather like that church that shell the guard shop for me what what place are the guard shops i think the god shops i know the guy chops there to console a whole lot of desperate people what we can hear called the failure of christianity really you know people in the guard shops are there because it gives them the only it's only one of the few places they can go to find anywhere getting through their day of dealing with the landlord and um pawn broker and the children and the whole horrible complex of forces which bear you down every day once you no longer accept this whole notion of heaven later in a concentration camp here next to the morningstar missionary about this church yes this is one of the real little god shops while people have always thought that the negro churches singing and dancing and praying means that they were really quite simple-minded and happier than like you know the white people what goes on those little guard shops you know it's exactly the same things going on now in the muslim temples but no one's ever no one has ever made that connection [Music] off to our left here's one negro hotel that's all the only [ __ ] hotel yes it's called the booker's washington yes naturally this is a street that only grows the barn off no the street only girls have to survive nobody watches the baptist church and and the malls there's really a great history you know great thing to be summed up in that if one could looking at this speed now the booktubey washington hotel i mean what comes to your mind about uh some type of music or some passions from the bible that destruct describes this sing the lord's song in a strange land i don't know i don't know i'm sure those guys across the street can dance like you know their white counterparts can and the reason they can is because they've in a way they must it is it's got to come out somehow it's got to come out somehow you know and the pressure is great enough has come out in a certain kind of negroes have great style i think this is true even if it sounds chauvinistic and white people don't have much style and one of the reasons the negros have a certain style is because they are aware of the conditions of their lives they can't fool themselves about it you know and when a negro laughs or tries to make love or or eats or dances it's kind of total action i don't mean this way white liberals are maybe going to think i mean it i don't mean they're more more sensual more primitive more the more spontaneous all this um ethnic jazz i mean i mean they live they live on another level of experience which doesn't allow them as much room as much room to make believe as white people have [Music] every known black man knows there's something that american white men are in the grip of some extraordinary sexual paranoia and they really are what that comes from is probably a story for some other you know some other time and place in any case such a long and terrible story and so complicated that one couldn't begin to discuss it except by examining if you like you know such things well we talked very soon we we in faulkner the range between black and white men in this country has always been the most extraordinary and once there's something real in it and a terrifying invention in it and it goes all the way back from the first time that any americans started writing and had something to do with the indian if one could that nut really you open that can of beans if one could find try to find out and this is something white people should be negro can't do it exactly what negro means to a white man i don't mean what he means in terms of signing petitions and you know mastering picket signs and all that jazz i mean what he really means no why are you afraid of him that's when it comes to you longer begin to examine that one might then begin to be able to deal with what is a really quite simple matter relatively speaking that is to say if you want to examine that then the conundrum of the housing situation in san francisco will not be a conundrum because it is based on that and all the lies americans tell themselves and all the evasions that they give themselves are based on some fantastic escape partly from europe and then from the indian and now spectacularly for me it's insane well white liberals think of themselves as missionaries i had i had a kind of fight once with a very well-known white liberal and i said in the course of my conversations and we have mr charlie this is a man who's been around for a long long time and he said who's mr charlie i was shocked that he didn't know you know and i told him where mrs charlie was i said you're mr charlie all white men are mr charlotte but liberals have protected themselves against this level of experience because their principal motive so far been so far been as far as i can tell a kind of alleviation of our protection of their own consciences they want to do something to help negroes because it makes them feel better but the prices they paid for this kind of effort is they've never discovered who a negro is not one but who only a liberal for example could write the script of the defiant ones no negro could no only a liberal can be offended as john fisher and harper's magazine is offended when you know when when it's when negroes make some unmistakable indications they're going to they don't want any more this is the record you see they really think that somehow the record of the negro people's survival in this country is something i wish they can congratulate themselves and they don't know that for every one man who survived 20 perished and that whatever the negroes managed to do here was done against tremendous the tremendous opposition of the power structure that means there weren't some white people who managed you know but in the generality this is the way it's been do you feel at the right level a lot of times that when it when the uh things gets real tough that he can escape i mean he can say you can revert back tomorrow when the white liberalism when things get stuck when things get suffer a white woman the white woman liberal told me a few a few weeks ago she had she had the bad luck to be sitting in the same room with about 20 students who would talk you know telling like it is sterling brown was there and uh she was one of the few white liberal in the liberals in the room and she was and that what what these kids were saying and the fact was we you know white people don't know enough about us to be able to help us you know white people say one thing and do another although it's absolutely true and she was terribly trying to be heard literally hurt and she said i'm sure i've done more for the negroes than they than they've ever done and i got mad and i said that's exactly what they were saying they don't do anything for negroes no they want you to do it for you you said well i'm not really i'm not willing to damage my child she said and i said well then forget it after all speaking for myself you know it's kind of insult i i here i am you know as they say no visible i'm not i'm not i'm not isolated i've got a family you know and a history and i got nieces and nephews i can't protect them you know they're they're in tremendous danger of every hour that they live just because they're black not because they're wicked no and i mean this from the from the baby niece to the to the oldest nephew who's only 16. now if this is the way that this is where they are you know and i know that every time i leave my nephew i don't know what happened what happened to him by the time i see him again i mean not only inside but physically how can you expect me to take seriously somebody who says i'm willing to fight for you but i but i can't afford to let my children get you know i can't afford my children to be damaged and furthermore how can i take seriously somebody who doesn't realize that children are being damaged by this because by the continuation of this other of this system you can't you know you can't serve as they say two masters and you know the liberal can't be safe and um and heroic too in other words they want to become so safe that he gets behind the safety zone yes that's right that's right he's with you but um not when the going gets rough and really what i really mean at bottom is that he doesn't if you can if you can put it think of it in those terms and you don't see the gravity of the situation you don't see that that we are living in a segregated society and this does terrible things in my child does terrible things to your child too if you don't see that then i don't think you see anything and most liberals do not see that one of the great american illusions one of the way american necessities is to believe that i the poor united black man who may save elephant-ridden jungles of africa whom they brought the bible is still grateful for that and people say in many many ways not only in the south all over this country in effect you should be grateful even even slavery it released you from that no longer dodging pepsi flies in some backward country well i know this anyone who's ever tried to live knows this so what you say about somebody else you know anybody else revealed you what i think of you as being it's dictated by my own necessities my own psychology my own um fears and desires i'm not describing you i talk about you describing me now here in this country we've got something called a [ __ ] it doesn't in such terms i beg you to remark exist in any other country in the world we have invented the [ __ ] i didn't invent him white people invented him i've always known i had to know by the time i was 17 years old what you were describing was not me and what you were afraid of was not me that'd be something else you had invented it so it had to be something you were afraid of and you invested me with now that's so no matter what you've done to me i can say to you this and i mean it i know you can't do anymore and i've got nothing to lose and i know and i've always known no and really always that's part of the agony i've always known that i'm not a [ __ ] but if i are not the [ __ ] [Applause] and if it's true that your invention reveals you and who is a [ __ ] i'm not the victim here i know one thing from another how do i want to born and i'm i'm going to be you know i was born i'm going to stop and i'm going to die the only way you get through life is know the worst things about it i know that a person is more important than anything else anything else i learned this because i've had to learn it but you still think i gather that the [ __ ] is necessary well it's unnecessary to me so it must be necessary to you i'll give you your problem back you're the [ __ ] baby isn't me

Channel: AfroMarxist

Views: 55,579

Keywords: James Baldwin

Id: J9UG9nJ2E9U

Length: 43min 48sec (2628 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 22 2020