The Lie That Underpins All Injustices Facing Black Americans | NowThis

[Music] the best way to talk about the line is the quote of passage on page nine it's from Jimmy's essay 1964 essay the white problem and it reads the people who settled the country had a fatal flaw they could recognize a man when they saw one they knew he wasn't anything else but a man but since they were Christian and since they had already decided that they came here to establish the free country the only way to justify the role this chattel was playing in one's life was to say that he was not a man or if he wasn't then no crime had been committed that line is the basis of our present trouble and so what Baldwin is saying here at the heart of it is that there have been lies told about black people's capacities about our character about our passions all to justify right this system of exploitation this system this cruel barbaric system of slavery that is at the heart of the founding of the modern world right at the heart of the founding of the country and so not only do you have lies about black people you have lives about what white Americans have done to black people and then you have the lie that's so this is the key point there's there's a way in which the lie works that it mouths forms I use that verb on purpose it mouth forms any reality any effort to expose the constant reality of what it is done so anything that anything that comes to reveal the truth of what the of what the nation has done what it is done to the native peoples what it is done in Haiti and Cuba and the Philippines what it is done in Hiroshima and Nagasaki anything that actually reveals that America is not the shining city on the hill or the Redeemer nation or the example of democracy achieve right anything that anything that attempts to reveal that reality is immediately dismissed as Harris that's what I mean by the lie and that lie is the architecture within which the value gap breathes and the value gap is fundamental belief that white people matter more than others and that's at the heart of it it's at the heart of our social arrangements our political arrangements our economic arrangements it's a valuation of black folk and evaluation of white folk that lead to the distribution of advantage and disadvantage that distorts the character of these folk who hold it so they can't even become the kinds of people their conception of democracy required he also knows how thick white supremacy is in the souls of black people for real right the lie has been something that too many black people have consented to so if you really believe you're less beautiful less intelligent less moral if you run around scared and intimidated and fearful all the time and laugh and want it don't it ain't funny and scratching win it don't inch you're just gonna wear a mask your whole life so the only thing that could break the back of fear is love people are fearful the only way you grow into maturity is through a sense of history you'll sense the memory and the love that went into you that empower you to break the kinds of anxieties that don't allow you to be the free person you ought to be [Music] [Music]

Channel: NowThis Impact

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Keywords: NowThis, NowThisNews, Now This News, NowThis News, Now This Media, NowThis Media, Current Events, news, US news, current events today, black lives matter, black lives matter protest, black lives matter protests, blm, blm protests, george floyd, george floyd protest, george floyd protests, cornel west, cornell west, james baldwin, eddie glaude jr, eddie glaude cornel west, cornel west eddie glaude, eddie glaude, the white problem, baldwin, baldwin the white problem, protests

Id: I205IQw6ns8

Length: 3min 46sec (226 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 08 2020