1 00:00:09,104 --> 00:00:11,649 [music] 2 00:00:17,252 --> 00:00:19,990 Narrator: The following program is from NET: 3 00:00:19,990 --> 00:00:22,680 The National Educational Television Network. 4 00:00:25,200 --> 00:00:29,303 - Debate: James Baldwin versus William Buckley. 5 00:00:29,303 --> 00:00:31,689 Subject: Has the American Dream 6 00:00:31,689 --> 00:00:34,869 Been Achieved at the Expense of the American Negro? 7 00:00:34,869 --> 00:00:39,639 This debate was held recently at the Cambridge Union, Cambridge University 8 00:00:39,639 --> 00:00:44,360 England, and was recorded for use by NET. 9 00:00:44,360 --> 00:00:47,040 Norman St. John Stevas, M.P: Well, here we are in the debating hall 10 00:00:47,040 --> 00:00:52,918 of the Cambridge Union, hundreds of undergraduates and myself waiting for what 11 00:00:52,918 --> 00:00:57,387 could prove one of the most exciting debates in the whole 150 years 12 00:00:57,387 --> 00:01:00,726 of the union history. It rarely... I don't think I have ever 13 00:01:00,726 --> 00:01:04,253 seen the union so well attended. There are undergraduates everywhere. 14 00:01:04,253 --> 00:01:07,506 They're on the benches and on the floor and on the galleries. And there are a lot 15 00:01:07,506 --> 00:01:12,855 more outside clamoring to get in. Well, the motion that has drawn this huge 16 00:01:12,855 --> 00:01:18,708 crowd tonight is this: That the American Dream has been achieved at the expense 17 00:01:18,708 --> 00:01:23,980 of the American negro. The debate will open with two undergraduate speakers, 18 00:01:23,980 --> 00:01:27,417 one from each side, and then we shall have the first distinguished guest, 19 00:01:27,417 --> 00:01:32,855 Mr James Baldwin, the well-known American novelist who has achieved a worldwide 20 00:01:32,855 --> 00:01:38,132 fame with his novel "Another Country." Then opposing the motion will be 21 00:01:38,132 --> 00:01:42,759 Mr. William Buckley, also an American. Very well-known as a conservative in the 22 00:01:42,759 --> 00:01:46,594 United States. I must stress a conservative in the American sense. Author of a book 23 00:01:46,594 --> 00:01:51,610 called "Up from Liberalism" and editor of the "National Review." One of the early 24 00:01:51,610 --> 00:01:55,880 supporters of Senator Goldwater. Well, this is the setting of the debate, 25 00:01:55,880 --> 00:02:00,720 and at any moment now, the president will be leading in his officers and his 26 00:02:00,720 --> 00:02:05,031 distinguished guests. He will take his chair, and the debate will begin. 27 00:02:07,191 --> 00:02:09,381 [applause] 28 00:02:46,213 --> 00:02:49,913 President: The motion before the house tonight is "The American Dream is at 29 00:02:50,006 --> 00:02:53,554 the Expense of the American Negro." The proposer, Mr. David Heycock of 30 00:02:53,554 --> 00:02:57,414 Pembroke College, and our opposer, Mr. Jeremy Burford of Emmanuel College. 31 00:02:57,414 --> 00:03:01,702 Mr. James Baldwin will speak third. Mr. William F. Buckley Jr. will speak fourth. 32 00:03:01,702 --> 00:03:04,024 Mr. Heycock is the ear of the house. 33 00:03:04,024 --> 00:03:06,988 [applause] 34 00:03:15,123 --> 00:03:19,099 David Heycock: Mr. President, sir, it is the custom of the house for the first 35 00:03:19,099 --> 00:03:22,869 speaker in any debate to extend a formal welcome to any visitors to the 36 00:03:22,869 --> 00:03:26,931 house. I can honestly say, however, it is a very great honor to be able to welcome 37 00:03:26,931 --> 00:03:31,005 to the house this evening Mr. William Buckley and Mr. James Baldwin. 38 00:03:31,005 --> 00:03:35,099 Mr. William Buckley has the reputation of possibly being the most articulate 39 00:03:35,099 --> 00:03:39,240 conservative in the United States of America. He was a graduate of Yale, 40 00:03:39,240 --> 00:03:42,614 and he first gained a reputation for himself by publishing a book entitled 41 00:03:42,614 --> 00:03:44,419 "God and Man at Yale." 42 00:03:44,419 --> 00:03:46,934 [laughter] 43 00:03:46,934 --> 00:03:50,393 Since then, he has devoted himself to the secular, and this has included 44 00:03:50,393 --> 00:03:54,613 Norman Mailer, Kenneth Tynan, Mary McCarthy, and Fidel Castro, none of whom 45 00:03:54,613 --> 00:03:57,063 have come out of their confrontations unscathed. 46 00:03:57,063 --> 00:03:58,250 [laughter] 47 00:03:58,250 --> 00:04:02,782 At present, his principal occupation is editing a right-wing newspaper in the 48 00:04:02,782 --> 00:04:04,923 United States entitled "The National Review." 49 00:04:04,923 --> 00:04:09,011 Mr. James Baldwin is hardly in need of introduction. His reputation both as a 50 00:04:09,011 --> 00:04:13,881 novelist and as an advocate of civil rights is international. His third novel 51 00:04:13,881 --> 00:04:18,238 "Another Country" has been published as a paperback in England today. Mr. Baldwin 52 00:04:18,238 --> 00:04:21,843 and Mr. Buckley are both very welcome to the house this evening. 53 00:04:21,843 --> 00:04:24,128 [applause] 54 00:04:40,973 --> 00:04:45,947 Imagine, Mr. President, a society which above all values freedom and equality. 55 00:04:45,947 --> 00:04:49,247 A society in which artificial barriers to fulfillment and achievement 56 00:04:49,247 --> 00:04:51,267 are unheard of. 57 00:04:51,267 --> 00:04:54,319 A society in which a man may begin his life as a rail splitter 58 00:04:54,319 --> 00:04:56,089 and end it as president. 59 00:04:56,089 --> 00:05:01,029 A society in which all men are free in every sense of the word. Free to live 60 00:05:01,029 --> 00:05:04,720 where they choose. Free to work where they choose. Equal in the eyes of the law and 61 00:05:04,720 --> 00:05:08,264 every public authority and equal in the eyes of their fellows. 62 00:05:08,264 --> 00:05:11,724 A society in fact in which intolerance and prejudice 63 00:05:11,724 --> 00:05:15,745 are meaningless terms. Imagine, however, Mr. President, 64 00:05:15,745 --> 00:05:20,019 that a condition of this utopia has been a persistent and quite deliberate 65 00:05:20,019 --> 00:05:24,889 exploitation of one ninth of its inhabitants. That one man in nine has 66 00:05:24,889 --> 00:05:28,870 been denied those rights, which the rest of that society takes for granted. 67 00:05:28,870 --> 00:05:32,769 That one man in nine does not have a chance for fulfillment or realization 68 00:05:32,769 --> 00:05:36,818 of his innate potentiality. That one man in nine cannot promise his 69 00:05:36,818 --> 00:05:41,801 children a secure future and unlimited opportunities. Imagine this Mr. President 70 00:05:41,801 --> 00:05:46,470 and you have, what is in my opinion, the bitter reality of the American Dream. 71 00:05:46,470 --> 00:05:51,092 A few weeks ago Martin Luther King had to hold a non-violent demonstration in 72 00:05:51,092 --> 00:05:55,720 Selma, Alabama in his drive to register negro voters. By the end of the week 73 00:05:55,720 --> 00:05:59,385 of his demonstrations, he was able to write quite accurately in a national 74 00:05:59,385 --> 00:06:03,801 fundraising letter from Selma, Alabama jail, "There are more negros in prison 75 00:06:03,801 --> 00:06:07,552 with me than there are on the voting rolls." When King wrote that letter, 76 00:06:07,552 --> 00:06:11,570 335 out of 32,700 77 00:06:11,570 --> 00:06:16,469 negros in Dallas had the vote. One percent of the Dallas population. 78 00:06:16,469 --> 00:06:21,209 After a mass march to the courthouse, 237 negros, 79 00:06:21,209 --> 00:06:25,089 King among them, were arrested. The following day, 470 80 00:06:25,089 --> 00:06:28,418 children, who had deserted their classrooms to protest against 81 00:06:28,418 --> 00:06:31,670 King's arrest, were charged with juvenile delinquency. 82 00:06:31,670 --> 00:06:33,758 [laughter] 83 00:06:33,758 --> 00:06:36,929 36 adults on the same day were charged with contempt of court for 84 00:06:36,929 --> 00:06:40,161 picketing the courthouse while state circuit court was in session. 85 00:06:40,161 --> 00:06:43,611 On the following day, 111 people were arrested on the 86 00:06:43,611 --> 00:06:46,989 same charge despite their claim that they merely wanted to see the voting 87 00:06:46,989 --> 00:06:52,139 registrar. 400 students were arrested and taken to the armory, 88 00:06:52,139 --> 00:06:56,574 where many of them spent the night on a cold cement floor. The following 89 00:06:56,574 --> 00:07:00,721 day, the demonstrations spread to Marion, Alabama. In Marion, negros 90 00:07:00,721 --> 00:07:05,089 outnumber whites by 11,500 to 6,000 people 91 00:07:05,089 --> 00:07:10,761 and yet, only 300 are registered to vote. Negros in Marion were anxious 92 00:07:10,761 --> 00:07:14,920 to test the public accommodations section of the civil rights law. They entered a 93 00:07:14,920 --> 00:07:19,269 drugstore and there they were served with Coca-Cola laced with salt and were 94 00:07:19,269 --> 00:07:24,770 told that hamburgers had risen to $5 each. After the arrest of 15 95 00:07:24,770 --> 00:07:28,349 negros for protesting against this treatment, 700 negros 96 00:07:28,349 --> 00:07:32,080 boycotted their classes the next day and marched in orderly fashion to the 97 00:07:32,080 --> 00:07:37,694 jail. There, they sang civil rights songs until they were warned by a state trooper 98 00:07:37,694 --> 00:07:41,389 that they would be arrested if they sung one more song. Of course, they sung 99 00:07:41,389 --> 00:07:45,429 another song, and of course, all 700 were arrested. American 100 00:07:45,429 --> 00:07:50,096 society has felt fit to use negro labor. It has felt fit to use the blood of the 101 00:07:50,096 --> 00:07:54,380 negro in two world wars. It has felt fit to listen to his music. It has felt fit to laugh 102 00:07:54,380 --> 00:07:57,901 at his jokes, and yet, as far as I am concerned, it has never felt fit to 103 00:07:57,901 --> 00:08:02,070 give the American negro a fair deal; and for this reason Mr. President, 104 00:08:02,070 --> 00:08:05,230 I will beg leave to propose the motion that the American Dream 105 00:08:05,230 --> 00:08:07,698 is at the expense of the American negro. 106 00:08:07,698 --> 00:08:10,058 [applause] 107 00:08:17,628 --> 00:08:22,768 - I now call Mr. Jeremy Burford of Emmanuel College to oppose the motion. 108 00:08:22,768 --> 00:08:24,806 [applause] 109 00:08:28,571 --> 00:08:32,747 Narrator: Now, we have Mr. Jeremy Burford of Emmanuel College who 110 00:08:32,747 --> 00:08:35,343 is the first undergraduate opposing the motion. 111 00:08:37,473 --> 00:08:41,495 Jeremy Burford: James Baldwin is well known as one of the most vivid 112 00:08:41,495 --> 00:08:46,322 and articulate writers about the negro problem in America. Mr. Baldwin 113 00:08:46,322 --> 00:08:50,329 had a difficult childhood, and he has personally himself suffered 114 00:08:50,329 --> 00:08:54,720 discrimination and ill treatment in the south of America, and I would 115 00:08:54,720 --> 00:09:00,775 like to say at this time that it is not the purpose of this side of 116 00:09:00,775 --> 00:09:06,921 the house to condone that in any way at all. It is not our purpose to 117 00:09:06,921 --> 00:09:13,512 oppose civil rights. It is our purpose to oppose this motion. 118 00:09:13,512 --> 00:09:17,816 [laughter] 119 00:09:17,816 --> 00:09:20,977 Thank you, sir. Come and collect your fee afterwards. 120 00:09:20,977 --> 00:09:23,858 [laughter and applause] 121 00:09:26,923 --> 00:09:31,812 This side of the house denies that the American Dream has in any way been 122 00:09:31,812 --> 00:09:36,088 helped by this undoubted inequality and suffering of the negro. 123 00:09:36,088 --> 00:09:41,295 We maintain that in fact it has hindered the American Dream, and if there had 124 00:09:41,295 --> 00:09:45,268 been equality, if there had been true freedom of opportunity, the American 125 00:09:45,268 --> 00:09:49,734 Dream would be very much more advanced than it is now. If the American Dream has 126 00:09:49,734 --> 00:09:54,755 made any progress, and I think it has, it has been made in spite of the suffering 127 00:09:54,755 --> 00:10:00,879 and inequality of the American negro and not because of it. Now it is also implied 128 00:10:00,879 --> 00:10:05,910 from this motion that the American Dream is encouraging and worsening the suffering 129 00:10:05,910 --> 00:10:07,769 of the American negro. 130 00:10:07,769 --> 00:10:12,039 This is emphatically not the case. The American Dream, 131 00:10:12,039 --> 00:10:17,028 the American economic prosperity and respect for civil liberties has been the 132 00:10:17,028 --> 00:10:19,166 main factor in bringing about 133 00:10:19,166 --> 00:10:22,386 the undoubted improvement in race relations in America 134 00:10:22,386 --> 00:10:24,893 in the last twenty years. 135 00:10:24,893 --> 00:10:28,403 And Professor Arnold Rose who is the author of "The Negro in America," 136 00:10:28,403 --> 00:10:33,271 which is perhaps the definitive work on the subject, who is also 137 00:10:33,271 --> 00:10:36,864 a contributor of what was called "The Freedom Pamphlet," 138 00:10:36,864 --> 00:10:40,753 so I should imagine that if he has any bias at all, it is in favor of the negro. 139 00:10:40,753 --> 00:10:44,953 He's said that this improvement in race relations 140 00:10:44,953 --> 00:10:49,244 will be seen in years to come as remarkably quick, and he has put it down 141 00:10:49,244 --> 00:10:54,718 to three main causes: increased industrialization and technical advance, 142 00:10:54,718 --> 00:10:59,020 the increased social mobility of the American people, and the economic 143 00:10:59,020 --> 00:11:04,304 prosperity. And I would put it to this house that that industrialization and 144 00:11:04,304 --> 00:11:09,658 economic prosperity are two of the main ingredients of the American Dream and 145 00:11:09,658 --> 00:11:15,232 at the same time--again, I do not want to say that the negro in America is treated 146 00:11:15,232 --> 00:11:20,345 fairly--but at the same time, the average per capita income of negros in America 147 00:11:20,345 --> 00:11:25,773 is exactly the same as the average per capita income of people in Great Britain. 148 00:11:25,773 --> 00:11:30,974 Now, I found that absolutely amazing. [laughter] 149 00:11:30,974 --> 00:11:36,414 [laughter] I understand that some of you do as well. 150 00:11:36,414 --> 00:11:40,434 So I've got the reference here from the United States News and World Report 151 00:11:40,434 --> 00:11:44,333 of July the 22nd 1963, in which it points out-- 152 00:11:44,333 --> 00:11:47,593 This will have to be the last interruption I take because time is running short. 153 00:11:47,593 --> 00:11:50,717 - Mr. President, on a point of information, is this speaker 154 00:11:50,717 --> 00:11:53,139 talking of real income or money income? 155 00:11:53,139 --> 00:11:55,743 - I'm talking of money income. [applause] 156 00:11:57,989 --> 00:12:01,491 I am talking of money income. I would not wish to disguise that. 157 00:12:01,491 --> 00:12:06,633 I would also say that in terms of this, there are only five countries in the world 158 00:12:06,633 --> 00:12:08,577 where the income is higher 159 00:12:08,577 --> 00:12:11,696 than that of the American negro, and they do not include countries like 160 00:12:11,696 --> 00:12:18,076 West Germany and France and Japan. Now, there are in America 35 161 00:12:18,076 --> 00:12:24,537 negro millionaires. There are negro 6,000 doctors and so on. Now I do not by saying 162 00:12:24,537 --> 00:12:29,055 this wish to emphasize that the negro is fairly treated. I merely wish to try and 163 00:12:29,055 --> 00:12:34,616 convey a more realistic and objective account of the situation of the negro. 164 00:12:34,616 --> 00:12:41,654 I agree that there are negros who are very poor indeed, such as the... 165 00:12:43,584 --> 00:12:45,549 Such as the old gentlemen in the south 166 00:12:45,549 --> 00:12:50,559 who was talking about some of his wealthier brethren 167 00:12:50,559 --> 00:12:53,606 and he was saying "Yes, sir, some of these rich negros, 168 00:12:53,606 --> 00:12:56,586 they put on airs, they're like the bottom figure of a fraction, 169 00:12:56,586 --> 00:12:59,244 the bigger they try to be, the smaller they really are." 170 00:12:59,244 --> 00:13:04,657 I would repeat Mr. President, sir, in the last minute I have, that this debate 171 00:13:04,657 --> 00:13:08,294 is not whether civil rights should be extended to American negros or not; 172 00:13:08,294 --> 00:13:12,136 if it were, it would be a very easy motion to argue for and a very easy 173 00:13:12,136 --> 00:13:17,959 motion to vote for. The debate tonight concerns whether the American Dream 174 00:13:17,959 --> 00:13:22,694 is at the expense of the American negro. That is whether the American negro has 175 00:13:22,694 --> 00:13:27,004 paid for the American Dream with his suffering or whether the American Dream 176 00:13:27,004 --> 00:13:31,290 has furthered negro inequality, and I would deny both those two precepts. 177 00:13:31,290 --> 00:13:35,918 I would say that negro inequality has hindered the American Dream, 178 00:13:35,918 --> 00:13:39,298 and I would say that the American Dream has been very important indeed 179 00:13:39,298 --> 00:13:40,908 in furthering civil rights 180 00:13:40,908 --> 00:13:43,418 and in furthering freedom for the American negro. 181 00:13:43,418 --> 00:13:46,023 Mr. President, sir, I beg to oppose the motion. 182 00:13:46,023 --> 00:13:48,675 [applause] 183 00:13:57,602 --> 00:14:00,579 - It is now with very great pleasure and a very great sense of 184 00:14:00,579 --> 00:14:04,072 honor that I call Mr. James Baldwin to speak third to this motion. 185 00:14:04,072 --> 00:14:06,817 [applause] 186 00:14:12,658 --> 00:14:18,302 Narrator: Now we have Mr. James Baldwin, the star of the evening, who has been 187 00:14:18,302 --> 00:14:23,766 sitting, listening attentively and getting a wonderful reception here in the 188 00:14:23,766 --> 00:14:25,531 Cambridge Union. 189 00:14:25,531 --> 00:14:29,791 From members, enthusiasm from all sides of the house for 190 00:14:29,791 --> 00:14:33,173 Mr. Baldwin, who has been listening to the arguments. 191 00:14:33,173 --> 00:14:35,711 Now will bring the voice of actual experience to the debate. 192 00:14:35,711 --> 00:14:37,097 James Baldwin: Good evening. 193 00:14:37,097 --> 00:14:40,667 [laughter] 194 00:14:40,667 --> 00:14:50,782 I find myself, not for the first time, in the position of a kind of Jeremiah. 195 00:14:53,894 --> 00:15:00,201 For example, I don’t disagree with Mr. Burford that the inequality 196 00:15:00,201 --> 00:15:04,067 suffered by the American Negro population of the United States has hindered 197 00:15:04,067 --> 00:15:07,730 the American Dream. Indeed, it has. 198 00:15:07,730 --> 00:15:14,425 I quarrel with some other things he has to say. The other, deeper, element of 199 00:15:14,425 --> 00:15:25,652 a certain awkwardness I feel has to do with one’s point of view. 200 00:15:25,652 --> 00:15:29,194 I have to put it that way-- one’s sense, one’s system of reality. 201 00:15:29,194 --> 00:15:33,238 It would seem to me the proposition before the house, and I would put it 202 00:15:33,238 --> 00:15:37,304 that way, is the American Dream at the expense of the American negro, 203 00:15:37,304 --> 00:15:40,382 or the American Dream is at the expense of the American negro, 204 00:15:40,382 --> 00:15:46,506 is a question hideously loaded, and that one’s response to that question, 205 00:15:46,506 --> 00:15:52,515 one’s reaction to that question, has to depend on effect and, in effect, 206 00:15:52,515 --> 00:15:56,751 where you find yourself in the world, what your sense of reality is, 207 00:15:56,751 --> 00:16:04,072 what your system of reality is. That is, it depends on assumptions which 208 00:16:04,072 --> 00:16:08,069 we hold so deeply as to be scarcely aware of them. 209 00:16:08,069 --> 00:16:12,812 A white South African or a Mississippi sharecropper or 210 00:16:12,812 --> 00:16:18,572 Mississippi sheriff, or a Frenchman driven out of Algeria, all have, at bottom, 211 00:16:18,572 --> 00:16:24,616 a system of reality which compels them to, for example, in the case of the 212 00:16:24,616 --> 00:16:30,096 French exile from Algeria, to defend French reasons for having ruled Algeria. 213 00:16:30,096 --> 00:16:34,401 The Mississippi or the Alabama sheriff, who really does believe, when he’s facing 214 00:16:34,401 --> 00:16:40,380 a negro boy or girl, that this woman, this man, this child must be insane to 215 00:16:40,380 --> 00:16:45,027 attack the system to which he owes his entire identity. Of course, to 216 00:16:45,027 --> 00:16:48,840 such a person, the proposition of which we are trying to discuss here tonight 217 00:16:48,840 --> 00:17:01,589 does not exist. And on the other hand, I have to speak as one of the people 218 00:17:01,589 --> 00:17:07,285 who’ve been most attacked by what we must now here call the Western or 219 00:17:07,285 --> 00:17:14,634 European system of reality. What white people in the world-- 220 00:17:14,634 --> 00:17:18,282 white supremacy, I hate to say it here, comes from Europe. 221 00:17:18,282 --> 00:17:25,006 That's how it got to America. Beneath then, whatever one’s reaction to this 222 00:17:25,006 --> 00:17:30,282 proposition is, has to be the question of whether or not civilizations can 223 00:17:30,282 --> 00:17:36,281 be considered, as such, equal, or whether one civilization has the right 224 00:17:36,281 --> 00:17:41,024 to overtake and subjugate, and, in fact, to destroy another. 225 00:17:42,724 --> 00:17:48,894 Now, what happens when that happens? Leaving aside all the physical facts which 226 00:17:48,894 --> 00:17:54,329 one can quote. Leaving aside rape or murder. Leaving aside the bloody 227 00:17:54,329 --> 00:17:59,651 catalog of oppression, which we are in one way too familiar with already, 228 00:17:59,651 --> 00:18:04,816 what this does to the subjugated, the most private, the most serious 229 00:18:04,816 --> 00:18:09,994 thing this does to the subjugated, is to destroy his sense of reality. 230 00:18:09,994 --> 00:18:16,045 It destroys, for example, his father’s authority over him. His father can no 231 00:18:16,045 --> 00:18:19,792 longer tell him anything, because the past has disappeared, and his 232 00:18:19,792 --> 00:18:24,236 father has no power in the world. This means, in the case of an 233 00:18:24,236 --> 00:18:29,603 American negro, born in that glittering republic, and the moment you 234 00:18:29,603 --> 00:18:32,076 are born, since you don’t know any better, 235 00:18:32,076 --> 00:18:36,013 every stick and stone and every face is white. 236 00:18:36,013 --> 00:18:39,614 And since you have not yet seen a mirror, you suppose that you 237 00:18:39,614 --> 00:18:47,535 are, too. It comes as a great shock around the age of 5, or 6, or 7, to 238 00:18:47,535 --> 00:18:51,158 discover the flag to which you have pledged allegiance, along with 239 00:18:51,158 --> 00:18:56,006 everybody else, has not pledged allegiance to you. It comes as a 240 00:18:56,006 --> 00:18:59,229 great shock to discover that Gary Cooper killing off the Indians, when you 241 00:18:59,229 --> 00:19:06,499 were rooting for Gary Cooper, that the Indians were you. It comes as a 242 00:19:06,499 --> 00:19:11,172 great shock to discover that the country which is your birthplace and to 243 00:19:11,172 --> 00:19:17,078 which you owe your life and your identity, has not, in its whole system of reality, 244 00:19:17,078 --> 00:19:24,594 evovled any place for you. The disaffection, the demoralization, and the 245 00:19:24,594 --> 00:19:29,794 gap between one person and another only on the basis of the color of their 246 00:19:29,794 --> 00:19:35,977 skin, begins there and accelerates-- accelerates throughout a whole lifetime 247 00:19:35,977 --> 00:19:40,338 to the present when you realize you’re thirty and are having a terrible 248 00:19:40,338 --> 00:19:48,176 time managing to trust your countrymen. By the time you are thirty, 249 00:19:48,176 --> 00:19:55,654 you have been through a certain kind of mill. And the most serious effect 250 00:19:55,654 --> 00:19:59,839 of the mill you’ve been through is, again, not the catalog of disaster, 251 00:19:59,839 --> 00:20:07,137 the policemen, the taxi drivers, the waiters, the landlady, the landlord, 252 00:20:07,137 --> 00:20:12,494 the banks, the insurance companies, the millions of details, twenty four 253 00:20:12,494 --> 00:20:17,492 hours of every day, which spell out to you that you are a worthless 254 00:20:17,492 --> 00:20:23,185 human being. It is not that. It’s by that time, you’ve begun to see 255 00:20:23,185 --> 00:20:28,373 it happening in your daughter or your son, or your niece or your nephew. 256 00:20:28,373 --> 00:20:33,370 You are thirty by now and nothing you have done has helped you to 257 00:20:33,370 --> 00:20:38,134 escape the trap. But what is worse than that, is that nothing you 258 00:20:38,134 --> 00:20:44,076 have done, and as far as you can tell, nothing you can do, will save your 259 00:20:44,076 --> 00:20:49,721 son or your daughter from meeting the same disaster and not 260 00:20:49,721 --> 00:20:58,956 impossibly coming to the same end. Now, we’re speaking about 261 00:20:58,956 --> 00:21:06,189 expense. I suppose there are several ways to address oneself, 262 00:21:06,189 --> 00:21:15,707 to... some attempt to define what that word means here. Let me put it 263 00:21:15,707 --> 00:21:23,042 this way, that from a very literal point of view, the harbors and the 264 00:21:23,042 --> 00:21:30,992 ports, and the railroads of the country, the economy, 265 00:21:30,992 --> 00:21:39,966 especially of the Southern states, could not conceivably be 266 00:21:39,966 --> 00:21:45,639 what it has become, if they had not had, and do not still have, 267 00:21:45,639 --> 00:21:55,215 indeed, for so long, so many generations, cheap labor. I am stating very 268 00:21:55,215 --> 00:22:04,234 seriously, and this is not an overstatement: I picked the cotton, 269 00:22:04,234 --> 00:22:13,254 and I carried it to market, and I built the railroads under 270 00:22:13,254 --> 00:22:19,557 someone else’s whip for nothing. For nothing. 271 00:22:21,187 --> 00:22:26,815 The Southern oligarchy, which has until today so much power in 272 00:22:26,815 --> 00:22:31,384 Washington, and therefore some power in the world, was created 273 00:22:31,384 --> 00:22:37,217 by my labor and my sweat, and the violation of my women and the murder of 274 00:22:37,217 --> 00:22:45,359 my children. This, in the land of the free, and the home of the brave. 275 00:22:45,359 --> 00:22:50,604 And no one can challenge that statement. It is a matter of historical record. 276 00:22:52,254 --> 00:23:00,925 In another way, this dream, and we’ll get to the dream in a moment, 277 00:23:00,925 --> 00:23:06,581 is at the expense of the American negro. You watched this in the Deep South 278 00:23:06,581 --> 00:23:14,756 in great relief. But not only in the Deep South. In the Deep South, you 279 00:23:14,756 --> 00:23:17,997 are dealing with a sheriff or a landlord, or a landlady or the 280 00:23:17,997 --> 00:23:28,204 girl of the Western Union desk, and she doesn’t know quite who she’s 281 00:23:28,204 --> 00:23:31,666 dealing with, by which I mean, that if you’re not a part of the town, 282 00:23:31,666 --> 00:23:38,514 and if you are a northern nigger, it shows in millions of ways. 283 00:23:38,514 --> 00:23:43,550 So she simply knows that it’s an unknown quantity, and she wants to 284 00:23:43,550 --> 00:23:46,730 have nothing to do with it because she won’t talk to you, you have 285 00:23:46,730 --> 00:23:49,790 to wait for a while to get your telegram. OK, we all know this. 286 00:23:49,790 --> 00:23:54,005 We've been through it and, by the time you get to be a man, it’s very easy 287 00:23:54,005 --> 00:23:58,873 to deal with. But what is happening in the poor woman, the poor man’s mind 288 00:23:58,873 --> 00:24:06,474 is this: they’ve been raised to believe, and by now they helplessly believe, 289 00:24:06,474 --> 00:24:11,743 that no matter how terrible their lives may be, and their lives have been 290 00:24:11,743 --> 00:24:17,154 quite terrible, and no matter how far they fall, no matter what disaster 291 00:24:17,154 --> 00:24:19,986 overtakes them, they have one enormous knowledge in 292 00:24:19,986 --> 00:24:24,856 consolation, which is like a heavenly revelation: at least, they are not black. 293 00:24:26,546 --> 00:24:33,504 Now I suggest that of all the terrible things that can happen to a 294 00:24:33,504 --> 00:24:37,840 human being, that is one of the worst. I suggest that what has happened 295 00:24:37,840 --> 00:24:42,045 to white southerners is in some ways, after all, much worse than 296 00:24:42,045 --> 00:24:51,624 what has happened to negroes there, because Sheriff Clark in 297 00:24:51,624 --> 00:24:58,412 Selma, Alabama, cannot be considered, you know, no one can be 298 00:24:58,412 --> 00:25:00,728 dismissed as a total monster. 299 00:25:00,728 --> 00:25:02,908 I’m sure he loves his wife, his children. 300 00:25:02,908 --> 00:25:05,988 I’m sure that, you know, he likes to get drunk. 301 00:25:07,778 --> 00:25:11,577 You know, after all, one’s got to assume--and he is visibly a man like me. 302 00:25:14,007 --> 00:25:21,348 But he doesn’t know what drives him to use the club, to menace with the 303 00:25:21,348 --> 00:25:25,224 gun, and to use the cattle prod. Something awful must have happened to 304 00:25:25,224 --> 00:25:28,793 a human being to be able to put a cattle prod against a 305 00:25:28,793 --> 00:25:32,464 woman’s breasts, for example. What happens to the woman is ghastly. 306 00:25:32,464 --> 00:25:37,933 What happens to the man who does it is in some ways much, much worse. 307 00:25:39,313 --> 00:25:46,043 This is being done, after all, not a hundred years ago, but in 1965, 308 00:25:46,043 --> 00:25:51,884 in a country which is blessed with what we call prosperity, a word we won’t examine 309 00:25:51,884 --> 00:25:59,194 too closely, with a certain kind of social coherence, which calls itself a 310 00:25:59,194 --> 00:26:04,658 civilized nation, and which espouses the notion of the freedom of the 311 00:26:04,658 --> 00:26:10,466 world. And it is perfectly true from the point of view now 312 00:26:10,466 --> 00:26:16,005 simply of an American negro, any American negro watching this, no matter 313 00:26:16,005 --> 00:26:19,504 where he is, from the vantage point of Harlem, which is another terrible 314 00:26:19,504 --> 00:26:24,494 place, has to say to himself, in spite of what the government says, 315 00:26:24,494 --> 00:26:29,488 the government says we can’t do anything about it, but if those were 316 00:26:29,488 --> 00:26:33,962 white people being murdered in Mississippi work farms, being carried 317 00:26:33,962 --> 00:26:37,784 off to jail, if those were white children running up and down the streets, 318 00:26:37,784 --> 00:26:41,303 the government would find some way of doing something about it. 319 00:26:41,303 --> 00:26:45,464 We have a civil rights bill now where an amendment, we have 320 00:26:45,464 --> 00:26:49,444 the 15th amendment, nearly a hundred years ago--I hate to sound again 321 00:26:49,444 --> 00:26:52,438 like an Old Testament prophet, but if the amendment was not 322 00:26:52,438 --> 00:26:55,646 honored then, I don't have any reason to believe the civil rights 323 00:26:55,646 --> 00:26:58,296 bill will be honored now. 324 00:26:58,296 --> 00:27:02,004 And after all one’s been there, since before, you know, a lot of other 325 00:27:02,004 --> 00:27:09,562 people got there. If one has got to prove one’s title to the land, 326 00:27:09,562 --> 00:27:15,020 isn't 400 years enough? 400 years? At least three wars? 327 00:27:16,370 --> 00:27:20,273 The American soil is full of the corpses of my ancestors. 328 00:27:20,273 --> 00:27:25,772 Why is my freedom or my citizenship, or my right to live there, how 329 00:27:25,772 --> 00:27:31,741 is it conceivably a question now? And I suggest further, and in the 330 00:27:31,741 --> 00:27:37,328 same way, the moral life of Alabama sheriffs and poor Alabama ladies, 331 00:27:37,328 --> 00:27:41,729 white ladies, their moral lives have been destroyed by the 332 00:27:41,729 --> 00:27:47,312 plague called color, that the American sense of reality has been corrupted by it. 333 00:27:48,782 --> 00:27:53,366 At the risk of sounding excessive, what I always felt, when I finally 334 00:27:53,366 --> 00:27:58,369 left the country, found myself abroad, in other places, and watched 335 00:27:58,369 --> 00:28:03,409 the Americans abroad, and these are my countrymen, and I do 336 00:28:03,409 --> 00:28:09,015 care about them, and even if I didn’t, there is something between us. 337 00:28:09,015 --> 00:28:14,133 We have the same shorthand, I know, if I look at a boy or a girl from 338 00:28:14,133 --> 00:28:18,162 Tennessee, where they came from in Tennessee, and what that means. 339 00:28:18,162 --> 00:28:21,962 No Englishman knows that. No Frenchman. No one in the world knows that except 340 00:28:21,962 --> 00:28:24,342 another black man who comes from the same place. 341 00:28:25,262 --> 00:28:32,852 One watches these lonely people. Denying the only kin they have. 342 00:28:32,852 --> 00:28:36,432 We talk about integration in America as though it were some great new 343 00:28:36,432 --> 00:28:40,622 conundrum. The problem in America is that we have been integrated for 344 00:28:40,622 --> 00:28:46,717 a very long time. Put me next to any African and you will see what I mean. 345 00:28:46,717 --> 00:28:52,607 My grandmother was not a racist. What we are not facing... 346 00:28:54,647 --> 00:28:58,732 is the results of what we've done. 347 00:28:58,732 --> 00:29:04,222 What one begs the American people to do for all our sakes is simply to 348 00:29:04,222 --> 00:29:07,542 accept our history. 349 00:29:07,542 --> 00:29:11,982 I was there not only as a slave but also as a concubine. 350 00:29:11,982 --> 00:29:16,792 One knows the power afterall which can be used against another person 351 00:29:16,792 --> 00:29:18,922 who has absolute power over that person. 352 00:29:21,472 --> 00:29:24,598 It seemed to me when I watched Americans in Europe that what they 353 00:29:24,598 --> 00:29:30,863 didn’t know about Europeans was what they didn’t know about me. 354 00:29:30,863 --> 00:29:34,545 They weren’t trying, for example, to be nasty to the French girl, or 355 00:29:34,545 --> 00:29:39,312 rude to the French waiter. They didn’t know they hurt their feelings. 356 00:29:39,312 --> 00:29:43,715 They didn’t have any sense this particular woman, this particular man, 357 00:29:43,715 --> 00:29:46,246 though they spoke another language and had different manners 358 00:29:46,246 --> 00:29:51,284 and ways, was a human being. And they walked over them with the same kind 359 00:29:51,284 --> 00:29:59,068 of bland ignorance, condescension, charming and cheerful with which 360 00:29:59,068 --> 00:30:03,833 they’d always patted me on the head and called me Shine and were upset 361 00:30:03,833 --> 00:30:14,739 when I was upset. What is relevant about this is that whereas forty years ago 362 00:30:14,739 --> 00:30:22,549 when I was born, the question of having to deal with what is unspoken 363 00:30:22,549 --> 00:30:28,049 by the subjugated, what is never said to the master, of ever 364 00:30:28,049 --> 00:30:31,006 having to deal with this reality was a very remote possibility. 365 00:30:31,006 --> 00:30:35,403 It was in no one’s mind. When I was growing up, I was taught in 366 00:30:35,403 --> 00:30:39,665 American history books, that Africa had no history, and neither did I. 367 00:30:41,555 --> 00:30:47,902 That I was a savage about whom the less said, the better, who had been 368 00:30:47,902 --> 00:30:55,587 saved by Europe and brought to America. And, of course, I believed it. 369 00:30:57,347 --> 00:31:02,273 I didn’t have much choice. Those are the only books there were. 370 00:31:02,273 --> 00:31:05,322 Everyone else seemed to agree. 371 00:31:05,322 --> 00:31:09,842 If you walk out of Harlem, ride out of Harlem, downtown, the world 372 00:31:09,842 --> 00:31:16,582 agrees what you see is much bigger, cleaner, whiter, richer, safer 373 00:31:16,582 --> 00:31:21,331 than where you are. They collect the garbage. People obviously can 374 00:31:21,331 --> 00:31:25,312 pay their life insurance. Their children look happy, safe. You’re not. 375 00:31:25,312 --> 00:31:31,289 And you go back home, and it would seem that, of course, that it’s an act 376 00:31:31,289 --> 00:31:38,527 of God that this is true! That you belong where white people have put you. 377 00:31:40,657 --> 00:31:45,403 It is only since the Second World War, that there’s been a 378 00:31:45,403 --> 00:31:48,872 counter-image in the world. And that image did not come about through 379 00:31:48,872 --> 00:31:53,807 any legislation or part of any American government, but through 380 00:31:53,807 --> 00:32:01,216 the fact that Africa was suddenly on the stage of the world, and Africans 381 00:32:01,216 --> 00:32:05,196 had to be dealt with in a way they’d never been dealt with before. 382 00:32:05,196 --> 00:32:09,688 This gave an American negro for the first time a sense of himself 383 00:32:09,688 --> 00:32:19,728 beyond a savage or a clown. It has created and will create a great 384 00:32:19,728 --> 00:32:23,970 many conundrums. One of the great things that the white world 385 00:32:23,970 --> 00:32:29,615 does not know, but I think I do know, is that black people are just like 386 00:32:29,615 --> 00:32:34,386 everybody else. One has used the myth of negro and the myth of color 387 00:32:34,386 --> 00:32:39,288 to pretend and to assume that you were dealing, essentially, 388 00:32:39,288 --> 00:32:43,755 with something exotic, bizarre, and practically, according to human laws, 389 00:32:43,755 --> 00:32:49,074 unknown. Alas, it is not true. We’re also mercenaries, 390 00:32:49,074 --> 00:32:54,662 dictators, murderers, liars. We are human too. 391 00:32:56,512 --> 00:33:01,279 What is crucial here is that unless we can manage to accept, establish 392 00:33:01,279 --> 00:33:08,420 some kind of dialog between those people whom I pretend have paid 393 00:33:08,420 --> 00:33:16,380 for the American Dream and those other people who have not achieved it, 394 00:33:16,380 --> 00:33:23,362 we will be in terrible trouble. I want to say, at the end, the last, is that 395 00:33:23,362 --> 00:33:28,335 is what concerns me most. We are sitting in this room, and we are all, 396 00:33:28,335 --> 00:33:32,347 at least we’d like to think we are, relatively civilized, and we can talk to 397 00:33:32,347 --> 00:33:38,717 each other at least on certain levels, so that we could walk out of here 398 00:33:38,717 --> 00:33:43,213 assuming that the measure of our enlightenment, or at least, our 399 00:33:43,213 --> 00:33:46,655 politeness, has some effect on the world. It may not. 400 00:33:48,285 --> 00:33:54,558 I remember, for example, when the ex-attorney-general Mr. Robert Kennedy 401 00:33:54,558 --> 00:34:01,239 said that it was conceivable that in forty years, in America, we might have 402 00:34:01,239 --> 00:34:08,079 a negro president. That sounded like a very emancipated statement, 403 00:34:08,079 --> 00:34:14,008 I suppose, to white people. They were not in Harlem when this statement 404 00:34:14,008 --> 00:34:19,648 was first heard. And did not hear, and possibly will never hear the laughter 405 00:34:19,648 --> 00:34:22,129 and the bitterness, and the scorn with which this statement was greeted. 406 00:34:22,129 --> 00:34:25,860 From the point of view of the man in the Harlem barbershop, Bobby Kennedy 407 00:34:25,860 --> 00:34:32,506 only got here yesterday, and he’s already on his way to the presidency. 408 00:34:32,506 --> 00:34:36,837 We’ve been here for 400 years and now he tells us that maybe 409 00:34:36,837 --> 00:34:42,541 in forty years, if you’re good, we may let you become president. 410 00:34:44,371 --> 00:34:52,922 What is dangerous here is the turning away from--the turning away from 411 00:34:52,922 --> 00:34:59,499 anything any white American says. The reason for the political hesitation, 412 00:34:59,499 --> 00:35:03,694 in spite of the Johnson landslide is that one has been betrayed by American 413 00:35:03,694 --> 00:35:08,707 politicians for so long. And I am a grown man and perhaps I can be 414 00:35:08,707 --> 00:35:16,767 reasoned with. I certainly hope I can be. But I don’t know, and neither does 415 00:35:16,767 --> 00:35:21,254 Martin Luther King, none of us know how to deal with those other people 416 00:35:21,254 --> 00:35:24,191 whom the white world has so long ignored, who don’t believe anything 417 00:35:24,191 --> 00:35:30,688 the white world says and don’t entirely believe anything I or Martin is saying. 418 00:35:32,388 --> 00:35:34,891 And one can’t blame them. You watch what has happened to them in less than 419 00:35:34,891 --> 00:35:42,247 twenty years. It seems to me that the city of New York, for example, this is 420 00:35:42,247 --> 00:35:49,744 my last point, has had negroes in it for a very long time. 421 00:35:49,744 --> 00:35:55,886 If the city of New York were able, as it has indeed been able, in the last fifteen 422 00:35:55,886 --> 00:36:01,029 years to reconstruct itself, tear down buildings and raise great new ones, 423 00:36:01,029 --> 00:36:07,829 downtown and for money, and has done nothing whatever except build 424 00:36:07,829 --> 00:36:15,299 housing projects in the ghetto for the negroes. And of course, negroes hate it. 425 00:36:15,299 --> 00:36:18,843 Presently the property does indeed deteriorate because the children 426 00:36:18,843 --> 00:36:26,391 cannot bear it. They want to get out of the ghetto. If the American pretensions 427 00:36:26,391 --> 00:36:33,077 were based on more solid, a more honest assessment of life and of 428 00:36:33,077 --> 00:36:39,094 themselves, it would not mean for negroes when someone says “urban renewal,” 429 00:36:39,094 --> 00:36:41,859 that negroes simply are gonna be thrown out into the streets. 430 00:36:41,859 --> 00:36:45,345 Which is what it does mean now. This is not an act of God. We’re 431 00:36:45,345 --> 00:36:52,490 dealing with a society made and ruled by men. If the American negro had not 432 00:36:52,490 --> 00:36:56,239 been present in America, I am convinced that the history of the American labor 433 00:36:56,246 --> 00:36:59,181 movement would be much more edifying than it is. 434 00:36:59,181 --> 00:37:05,783 It is a terrible thing for an entire people to surrender to the notion 435 00:37:05,783 --> 00:37:12,061 that one-ninth of its population is beneath them. And until that moment, 436 00:37:12,061 --> 00:37:18,277 until the moment comes when we, the Americans, we, the American people, 437 00:37:18,277 --> 00:37:23,305 are able to accept the fact, that I have to accept, for example, that my ancestors 438 00:37:23,305 --> 00:37:28,617 are both white and black, that on that continent we are trying to forge a new 439 00:37:28,617 --> 00:37:34,814 identity for which we need each other and that I am not a ward of America, 440 00:37:34,814 --> 00:37:40,512 I am not an object of missionary charity. I am one of the people who built 441 00:37:40,512 --> 00:37:46,772 the country, until this moment, there is scarcely any hope for the American Dream, 442 00:37:46,772 --> 00:37:53,418 because the people who are denied participation in it, by their very 443 00:37:53,418 --> 00:37:59,046 presence, will wreck it. And if that happens, it is a very grave moment for 444 00:37:59,046 --> 00:38:00,898 the West. Thank you. 445 00:38:00,898 --> 00:38:04,449 [loud applause] 446 00:38:22,247 --> 00:38:28,430 Narrator: Tremendously moving moment now. The whole of the union standing and 447 00:38:28,430 --> 00:38:34,945 applauding this magnificent speech of James Baldwin. Never seen this happen 448 00:38:34,945 --> 00:38:41,017 before in the union in all the years that I have known it. Baldwin smiling, 449 00:38:41,017 --> 00:38:46,493 obviously delighted by his reception, tremendously moved by it. 450 00:38:46,493 --> 00:38:48,707 [applause] 451 00:39:04,623 --> 00:39:07,385 President: I am now very grateful and very pleased to be 452 00:39:07,385 --> 00:39:11,239 able to call Mr. William F Buckley Jr. to speak fourth to this motion. 453 00:39:11,239 --> 00:39:14,441 [applause] 454 00:39:19,409 --> 00:39:23,436 Narrator: Now we have Mr. William Buckley, who will need all his skill to 455 00:39:23,436 --> 00:39:27,286 establish ascendancy over his audience, which has clearly been so deeply 456 00:39:27,286 --> 00:39:31,564 moved by the eloquence and personal experience of the preceding speaker. 457 00:39:31,564 --> 00:39:34,381 William Buckley: Thank you Mr. President, Baldwin, Heycock, Burford, gentlemen. 458 00:39:39,391 --> 00:39:49,242 It seems to me that of all the indictments Mr. Baldwin has made of America 459 00:39:49,242 --> 00:39:58,894 here tonight and in his copious literature of protest, that the one that is most 460 00:39:58,894 --> 00:40:11,508 striking, involves, in effect, the refusal of the American community to treat 461 00:40:11,508 --> 00:40:19,647 him other than as a negro. The American community has refused 462 00:40:19,647 --> 00:40:26,424 to do this. The American community almost everywhere he goes 463 00:40:26,424 --> 00:40:36,061 treats him with a kind of unction, of a kind of satisfaction at posturing 464 00:40:36,061 --> 00:40:44,278 carefully for his flagellations of our civilization. That indeed, 465 00:40:44,278 --> 00:40:50,680 quite properly, commands the contempt which he so eloquently showers upon us. 466 00:40:52,100 --> 00:40:57,333 It is impossible in my judgment to deal with the indictment of Mr. Baldwin 467 00:40:57,333 --> 00:41:03,489 unless one is prepared to deal with him as a white man. Unless one is prepared to 468 00:41:03,489 --> 00:41:08,425 say to him, the fact that your skin is black is utterly irrelevant to the 469 00:41:08,425 --> 00:41:14,304 arguments that you raise, or the fact that you sit here as is your 470 00:41:14,304 --> 00:41:20,367 rhetorical device and lay the entire weight of the negro ordeal on your 471 00:41:20,367 --> 00:41:26,410 own shoulders is irrelevant to the argument that we are here to discuss. 472 00:41:29,070 --> 00:41:36,098 The gravamen of Mr. Baldwin's charges against America are not so much that our 473 00:41:36,098 --> 00:41:41,737 civilization has failed him and his people. That our ideals are 474 00:41:41,737 --> 00:41:48,772 insufficient or that we have no ideals. That our ideals, rather, 475 00:41:48,772 --> 00:41:54,372 are some sort of a superficial coating which we come up with at any 476 00:41:54,372 --> 00:41:58,756 given moment in order to justify whatever commercial and 477 00:41:58,756 --> 00:42:04,442 noxious experiment we are engaged in. Thus, Mr. Baldwin can write his 478 00:42:04,442 --> 00:42:10,019 book "The Fire Next Time," in which he threatens America. He didn't 479 00:42:10,019 --> 00:42:13,923 in writing that book speak with a British accent that he used 480 00:42:13,923 --> 00:42:17,700 exclusively tonight, in which he threatened America with a 481 00:42:17,700 --> 00:42:27,434 necessity for us to jettison... for us to jettison our entire 482 00:42:27,434 --> 00:42:32,791 civilization, the only thing that the white man has that the negro should 483 00:42:32,791 --> 00:42:37,435 want, he said, is power, and he is treated 484 00:42:37,435 --> 00:42:42,060 from coast to coast of the United States with a kind of unctuous... 485 00:42:42,060 --> 00:42:46,664 [Narrator speaking over him: inaudible] 486 00:42:46,664 --> 00:42:49,850 ... that goes beyond anything that was ever expected from the most 487 00:42:49,850 --> 00:42:54,100 servile negro creature by a southern family. I propose to pay him the honor 488 00:42:54,100 --> 00:43:00,711 this night of saying to him, Mr. Baldwin, I am going to speak to you without any 489 00:43:00,711 --> 00:43:08,035 reference whatever to those surrounding protections which you are used to 490 00:43:08,035 --> 00:43:12,673 in virtue of the fact that you are a negro. Here we need to ask the question, 491 00:43:12,673 --> 00:43:17,132 what in fact shall we do about it, Mr. President? What shall we in America 492 00:43:17,132 --> 00:43:25,320 try to do? For instance, to eliminate those psychic humiliations which I join 493 00:43:25,320 --> 00:43:30,052 Mr. Baldwin in believing are the very worst aspects of this discrimination. 494 00:43:30,052 --> 00:43:35,344 You found it a source of considerable mirth to laugh away the statistics 495 00:43:35,344 --> 00:43:39,820 of my colleague, Mr. Burford. I don't think they are insignificant. They 496 00:43:39,820 --> 00:43:45,010 certainly are not insignificant in a world which attaches a considerable importance 497 00:43:45,010 --> 00:43:53,252 to material progress. It is in fact the case that seven-tenths of the white income 498 00:43:53,252 --> 00:43:57,359 of the United States is equal to the income that is made by the average 499 00:43:57,359 --> 00:44:02,865 negro. I don't think this is an irrelevant statistic, ladies and gentleman. It takes 500 00:44:02,865 --> 00:44:06,796 the capitalization of fifteen, sixteen, seventeen thousand dollars per job in the 501 00:44:06,796 --> 00:44:12,287 United States. This is capitalization that was not created exclusively as a result 502 00:44:12,287 --> 00:44:17,615 of negro travail. My great grandparents worked too, presumably yours worked 503 00:44:17,615 --> 00:44:21,113 also. I don't know of anything that has ever been created without the expense 504 00:44:21,113 --> 00:44:25,529 of something. All of you who hope for a diploma here are going to do that at the 505 00:44:25,529 --> 00:44:30,108 expense of a considerable amount of effort. And I would thank you to please 506 00:44:30,108 --> 00:44:35,130 not to belie the fact that a considerable amount of effort went into the production 507 00:44:35,130 --> 00:44:39,606 of a system which grants a greater degree of material well-being to the American 508 00:44:39,606 --> 00:44:44,129 negro, than that that is enjoyed by 95% of the other peoples of the human 509 00:44:44,129 --> 00:44:50,593 race. But even so, to the extent that your withering laughter suggested here 510 00:44:50,593 --> 00:44:56,249 that you found this a contemptible observation, I agree. I don't think it 511 00:44:56,249 --> 00:45:00,802 matters that there are 35 millionaires among the negro community 512 00:45:00,802 --> 00:45:04,277 if there were 35, if there were 20 million millionaires among 513 00:45:04,277 --> 00:45:08,257 the negro community of the United States, I would still agree with you that we 514 00:45:08,257 --> 00:45:14,571 have a dastardly situation. But I am asking you not to make politics as 515 00:45:14,571 --> 00:45:20,094 the crow flies, to use the fleeted phrase of Professor Oakshock, but rather to consider 516 00:45:20,094 --> 00:45:24,957 what in fact is it that we Americans ought to do? What are your instructions that 517 00:45:24,957 --> 00:45:29,538 I am to take back to the United States my friend? I want to know what it is 518 00:45:29,538 --> 00:45:34,613 that we should do and especially, I want to know whether it is time in fact 519 00:45:34,613 --> 00:45:38,957 to abandon the American Dream as it has been defined by Mr. Heycock and 520 00:45:38,957 --> 00:45:44,009 Mr. Burford. What in fact is it we ought to do, for instance, to avoid 521 00:45:44,009 --> 00:45:52,316 due humiliations mentioned by Mr. Baldwin as being a part of his own experience 522 00:45:52,316 --> 00:45:57,680 during his lifetime. At the age of twelve, you will find on reading his book, 523 00:45:57,680 --> 00:46:04,293 he trespassed outside the ghetto of Harlem and was taken by the scruff of the 524 00:46:04,293 --> 00:46:08,787 neck by a policeman on 42nd Street, Madison Avenue and said, "Here, 525 00:46:08,787 --> 00:46:14,563 you nigger, go back to where you belong." Fifteen, twenty years later he goes in 526 00:46:14,563 --> 00:46:20,580 and asks for a scotch whiskey at the airport at Chicago and is told by the 527 00:46:20,580 --> 00:46:25,860 white woman that he is obviously underage and under the circumstances, can't be 528 00:46:25,860 --> 00:46:32,633 served. I know. I know from your faces that you share with me the feeling of 529 00:46:32,633 --> 00:46:38,245 compassion and the feeling of outrage that this kind of thing should have 530 00:46:38,245 --> 00:46:43,781 happened. What in fact are we going to do to this policeman and what in fact are 531 00:46:43,781 --> 00:46:52,128 we going to do to this barman? How are we going to avoid the kind of humiliations 532 00:46:52,128 --> 00:46:58,413 that are perpetually visited on members of the minority race? Obviously, the first 533 00:46:58,413 --> 00:47:03,952 element is concern. We've got to care that it happens. We've got to 534 00:47:03,952 --> 00:47:09,387 do what we can to change the warp and woof of moral thought in society 535 00:47:09,387 --> 00:47:15,260 in such fashion as to try to make it happen less and less. Let me urge this 536 00:47:15,260 --> 00:47:18,861 point to you, which I can do with authority, my friends. The only thing that 537 00:47:18,861 --> 00:47:24,660 I can tonight, and that is to tell you that in the United States there is a 538 00:47:24,660 --> 00:47:27,843 concern for the negro problem. Now if you get up to me and 539 00:47:27,843 --> 00:47:32,847 say--[laughter] 540 00:47:32,847 --> 00:47:36,558 If you get up to me and say, "Well, now is there the kind of 541 00:47:36,558 --> 00:47:40,920 concern that we, students of Cambridge, would show if the problem were our 542 00:47:40,920 --> 00:47:46,205 own?" All I can say is, I don't know. It may very well be that there has 543 00:47:46,205 --> 00:47:51,592 been some sort of a sunburst of moral enlightenment that has hit this 544 00:47:51,592 --> 00:47:55,821 community so as to make it predictable that if you were the 545 00:47:55,821 --> 00:47:59,896 governors of the United States, the situation would change overnight. 546 00:47:59,896 --> 00:48:04,827 I am prepared to grant this as a form of courtesy, Mr. President, but 547 00:48:04,827 --> 00:48:10,651 meanwhile, I am saying to you that the engines of concern in the United States 548 00:48:10,651 --> 00:48:17,237 are working. The presence of Mr. Baldwin here tonight is in part a reflection of 549 00:48:17,237 --> 00:48:21,216 that concern. [audience member yells out] You cannot go to a 550 00:48:21,216 --> 00:48:25,411 university in the United States, a university in the United States presumably 551 00:48:25,411 --> 00:48:30,723 also governed by the lord spiritual as you are, in which Mr. Baldwin is not the 552 00:48:30,723 --> 00:48:36,023 toast of the town. You cannot go to a university of the United States in which 553 00:48:36,023 --> 00:48:43,336 practically all other problems of public policy are preempted by the primary policy of concern 554 00:48:43,336 --> 00:48:48,786 for the negro. I challenge you to name another civilization any time 555 00:48:48,786 --> 00:48:53,338 anywhere in the history of the world in which the problems of the minority, 556 00:48:53,338 --> 00:48:58,067 which have been showing considerable material and political advancement is as 557 00:48:58,067 --> 00:49:03,195 much a subject of dramatic concern as it is in the United States, but let me just 558 00:49:03,195 --> 00:49:12,010 say finally, ladies and gentlemen, this. There is no instant cure for the race 559 00:49:12,010 --> 00:49:16,593 problem in America and anybody who tells you that there is 560 00:49:16,593 --> 00:49:21,193 is a charlatan and ultimately a boring man. 561 00:49:21,193 --> 00:49:27,743 Boring precisely because he is then speaking in the kind of abstractions that 562 00:49:27,743 --> 00:49:33,430 do not relate to the human experience. The trouble in America where the negro 563 00:49:33,430 --> 00:49:38,706 community is concerned is a very complicated one. I urge those of you 564 00:49:38,706 --> 00:49:44,431 who have an actual rather than a purely ideologized interest in the 565 00:49:44,431 --> 00:49:50,514 problem to read the book "Beyond the Melting Pot" by Professor Glazer, 566 00:49:50,514 --> 00:49:56,830 also co-author of the "The Lonely Proud" a prominent Jewish intellectual who 567 00:49:56,830 --> 00:50:02,164 points at the fact that the situation in America where the negros are concerned 568 00:50:02,164 --> 00:50:08,619 is extremely complex as the result of an unfortunate conjunction of two factors. 569 00:50:08,619 --> 00:50:15,928 One is the dreadful efforts to perpetuate discrimination by many individual American 570 00:50:15,928 --> 00:50:21,910 citizens as a result of their lack of that final and ultimate concern which some 571 00:50:21,910 --> 00:50:27,317 people are truly trying to agitate, the other is as a result of the failure of the negro 572 00:50:27,317 --> 00:50:35,034 community itself to make certain exertions which were made by other minority groups 573 00:50:35,034 --> 00:50:40,434 during the American experience. If you can stand a statistic not of my own making, 574 00:50:40,434 --> 00:50:45,514 let me give you one which Professor Glazer considers as relevant. He says 575 00:50:45,514 --> 00:50:51,367 for instance, in 1900 there were 3,500 negro doctors in America. 576 00:50:51,367 --> 00:50:57,200 In 1960, there were 3,900. An increase in 400. Is this because 577 00:50:57,200 --> 00:51:01,254 there were no opportunities, as has been suggested by Mr. Heycock and also by 578 00:51:01,254 --> 00:51:06,284 Mr. Baldwin implicitly. "No," says Professor Glazer. There are a great many 579 00:51:06,284 --> 00:51:11,876 medical schools who by no means practice discrimination, who are anxious to recieve 580 00:51:11,876 --> 00:51:15,734 the trained negro doctors. There are scholarships available to put them 581 00:51:15,734 --> 00:51:21,158 through, but in fact that particular energy which he remarks was so noticeable 582 00:51:21,158 --> 00:51:24,275 in the Jewish community and to a certain and lesser extent in the Italian and 583 00:51:24,275 --> 00:51:29,066 Irish community, for some reason is not there. We should focus on the 584 00:51:29,066 --> 00:51:34,154 necessity to animate this particular energy, but he comes to the conclusion 585 00:51:34,154 --> 00:51:38,606 which strikes me as plausible. The people who can best do it most effectively 586 00:51:38,606 --> 00:51:44,812 are negros themselves. Let me conclude by reminding you, ladies and gentlemen 587 00:51:44,812 --> 00:51:50,307 that where the negro is concerned, the dangers, far as I can see at this 588 00:51:50,307 --> 00:51:56,144 moment is that they will seek to reach out for some sort of radical 589 00:51:56,144 --> 00:52:01,797 solutions on the basis of which the true problem is obscured. They have done a 590 00:52:01,797 --> 00:52:08,589 great deal to focus on the fact of white discrimination against negros. They have 591 00:52:08,589 --> 00:52:14,214 done a great deal to agitate a moral concern, but where in fact do they go 592 00:52:14,214 --> 00:52:18,747 now? They seem to be slipping, if you read carefully for instance the words of 593 00:52:18,747 --> 00:52:25,274 Mr. Bayard Rustin, toward some sort of a procrustean formulation which ends up 594 00:52:25,274 --> 00:52:30,458 less urging the advancement of the negro than the regression of the white people. 595 00:52:30,458 --> 00:52:36,224 Fourteen times as many people in New York City born of negros are illegitimate 596 00:52:36,224 --> 00:52:40,854 as of whites. This is a problem. How should we address it? By seeking out laws 597 00:52:40,854 --> 00:52:45,514 that encourage illegitimacy in white people? This unfortunately tends to be 598 00:52:45,514 --> 00:52:48,910 the rhetorical momentum that some of the arguments are taking. 599 00:52:48,910 --> 00:52:54,220 - One thing you might do Mr. Buckley is let them vote in Mississippi. [applause] 600 00:52:54,220 --> 00:52:55,644 Buckley: I agree. 601 00:52:59,664 --> 00:53:06,874 I couldn't agree with you more and for... except, lest I appear too 602 00:53:06,874 --> 00:53:12,452 ingratiating which is hardly my objective here tonight. I think actually what is 603 00:53:12,452 --> 00:53:16,110 wrong in Mississippi, sir, is not that not enough negros are voting but that 604 00:53:16,110 --> 00:53:18,659 too many white people are voting. 605 00:53:18,659 --> 00:53:21,443 [laughter] 606 00:53:25,661 --> 00:53:32,726 Booker T. Washington said, "That the important thing where negros are 607 00:53:32,726 --> 00:53:37,989 concerned is not that they hold public office, but they be prepared 608 00:53:37,989 --> 00:53:42,017 to hold public office. Not that they vote, but that they be prepared to vote." 609 00:53:42,017 --> 00:53:45,348 What are we going to do with the negros having taught the negros 610 00:53:45,348 --> 00:53:49,929 in Mississippi to despise Barnett, Ross Barnett, shall we then teach 611 00:53:49,929 --> 00:53:53,720 them to emulate their cousins in Harlem and adore Adam 612 00:53:53,720 --> 00:53:58,538 Clayton Powell Jr.? It is much more complicated, sir, than simply the 613 00:53:58,538 --> 00:54:02,829 question of giving them the vote. If I were myself a constituent of the 614 00:54:02,829 --> 00:54:06,810 community of Mississippi at this moment, what I would do is vote to lift the 615 00:54:06,810 --> 00:54:12,124 standards of the vote so as to disqualify 65% of the white people who 616 00:54:12,124 --> 00:54:14,444 are presently voting, not simply... 617 00:54:14,444 --> 00:54:16,995 [applause] 618 00:54:19,784 --> 00:54:21,933 I say, then, that what we need 619 00:54:21,933 --> 00:54:26,373 is a considerable amount of frankness that acknowledges 620 00:54:26,373 --> 00:54:31,624 that there are two sets of difficulties, the difficulties of the white person who 621 00:54:31,624 --> 00:54:38,122 acts as white people and brown people and black people do all over the world to 622 00:54:38,122 --> 00:54:42,709 protect their own vested interests, who have as all the races in the entire world 623 00:54:42,709 --> 00:54:50,349 have and suffer from a kind of racial narcissism which tends always to 624 00:54:50,349 --> 00:54:54,529 convert every contingency in such a way as to maximize their own power. 625 00:54:54,529 --> 00:54:57,400 That, yes, we must do, but we must also 626 00:54:57,400 --> 00:55:00,620 reach through to the negro people and tell them 627 00:55:00,620 --> 00:55:05,982 that their best chances are in a mobile society and the most mobile society 628 00:55:05,982 --> 00:55:11,048 in the world today, my friends, is the United States of America. The most 629 00:55:11,048 --> 00:55:14,717 mobile society in the world is the United States of America, and it is 630 00:55:14,717 --> 00:55:19,817 precisely that mobility which will give opportunities to the negros which 631 00:55:19,817 --> 00:55:24,778 they must be encouraged to take, but they must not in the course of their 632 00:55:24,778 --> 00:55:32,235 ordeal be encouraged to adopt the kind of cynicism, the kind of despair, the kind 633 00:55:32,235 --> 00:55:38,266 of iconoclasm that is urged upon them by Mr. Baldwin in his recent works because 634 00:55:38,266 --> 00:55:44,516 one thing I can tell you, I believe with absolute authority, that where the 635 00:55:44,516 --> 00:55:50,654 United States is concerned, if it ever becomes a confrontation between a 636 00:55:50,654 --> 00:55:58,814 continuation of our own sort of idealism, the private stock of which, granted like 637 00:55:58,814 --> 00:56:02,285 most people in the world, we tend to lavish only every now and then on 638 00:56:02,285 --> 00:56:06,694 public enterprises, reserving it so often for our own irritations and pleasures, 639 00:56:06,694 --> 00:56:13,761 but the fundamental friend of the negro people in the United States is the good 640 00:56:13,761 --> 00:56:20,342 nature and is the generosity and is the good wishes, is the decency, the 641 00:56:20,342 --> 00:56:25,768 fundamental decency that do lie at the reserves of the spirit of the American 642 00:56:25,768 --> 00:56:31,246 people. These must not be laughed at and under no circumstances must they 643 00:56:31,246 --> 00:56:36,723 be laughed at and under no circumstances must America be addressed and told that 644 00:56:36,723 --> 00:56:42,090 the only alternative to the status quo is to overthrow that civilization 645 00:56:42,090 --> 00:56:47,074 which we consider to be the faith of our fathers, the faith indeed of 646 00:56:47,074 --> 00:56:52,435 your fathers. This is what must animate whatever meliorism must 647 00:56:52,435 --> 00:56:58,316 come because if it does finally come to a confrontation, a radical confrontation, 648 00:56:58,316 --> 00:57:02,991 between giving up what we understand to be the best features of the American 649 00:57:02,991 --> 00:57:06,975 way of life, which at that level is indistinguishable so far as I can see 650 00:57:06,975 --> 00:57:11,324 from the European way of life, then we will fight the issue and we will 651 00:57:11,324 --> 00:57:15,561 fight the issue not only in the Cambridge Union, but we will fight it as you were 652 00:57:15,561 --> 00:57:19,882 once recently called to do on beaches and on hills and on mountains and 653 00:57:19,882 --> 00:57:24,665 on landing grounds and we will be convinced that just as you won the 654 00:57:24,665 --> 00:57:31,132 war against a particular threat to civilization, you were nevertheless 655 00:57:31,132 --> 00:57:36,186 waging a war in favor of and for the benefit of Germans, your own 656 00:57:36,186 --> 00:57:40,549 enemies, just as we are convinced that if it should ever come to that kind of a 657 00:57:40,549 --> 00:57:44,886 confrontation, our own determination to win the struggle will be a 658 00:57:44,886 --> 00:57:49,314 determination to wage a war not only for whites but also for negros. 659 00:57:49,314 --> 00:57:53,532 [long applause] 660 00:58:20,893 --> 00:58:25,511 President: Will the tellers take their places please? They voted 661 00:58:25,511 --> 00:58:29,065 in favor of the motion, the motion being that the American Dream is at the expense 662 00:58:29,065 --> 00:58:33,009 of the negro, they voted in favor of that motion 544 persons 663 00:58:33,009 --> 00:58:36,452 and against, 164 persons. The motion is 664 00:58:36,452 --> 00:58:39,554 therefore carried by 380 votes, I declare the house 665 00:58:39,554 --> 00:58:43,944 to stand adjourned. [applause]