>> [MUSIC] The following program
is from NET,
the National Educational Television Network.
>> Debate, James Baldwin,
versus William Buckley.
Subject, has the American dream
been achieved at the expense
of the American negro?
This debate was held recently at
the Cambridge Union, Cambridge University,
England, and was recorded for use by NET.
>> Well, here we are in
the debating hall of the Cambridge Union,
hundreds of undergraduates and
myself waiting for what could prove one
of the most exciting debates in
the whole 150 years of the Union history.
It really, I don't think I've ever
seen the Union so well attended.
They're undergraduates everywhere.
They're on the benches,
and on the floor, but in the galleries,
and there are a lot more outside
clamoring to get in.
Well, the motion that has drawn
this huge crowd tonight is this that
the American dream has been
achieved at the expense
of the American negro.
The debate will open with
two undergraduate speakers,
one from each side.
And then we shall have
the first distinguished guest,
Mr. James Baldwin,
the well known American
novelist who has achieved
a worldwide fame with
his novel, Another Country.
Then opposing the motion will be Mr.
William Buckley, also an American,
very well known as a conservative in
the United States under stress
a conservative in the American sense,
author of a book called Up From Liberalism,
and editor of the national review,
one of the earliest supporters
of Senator Goldwater.
Well, this is the setting of the debate,
and at any moment now,
the president will be leading
in his officers and his distinguished guests.
He'll take his chair, and
the debate will begin.
[APPLAUSE]
The motion before
the House tonight is
the American dream is at
the expense of the American negro.
I propose of Mr. David
Haycock of Pembroke College
and opposed Mr. Jeremy
Befort of Emmanuel College.
Mr. James Baldwin will speak first,
Mr. William Buckley junior will speak forth.
Mr. Haycock is the heir
of the house.
[APPLAUSE]
>> Mr. President, sir, it
is the custom of the House for
the first speaker in any debate to
extend a formal welcome
to any visitors to the house.
I can honestly say, however,
that it is a very great honor to be
able to welcome to the house this evening,
Mr. William Buckley and Mr. James Baldwin.
Mr. William Buckley has
the reputation of possibly
being the most articulate conservative
in the United States of America.
He was a graduate of Yale,
and he first gained
a reputation for himself by
publishing a book entitled
God and Man and Yale.
[LAUGHTER] Since then, he has
devoted himself to the secular.
And this has included Norman Mailer,
Kenneth Tyler and Mary McCarthy,
and Fidel Castro, none of whom
have come out of
their confrontations unscathed.
[LAUGHTER] At present,
his principal occupation is editing
a right wing newspaper in
the United States
entitle the National Review.
Mr. James Baldwin is
hardly in need of introduction.
His reputation, both as a novelist,
and as an advocate of
civil rights is international.
His third novel, Another Country has
been published as
a paperback in England today.
Mr. Baldwin and Mr. Buckley are both
very welcome to the house this evening.
[APPLAUSE]
Imagine, Mr. President,
a society which above
all values, freedom and equality.
A society in which artificial barriers to
fulfillment and achievement are unheard of.
A society in which a man may begin
his life as a rail splitter
and end it as president,
a society in which all men
are free in every sense of the word.
Free to live where they choose,
free to work where they choose,
equal in the eyes of the law
and every public authority,
and equal in the eyes of
their fellows, a society,
in fact, in which intolerance and
prejudice are meaningless terms.
Imagine, however, Mr. President,
that a condition of this utopia has been
the persistent and
quite deliberate exploitation
of one ninth of its inhabitants.
That one man in nine has
been denied those rights,
which the rest of
that society takes for granted.
That one man in
nine does not have the chance for
fulfillment or realization
of his innate potentiality.
[NOISE] That one man in nine cannot promise
his children a secure future
and unlimited opportunities.
Imagine this, Mr. President,
and you have what is in my opinion,
the bitter reality of the American dream.
A few weeks ago,
Martin Luther King had to hold
a non violent demonstration in
Selma Alabama in his drive
to register negro voters.
By the end of the week of his demonstrations,
he was able to write quite accurately in
a national fund raising letter
from Selma Alabama jail.
There are more negroes in prison
with me than there are on the voting rolls.
When King wrote that letter,
335 out of 32,700
negroes in Dallas had the vote,
1% of the Dallas population.
After a mass march to the courthouse,
237 negroes, King among them were arrested.
The following day, 470
children who had deserted
their classrooms to protest against
King's arrest were
charged with juvenile delinquency.
[LAUGHTER] Thirty six adults
on the same day were charged with
contempt of court for picketing
the courthouse while
state circuit court was in session.
On the following day, 111 people
were arrested on the same charge,
despite their claim that they
merely wanted to see the voting registrar.
Four hundred students were
arrested and taken to the armory,
where many of them spent the night
on a cold cement floor.
The following day, the demonstration
spread to Marion, Alabama.
In Marion, negroes outnumber whites,
by 11 and a half thousands to 6,000 people,
and yet only 300 are registered to vote.
Negroes and Marion were anxious to test
the public accommodation section
of the civil rights law.
They entered a drug store,
and there they were served with
coca cola laced with salt
and were told that hamburgers
had risen to $5 each.
After the arrest of 15 negroes
for protesting against this treatment,
700 negroes boycotted their classes
next day and marched
in orderly fashion to the jail.
There, they sang civil rights songs,
until they were warned by
a state trooper that they would
be arrested if they sang one more song.
Of course, they sang another song,
and of course, all 700 were arrested.
American Society has felt
fit to use negro labor.
It has felt fit to use
the blood of the negro in two world wars.
It felt fit to listen to his music.
It has felt fit to laugh at his jokes.
And yet, as far as I'm concerned,
it has never felt fit to
give the American negro a fair deal.
And for this reason, Mr. President,
I would beg leave to propose the motion that
the American dream is at
the expense of the American negro. [APPLAUSE]
>> I now call Mr. Jeremy Burford of
Emmanuel College to oppose the motion.
[APPLAUSE]
>> Now I have Mr. Jeremy Burford of Emmanuel College,
who is
the first undergraduate opposing the motion.
>> James Baldwin is well known as one of
the most vivid and articulate writers
about the negro problem in America.
Mr. Baldwin had a difficult childhood,
and he has personally himself suffered
discrimination and ill treatment
in the South of America.
And I would like to say at this time,
that it is not the purpose of this side of
the House to condone that in any way at all.
It is not our purpose to oppose civil rights.
It is our purpose to oppose this motion.
[LAUGHTER] Thank you, sir.
Come and collect your fee afterwards.
[LAUGHTER] [APPLAUSE] This side
of the House denies that
the American dream has in any way been
helped by this undoubted inequality
and suffering of the negro.
We maintain that, in fact,
it has hindered the American dream.
And if there had been equity,
if there had been
true freedom of opportunity,
the American dream would be very
much more advanced than it is now.
If the American dream has
made any progress, and I think it has,
it has been made in spite of the suffering
and inequality of the American
negro and not because of it.
Now, it is also implied from this motion that
the American dream is encouraging
and worsening the suffering
of the American negro.
This is emphatically not the case.
The American dream,
the American economic prosperity
and respect for civil liberties
has been the main factor in bringing about
the undoubted improvement in
race relations in America
in the last 20 years.
And Professor Arnold Rose,
who is the author of the Negro in America,
which is perhaps
the definitive work on the subject,
who is also a contributor to
what was called a freedom pamphlet.
So I should imagine that
if he has any bias at all,
it is in favor of the negro.
He said that this improvement in
race relations will be seen
in years to come as remarkably quick,
and he has put it down to three main causes,
increased industrialization
and technical advance,
the increased social mobility
of the American people,
and the economic prosperity.
And I would put it to this house
that that industrialization and
economic prosperity are two of
the main ingredients of the American dream.
And at the same time, again,
I do not want to say that
the negro in America
is treated fairly, but at the same time,
the average per capita
income of negroes in America is
exactly the same as the average
per capita income of people in Great Britain.
Now,
[LAUGHTER] I found that absolutely amazing,
and [LAUGHTER] I understand
that some of you do as well,
so I have got the reference here from
the United States News and
World Report of July the 22nd,
1963, in which it points out,
this will have to be the last interruption
I take as time is running.
>> Mr. President, on a point of information,
is the speaker talking of
real income or money income? [APPLAUSE]
>> I'm talking of money income.
I would not wish to disguise that.
I would also say that in terms of this,
there are only five countries
in the world where
the income is higher than
that of the American negro,
and they do not include countries like
West Germany and France and Japan.
Now, there are in America
35 negro millionaires.
There are negro $6,000
[inaudible] [LAUGHTER] Now,
I do not by saying this,
wish to emphasize but
the negros fairly treated,
I merely wish to try and convey
a more realistic and objective account
of the situation of the negro.
I agree that there are
negroes who are very poor,
indeed [LAUGHTER] such as
the old gentleman in the south,
who was talking about
some of his wealthier brethren,
and he was saying, yes,
some of these rich negroes,
they put on airs day like
the bottom figure of a fraction.
The bigger they try to be,
the smaller they really are.
I would repeat, Mr. President,
sir, in the last minute I have,
that this debate is not whether
civil rights should be extended
to American negroes or not.
If it were, it would be a very easy motion
to argue for and a very easy
motion to vote for.
The debate tonight concerns whether
the American dream is at
the expense of the American negro.
That is whether the American negro
has paid for the American dream with
his suffering or whether
the American dream has
furthered negro inequality.
And I would deny both those two precepts.
I would say that negro inequality
has hindered the American dream.
And I would say that the
American dream has been very important
indeed in furthering civil rights
and in furthering freedom
for the American negro.
Mr. President, sir, I
beg to oppose the motion. [APPLAUSE]
>> It is now with very great pleasure
and a very great sense of honor
that I called Mr. James Baldwin
to speak third to this motion. [APPLAUSE]
>> Now we have Mr. James Baldwin,
the star of the evening,
who has been sitting listening attentively,
getting a wonderful reception
here in the Cambridge Union.
Tremendous enthusiasm from all sides
of the house to Mr. Baldwin,
who has been listening to the arguments.
Now we'll bring the voice of actual
experience to the debate.
>> Good evening. [LAUGHTER]
I find myself, not for the first time
and the position of a Jeremiah.
For example, I don't disagree
with Mr. Burford that
the inequality suffered by
the American Negro population of
the United States has
hindered the American dream.
Indeed, it has. I quarrel
with some other things he has to say.
The other deeper element of
a certain awkwardness I feel has to do with,
it has to do with one's point
of view, I had to put it that way.
One sense, one system of reality,
it would seem to me
the proposition before the house,
if I put it that way, is
the American dream at
the expense of the American Negro,
or the American dream is
at the expense of the American Negro?
Is a question hideously loaded,
and that one's response to that question,
or one's reaction to that question,
has it depend on
effect on where you
find yourself in the world,
what your sense of reality is,
what your system of reality is.
That is, it depends on assumptions which we
hold so deeply as
to be scarcely aware of them.
White South African or
Mississippi Share crop
or Mississippi Sheriff,
or a Frenchman driven out of
Algeria all have at bottom,
a system of reality
which compels them to, for example,
in the case of the French exile from Algeria,
to defend French reasons
for having ruled Algeria.
The Mississippi or Alabama Sheriff,
who really does believe when he's facing
a Negro boy or girl, that this woman,
this man, this child,
must be insane to
attack the system to which
he owes his entire identity.
Of course, for such a person,
the proposition of which
which we're trying to
discuss here tonight does not exist.
And on the other hand,
I have to speak as
one other people who've been most attacked
by what they must now here call the
Western or the European system of reality.
What white people in the world,
the of white supremacy,
I hate to say it here comes from Europe.
That's how it got to America.
Beneath then, whatever one's reaction
to this proposition is has to
be the question or whether or
not civilizations can be considered as such,
equal or whether one civilization has
the right to overtake and
subjugate and in fact to destroy another.
Now, what happens when that happens,
leaving aside all the physical facts
which one can quote,
leaving aside rape or murder,
leaving aside the bloody
catalog of oppression,
which we are in one way
too familiar with already.
What this does to the
subjugated, the most private,
the most serious thing
this does to the subjugated,
is to destroy his sense of reality.
It destroys, for example,
his father's authority over him.
His father can no longer tell
him anything because the past has
disappeared and his father
has no power in the world.
This means in the case of an American Negro,
born in that glittering republic,
at the moment you are born,
since you don't know any better.
Every stick in stone and every face is white,
and since you have not yet seen a mirror,
you suppose that you are too.
It comes as a great shock
around the age of five or six
or seven to discover
the flag to which you have
pledged allegiance,
along with everybody else,
as not pledge allegiance to you.
It comes as a great shock to
discover that Gary Cooper killing
off the Indians when you were
rooting for Gary Cooper,
that the Indians were you. [LAUGHTER]
It comes as a great shock
to discover that the country,
which is your birthplace
and to which you owe your life and
your identity has not
in its whole system of reality,
evolved any place for you.
The disaffection, the demoralization,
and the gap between one person and
another only on the basis
of the color of their skins,
begins there and accelerates
throughout a whole lifetime.
So the presently you realize you're 30,
and are having a terrible time managing to
trust your countrymen By the time you are 30,
you have been through a certain mill,
and the most serious effect
of the mill you've
been through is again,
not the catalogue of disaster.
The policemen, the taxi drivers,
the waiters, the landlady,
the landlord, the banks,
the insurance companies,
the millions of details,
24 hours of every day,
which spell out to
you that you are a worthless human being.
It is not that. Is by
that time you've begun to see it
happening in your daughter or
your son or your niece or your nephew.
You are 30 by now,
and nothing you have done
has helped to escape the trap.
But what is worse than that
is that nothing you have done,
and as far as you can tell nothing you can
do will save your son or
your daughter from meeting the same disaster
and not impossibly coming to the same end.
Now, we're speaking about
expense and I suppose
there are several ways
to address oneself, too.
Some attempt to define
what that word means here.
Let me put it this way,
that from a very literal point of view,
the harbors and the ports and
the railroads of the country.
The economy,
especially of the southern states
could not conceivably be what it has
become if they had
not had and do not still have,
indeed, and for so long,
so many generations cheap labor.
I am stating very seriously,
and this is not an overstatement.
That I picked the coffee,
and I carried it to market and I built
the railroad under
someone else's whip for nothing.
The southern Alagachi which has until today,
so much power in Washington, and therefore,
some power in the world
was created by my labor and
my sweat and the violation
of my women and the murder of my children.
This in the land of the free and the home
of the brave and
no one can challenge that statement,
it is a matter of historical record.
In another way this dream,
and we'll get to the dream in
a moment is at
the expense of the American Negro.
You watch this in
the Deep South in great relief,
but not only in the Deep South.
In the Deep South,
you are dealing with a sheriff or landlord or
landlady or the girl of
the Western Union desk.
And she doesn't know
quite who she's dealing with,
by which I mean that
if you're not part of the town,
and if you are a northern nigger,
it shows in millions of ways.
So she simply knows
that it's an unknown quantity,
and she wants to have nothing to do with it.
So she won't talk to you,
you have to wait for
a while to get your telegram.
We all know this, we've been through it,
and by the time you get to be a man,
it's very easy to deal with.
But what is happening in the poor woman,
the poor man's mind is this.
They have been raised to believe,
and by now they helplessly believe,
no matter how terrible their lives may be,
and their lives have been quite terrible.
No matter how far they fall,
no matter what disaster overtakes them,
they have one enormous
knowledge and consolation,
which is like a heavenly revelation,
at least they are not black.
Now, I suggest that of
all the terrible things that
can happen to a human being
that is one of the worst.
I suggest that what has happened to
white southerners is in some ways,
after all, much worse
than what has happened to Negroes there.
Because Sheriff Clark in Selma,
Alabama, cannot be considered,
no one can be dismissed as a total monster.
I'm sure he loves his wife, his children.
I'm sure that [LAUGHTER] he
likes to get drunk.
After all, one's got to assume and
he is visibly a man like me.
He doesn't know what drives
him to use the club,
to menace with the gun,
and to use the cattle prod.
Something awful must have
happened to a human being,
to be able to put a cattle prod
against a woman's breast, for example.
What happens to the woman is ghastly.
What happens to the man who does it
is in some ways much much worse.
This is being done after all.
Not 100 years ago, but in 1965,
in a country which is blessed with
what we call prosperity,
where do you want to examine too closely?
With a certain social coherence,
which calls itself a
civilized nation and which
espouses the notion of the freedom
of the world and
it is perfectly true from the point of view
now simply of an American Negro.
Any American Negro watching this,
no matter where he is,
from the vantage point of Holland,
which is another terrible place,
has to say to himself,
in spite of what the government says,
the government says, we can't
do anything about it.
But those are white people being murdered
in Mississippi work farms,
being carried off to jail,
those are white children,
running up and down the streets,
the government would find some way
of doing something about it.
We have a Civil Rights Bill now.
We had an amendment, the 15th Amendment
nearly 100 years ago.
I hate to sound again like
an old Testament prophet
but if the amendment was not honored then,
I don't have any reason for believing
the Civil Rights Bill will be honored now.
And after all, one's been there,
since before,
a lot of other people got there.
If one has got
to prove one's title to the land,
isn't 400 years enough?
400 years, at least three wars.
The American soil is full of
the corpses of my ancestors.
Why is my freedom or my citizenship,
or my right to live there,
how is it conceivably a question now?
And I suggest further that in the same way,
the moral life of
Alabama Sheriffs and
poor Alabama white ladies,
their moral lives have been
destroyed by the plague called color.
That the American sense
of reality has been corrupted by it.
At the risk of sounding excesses.
What I always felt when
I finally left the country.
Found myself abroad in other places,
and watched Americans abroad and these
are my countrymen and I do care about them.
And even if I didn't,
there is something between us,
we have the same shorthand.
I know, when
I look at a girl or a boy from Tennessee,
where they came from in Tennessee,
and what that means.
No Englishman knows that, no Frenchman,
no one in the world knows that except
another black man who
comes from the same place.
The one watches these lonely people
denying the only kin they have.
We talk about integration
in America as though it
was some great new conundrum.
The Parliament in America, though we've been
integrated for very long time.
Put me next to any
African and you will see what I
mean and my grandmother was not a rapist.
What we are not facing
is the results of what we've done.
What one brags the American people to do for
all our sakes is
simply to accept our history.
I was there not only as a slave,
but also as a concubine.
One knows the power after all,
which can be used against another person
who've got absolute power over that person.
It seemed to me when I watched Americans in
Europe but they didn't know about Europeans.
Was what they didn't know about me.
They weren't trying, for example,
to be nasty to the French girl
or rude to the French waiter.
They didn't know, they hurt their feelings.
They didn't have any sense
this particular woman, this particular man,
though they spoke another language
and had different manners and
ways was a human being.
And they walked over them
the same bland ignorance, condescension,
charming and cheerful,
with which they had always patted
me on the head and called me
shine and were upset when I was upset.
What is relevant about this is that,
whereas 40 years ago when I was born,
the question of having to deal
with what is unspoken by the subjugated,
what is never said to the master.
Having to deal with this reality was
a very remote possibility,
I was in no one's mind.
When I was growing up, I
was taught in American history books,
that Africa had no history,
and neither did I,
that I was a savage
about who the less said the better,
who had been saved by Europe
and brought to America.
And of course, I believed it,
I didn't have much choice
those are the only books there were.
Everyone else seem to agree
if you walk out of Harlem,
ride out of Harlem, downtown,
the world agrees, what you
see is much bigger, cleaner,
wider, richer, safer, than where you are.
They collect the garbage,
people obviously can
pay their life insurance.
The children look happy, safe,
you're not, and you go back home.
And it would seem then, of course,
that it's an act of God that this is true,
that you belong,
where white people have put you.
It is only since the Second World War,
that there has been a counter
image in the world.
And that image not come
about through any legislation on
the part of any American government,
but through the fact that Africa
was suddenly on the stage of the world,
and Africans had to be dealt
with in a way
that never been dealt with before.
This gave an American
Negro for the first time
a sense of himself beyond
a savage or a clown.
It is created and will
create a great many conundrums.
One of the great things
that the white world does
not know but I think I do know,
is that black people are just
like everybody else.
One has used the myths of Negro and
the myth of color to
pretend and to assume that you are
dealing essentially with something exotic,
bizarre, and practically according
to human laws unknown.
Alas, that is not true.
We are also mercenaries, dictators,
murderers, fliers. We are human too.
What is crucial here,
is unless we can manage to establish
some dialogue between those people
whom I pretend has paid
for the American dream
and those other people who have
not achieved it,
we will be in terrible trouble.
I want to say at the end,
the last, is that
that is what concerns me most.
We are sitting in this room and we are
all we like to think we are,
relatively civilized, and we can
talk to each other at
least on certain levels.
So that we could walk out of here assuming
that the measure of our enlightenment or
at least our politeness
has some effect on the world.
It may not. I remember,
for example, when the ex Attorney General,
Mr. Robert Kennedy, said
that it was conceivable
that in 40 years in America,
we might have a Negro president.
And that sounded like
a very emancipated statement,
I suppose, to white people.
They were not in Harlem
when this statement was first heard,
and did not hear and possibly will never
hear the laughter and
the bitterness and the scorn,
which the statement was greeted.
From the point of view of the man in
the N Harlem barbershop,
Bobby Kennedy only got here
yesterday and now he's
already on his way to the presidency.
We've been here for 400 years,
and now he tells us that maybe in 40 years,
if you're good, we
may let you become president.
What is dangerous here is the turning away
from anything any white American says.
The reason for the political
hesitation in spite of
the Johnson landslide is the one who's been
betrayed by American politicians for so long.
I'm a grown man, and perhaps
I can be reasoned with,
I certainly hope I can be.
But I don't know and
neither does Martin Luther King,
none of us know how to
deal with those other people whom
the white world has so long ignored,
who don't believe anything the white world
says and don't entirely believe anything
I or Martin say.
And one can't blame them,
you watch what has happened to
them in less than 20 years.
It seems to me that the City of New York,
for example, this is my last point.
We said Negroes lived in it for
a very long time.
If the City of New York
were able as it has indeed been able,
in the last 15 years to reconstruct itself,
teared down buildings and
raise great new ones,
downtown and for money.
And it has done nothing whatever
except build housing projects in
the ghetto for the Negroes
and of course, Negroes hate it.
Presently, the property
doesn't deteriorate because
the children cannot bear it.
They want to get out of the ghetto.
If the American pretensions
were based on more solid,
a more honest assessment
of life and of themselves,
it would not mean for Negroes
when someone says
urban renewal that Negroes
simply going to be
thrown out into the streets.
This is what it does mean now.
This is not an act of God,
we're dealing with a society made
and ruled by men.
If the American Negro
had not been present in America,
I'm convinced that the history of
the American labor movement would
be much more edifying than it is.
It is a terrible thing
for an entire people to
surrender to the notion that
one ninth of its population is beneath them.
And until that moment,
until the moment comes, when we,
the American people are
able to accept the fact
that I have to accept,
for example, that my ancestors are
both white and black.
That on that continent,
we are trying to forge
a new identity for which we need each other,
and that I am not a ward of America.
I'm not an object of missionary charity.
I am one of the people who built the country.
Until this moment, there are
scarcely any hope for the American dream
because the people who are
denied participation in
it by their very presence will wreck it,
and if that happens,
it's a very grave moment for the West.
Thank you. [APPLAUSE].
>> Tremendously moving moment now.
The whole of the Union standing and
applauding this magnificent speech
of James Baldwin.
Never seen this happen before in
the Union in all the years
that I have known it.
Baldwin smiling, obviously,
delighted by his reception,
tremendously moved by it.
>> I am now very grateful and
very pleased to be able to call
Mr. William F Buckley junior to speak
forth to this motion.[APPLAUSE]
>> Now, we have Mr. William Buckley,
who will need all his skill to
establish ascendency over his audience,
which has clearly been so deeply moved by the
eloquent and personal experience,
the preceding speaker.
>> Take, Mr. President, gentlemen.
It seems to me that of
all the indictments Mr. Baldwin,
has made of America are
here tonight and in
his copious literature of protest.
The one that is most striking involves in
effect the refusal of
the American community to
treat him other than as a Negro.
The American community has
refused to do this.
The American community almost
everywhere he goes,
treats him with the kind of unction.
The kind of satisfaction
at posturing carefully for
his flagellations of our civilization,
that indeed, are quite properly of
commands the contempt which
he so eloquently showers upon it.
It is impossible in
my judgment to deal
with the indictment of Mr. Baldwin,
unless one is prepared to
deal with him as a white man.
Unless one is prepared to say to him,
the fact that your skin is black
is utterly irrelevant to
the arguments that you raise.
The fact that you sit here as is
your rhetorical device and lay
the entire weight of the Negro ordeal on
your own shoulders is irrelevant
to the argument that we are here to discuss.
The gravamen of Mr. Baldwin's
charges against America are
not so much that our civilization has failed
him and his people
that our ideals are insufficient,
but that we have no ideals.
That our ideals,
rather or some sort of a superficial coating,
which we come up with at
any given moment in order to justify whatever
commercial and anoxious experiment
we are engaged in.
Thus, Mr. Baldwin can write his book,
the fire next time,
in which he threatens America.
He didn't in writing that book speak with
the British accents that
he used exclusively tonight.
In which he threatened America with
necessity for us to
jettison our entire civilization.
The only thing that
the white man has that the Negro should want,
he said is power.
And he is treated from
coast to coast United states
with anguish [BACKGROUND] goes
beyond anything that was ever expected from
the most servile Negro creature
by a southern family.
I propose to pay him the honor
this night saying to him, Mr. Baldwin,
I am going to speak to you without
any reference whatever to
those surrounding protections which you
are used to in virtue of
the fact that you are a Negro.
And here we need to ask the question.
What, in fact, shall we do about it, Mr.
Present? What shall we in
America try to do, for instance,
to eliminate those psychic humiliation,
which I join Mr. Baldwin in believing,
are the very worst aspects
of this discrimination?
Are you found that a source of
considerable birth to laugh away
the statistics of my colleague, Mr. Burford.
I don't think they are insignificant.
They are certainly not insignificant,
or in a world which attaches
a considerable importance
to material progress.
It is, in fact, the case,
that seven tenths of the white income
of the United States
is equal to the income that is
made by the average Negro.
I don't think this is an irrelevant
statistic ladies and gentlemen.
It takes a capitalization of 15,16,
$17,000 per job in
the United States. This is a capitalization.
That it was not created
exclusively as a result of negro travail.
My great grandparents worked too,
presumably yours worked also.
I don't know if anything that has ever been
created without the expense of something,
all of you who hope for
a diploma here are going to do
that at the expense
of a considerable amount of effort.
And I would thank you.
Please [LAUGHTER] not to belie the fact that
a considerable amount of effort went into
the production of a system which
grants a greater degree of material well
being to the American negro
other than that that is
enjoyed by 95% of
the other peoples of the human race.
But even so, to
the extent that your withering laughter
suggested here that you found
this a contemptible observation, I agree.
I don't think it matters that there are
35 millionaires among the negro community.
If there were 20 million millionaires
among the negro community
of the United States,
I would still agree with you.
That we have a dastardly situation.
But I'm asking you not to make politics as
the pro flies to use
the fleeted phrase of Professor Oakeshott,
but rather to consider, what in
fact is it that we Americans ought to do?
What are your instructions that
I'm to take back to the United States,
my friend [LAUGHTER] I
want to know what it is that we should do,
and especially I want to know
whether it is time, in fact,
to abandon the American dream,
as it has been defined
by Mr. Haycock, Mr. Burford.
What in fact is it that
we ought to do for instance?
To avoid do humiliations mentioned by Mr.
Baldwin as being a part of
his own experience during his lifetime.
At the age of 12, you
will find on reading his book,
he trespassed outside the ghetto
of Harlem and was
taken by the scruff of the neck by
a policeman on 42nd Street
in Madison Avenue and said,
here you nigger, go back
to where you belong.
Fifteen, 20 years later,
he goes in and asks for a scotch whiskey
at the airport at Chicago and
is told by the white barman that he is
obviously underage and under
the circumstances cannot be served.
I know from your faces that you
share with me the feeling of
compassion and the feeling of
outrage that this kind
of thing should have happened.
What, in fact, are we
going to do to this policeman?
And what in fact are we going to
do to this barman?
How are we going to avoid?
The kind of humiliations that are
perpetually visited on members
of the minority race.
Obviously, the first element is concern.
We've got the care that it happens.
We have got to do what we
can to change the warp and woof of
moral thought in society in
such fashion as to try
to make it happen less and less.
Let me urge this point to you,
which I can do with authority, my friends.
The only thing that I can
tonight and that is to
tell you that in the United States,
there is a concern for the negro problem.
Now [LAUGHTER] [APPLAUSE] if you get
up to me and say,
well, now, is there the kind of concern
that we students of Cambridge would show,
if the problem were our own?
All I can say is I don't know.
It may very well be
that there has been some sort of
a sunburst of moral enlightenment
that has hit this community.
[LAUGHTER] So as to make it
predictable that if you were
the governors of the United States,
the situation would change overnight.
I'm prepared to grant this as
a form of courtesy, Mr. President.
[LAUGHTER] But meanwhile, I'm saying to you
that the engines of concern
in the United States are working.
The presence of Mr. Baldwin here tonight is
in part a reflection of that concern.
[LAUGHTER] You cannot go
to a university in the United States.
A university in the United States
presumably also
governed by the Lord spiritual as you are,
in which Mr. Baldwin is not
the toast of the town.
You cannot go to
a university of the United States,
in which practically all other problems
of public policy are
preempted by the primary policy
of concern for the negro.
I challenge you to name
me another civilization anytime,
anywhere in the history of the world,
in which the problems of
a minority which have been showing
considerable material
and political advancement is
as much a subject of
dramatic concern as it
is in the United States.
Let me just say,
finally, ladies and gentlemen,
this, there is
no instant cure for
the race problem in America.
And anybody who tells you that there is is
a charlatan and ultimately a boring man,
a boring precisely because
he is then speaking in
the kind of abstractions that do
not relate to the human experience.
The trouble in America,
where the negro community is concerned is
a very complicated one.
I urge those of you who
have an actual rather than
a purely ideologized interest
in the problem to read
the book beyond the melting part
by Professor Glazer,
also co author of the Lonely Crowd,
a prominent Jewish intellectual,
who points to the fact that
the situation in America where the negroes
are concerned is extremely complex as
a result of
an unfortunate conjunction of two factors.
One is the dreadful efforts
to perpetuate discrimination by
many individual American citizens as
a result of their lack of
that final and ultimate concern which
some people are truly trying to agitate
the other is as
a result of the failure of
the negro community itself to make
certain exertions which were
made by other minority groups
during the American experience.
If you can stand a statistic
not of my own making,
let me give you one which
Professor Glazer considers as relevant.
He says, for instance, in 1900,
there were 3,500 negro doctors in America.
In 1960, there were 3,900,
an increase in 400.
Is this because there were no opportunities,
as has been suggested by Mr.
Haycock and also by Mr. Baldwin implicitly?
No, says Professor Glazer.
There are a great many medical schools
who are by no means practice discrimination,
who are anxious to receive,
to train negro doctors.
There are scholarships available
to put them through.
But in fact, that particular energy,
which he remarks was so
noticeable in the Jewish community and to
a certain and lesser extent in
the Italian Irish community
for some reason is not there.
We should focus on
the necessity to
animate this particular energy,
but he comes to the conclusion
which strikes me as plausible.
That the people who can best do it,
who can do it most effectively
are negroes themselves.
Let me conclude by reminding you,
ladies and gentlemen, that
where the negro is concerned,
the dangers as far as I can see at
this moment is that they will
seek to reach out for some sort of
radical solutions on the basis of
which the true problem is obscured.
They have done a great deal to focus on
the fact of
white discrimination against the negroes.
They have done a great deal to
agitate a moral concern,
but where in fact, do they go now?
They seem to be slipping.
If you will read carefully, for instance,
the words of Mr. Bayard Rustin towards
some sort of a procrustan formulation
which ends up less urging
the advancement of the negro
than the regression of the white people.
Fourteen times as many people in
New York City born of
negroes are illegitimate as of whites.
This is a problem. How shall we address it?
By seeking out laws that
encourage illegitimacy in white people?
This unfortunately tends to be
the rhetorical momentum that
some of their arguments are taken.
>> One thing you might do,
Mr. Buckley is let them
vote in Mississippi [APPLAUSE]
>> I couldn't agree with you more
[LAUGHTER]
except unless I appear too ingratiating,
which is hardly my objective here tonight.
I think actually what
is wrong in Mississippi, sir,
is not that not enough negroes are voting,
but that too many white people
are voting [LAUGHTER]
Booker T. Washington said
that the important thing where negroes are
concerned is not that
they hold public office,
but that they be
prepared to hold public office.
Not that they vote,
but that they be prepared to vote.
What are we going to do with
the negroes having taught
the negroes in Mississippi
to despise Rose Barnett?
Shall we then teach them to emulate
their cousins in Harlem
and adore Adam Clayton Powell Junior?
Well, it is much more complicated,
sir, than simply the question
of giving them the vote.
If I were myself a constituent
of the community of
Mississippi at this moment,
what I would do is vote to lift
the standards of the vote so as to
disqualify 65%
of the white people who are presently voting
[LAUGHTER] [APPLAUSE] I say
then that what we need
is a considerable amount of
frankness that acknowledges that
there are two sets of difficulties.
The difficulties of the white person
who acts as white people and brown people
and black people do all over
the world to protect
their own vested interests,
who have, as all of
the races in the entire world have,
and suffer from a kind of
a racial narcissism,
which tends always to convert
every contingency into such a way
as to maximize their own power.
That, yes, we must do.
But we must also reach
through to the negro people and tell them
that their best chances are in
a mobile society and
the most mobile society in the world today,
my friends, is the United States of America.
The most mobile society of
the United States in the world
is the United States of America,
and it is precisely that mobility,
which will give opportunities
to the negroes,
which they must be encouraged to
take, but they must not.
In the course of their ordeal,
be encouraged to adopt the kind of cynicism,
the kind of despair,
the kind of iconoclasm
that is urged upon them
by Mr. Baldwin in his recent works,
because of one thing, I can tell you,
I believe with absolute authority,
that where the United States is concerned,
if it ever becomes a confrontation,
between a continuation of
our own sort of idealism.
The private stock of which granted,
like most people in the world,
we tend to lavish only every now and then on
public enterprises reserving it so
often for our own irritations and pleasures.
But the fundamental trend of
the negro people in
the United States is the good nature and is
the generosity and is the good wishes is
the fundamental decency that do
lie at the reserves of
the spirit of the American people.
These must not be laughed at.
And under no circumstances
must they be laughed at,
and under no circumstances must America be
addressed and hold that
the only alternative to the status quo,
is to overthrow that civilization,
which we consider to
be the faith of our fathers,
the faith indeed of your fathers.
This is what must animate
whatever meliorism must come
because if it does finally come to
a radical confrontation
between giving up what
we understand to be
the best features of
the American way of life,
which at that level is
indistinguishable so far as
I can see from the European way of life.
Then we will fight the issue.
And we will fight the issue, not
only in the Cambridge Union,
but we will fight it as
you were once recently
called to do on beaches
and on hills and on mountains,
and on landing grounds,
and we will be convinced that just as you won
the war against
a particular threat to civilization,
you were nevertheless waging
a war in favor of than
for the benefit of Germans, your own enemies,
just as we are convinced that if it should
ever come to that kind of a confrontation,
our own determination to
win the struggle will be
a determination to wage
a war not only for whites,
but also for negroes [APPLAUSE]
>> Will the tellers
take their places, please?
They voted in favor of the motion,
the motion being at the American dreams
at the expense of the negro.
They voted in favor of that motion,
544 persons and against 164 persons.
The motion is therefore carried by 380 votes.
I declare the House to stand
adjourned. [APPLAUSE]