James Baldwin Debates William F. Buckley (1965)

[music]

Narrator: The following program is from NET:
The National Educational Television Network.

Debate, James Baldwin Vs 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.

Norman St. John Stevas, M.P:
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 have ever

seen the union so well attended.
There are undergraduates everywhere.

They're on the benches and on the floor
and on the galleries. And there are a lot

more outside clambering 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 undergraduates 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 world wide

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. I must 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

reporters 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 will take his
chair, and the debate will begin.

[applause]

President: The motion before the house
tonight is "The American Dream at the

Expense of the American Negro." The proposer,
Mr. David Haycock of Pembroke College,

and our opposer, Mr. Jeremy Burford of
Emmanuel College. Mr. James Baldwin

will speak third. Mr William F. Buckley Jr.
will speak fourth. Mr. Heycock has the

ear of the house.

[applause]

David Heycock: 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 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 at Yale."

[laughter]

Since then, he has devoted himself to
the secular, and this has included

Norman Mailer, Kenneth Tynan, Mary McCarthy,
and Fidel Castro, none of whom have come

out of their confrontations unscathed.

[laughter]

At present, his principle occupation is
editing a right-wing newspaper in the

United States entitled
"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 which

intollerence and prejudice are meaningless
terms. Imagine; however, Mr. President, a

condition of this utopia has been a
persistent and quite deliberate

exploitation of one ninth of its
inhabitants. That one man in nine has

been denied his rights, which the rest
of that society takes for granted.

That one man in nine does not have
a chance for fulfillment or realization

of his innate potentiality. 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

fundraising letter from Selma, Alabama
jail "There are more negros in prison

with me then there are on the voting
roles." When King wrote that letter,

three-hundred and thirty-five out of
thirty-two-thousand-seven-hundred

negros in Dallas had the vote.
One percent of the Dallas population.

After a mass march to the court house,
two-hundred-and-thirty-seven negros,

King among them, were arrested.
The following day, four-hundred-and

seventy 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 court house while
state circuit court was in session.

On the following day, a hundred-and
eleven 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

date the demonstrations spread to
Marion, Alabama. In Marion, negros

outnumbered the whites by eleven-and
a-half thousand to six-thousand people

and yet, only three hundred are registered
to vote. Negros in Marion were anxious

to test the public accommodations 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 five
dollars each. After the arrest of fifteen

negros for protesting against this
treatment, seven hundred negros

boycotted their classes the 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 sung
one more song. Of course, they sung

another song, and of course, all seven
hundred 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 has felt fit to
listen to his music. It has felt fit to laugh

at his jokes, and yet, as far as I am
concerned, it has never felt fit to

give the American negro a fair deal;
and for this reason Mr. President,

I will beg leave to propose the motion
that the American dream is at the expense

of the American negro.

[applause]

President: I now call Mr. Jeremy Burford of Emmanuel College to oppose the motion.

[applause]

Narrator: Now, we have Mr. Jeremy
Burford of Emmanuel College who

is the first undergraduate opposing
the motion.

Jeremy Burford: 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
of a sort in 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. [audience: here here]

[laughter]

Thank you, sir. Come and collect
your fee afterwards.

[laughter and 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 in fact that this has hindered
the American Dream, and if there had

been equality, if there had been true
freedom of opportunity, the American

dream would be very much more advance
then 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

in 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 twenty years; and Professor
Arnold Rose was the author of the "Negro

in America" which is perhaps the definitive
work on the subject, who is also a

contributor of what is called "The Freedom
Pamphlet". So I should imagine if he has

any bias at all, it is in favor of the negro.
He's 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 negros in America

is exactly the same as the average per
capita income of people in Great Britain.

Now, I found that absolutely amazing.
[laughter]

[laughter]
I understand that some of you do as well;

I've got the reference here from the
United States News and World Report

of July the 22nd 1963, in which it points
out- [Man in the audience interrupts]

This will have to be the last interruption
I take because time is running short.

Audience member: Mr. President. Now a
point of information, is this being a talking

of real income or money income?
[Audience: here here, applause.]

I am 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 thirty-five

negro millionaires. There are six thousand
doctors and so on. Now I do not by saying

this wish to emphasize that the negro is
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 negros who are
very poor indeed, such as the old

gentlemen in the south who was talking
about some of his wealthier brethren

saying "Yes. Some of these rich negros
they put on airs like the bottom

figure of a fetch, and the bigger they try
to be the smaller they really are."

I would repeat Mr. President in the
last minute that I have that this debate

is not whether civil rights should be
extended to American negros 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 where the American negro has paid

for the American dream with a suffering
or whether the American dream has

furthered the negro inequality, and
I would deny those things to precept.

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]

President: It is now with very
great pleasure and a very great sense of

honor that I call Mr. James Baldwin
to speak third to this motion.

[applause]

Narrator: Now we have Mr. James Baldwin,
the star of the evening, who has been

sitting, listening attentively and getting
a wonderful reception here in the

Cambridge Union. From members, enthusiasm from all sides of the house for

Mr. Baldwin, who has been listening to the arguments. Now will bring the voice of actual

experience to the debate.

James Baldwin: Good evening.

[laughter]

I find myself, not for the first time, in
the position of a kind of 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 quarrell with some other things he
has to say. The other, deeper, element of

a certain awkwardness I feel has to do
with one’s point of view.

I have to put it that way – one’s sense,
one’s system of reality.

It would seem to me the proposition
before the House, and I would 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 the question hideously loaded,
and then one’s response to that question

– one’s reaction to that question –
has to depend on effect and, in effect,

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 so as to
be scarcely aware of them.

Are white South African or
Mississippi sharecropper, 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 offend
French reasons from 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, to

such a person, the proposition which
we are trying to discuss here tonight

does not exist. And on the other hand,
I, have to speak as one of the people

who’ve been most attacked by what
we now must here call the Western or

European system of reality. What white
people in the world, what we call

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
of whether or not civilizations can

be considered, as such, equal, or
whether one’s 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 that

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, and the moment you

are born, since you don’t
know any better,

every stick and 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 5, or 6, or 7, to

discover that the flag to which
you have pledged allegiance, along with

everybody else, has not pledged
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. 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,

evovled 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

skin, begins there and accelerates
– accelerates throughout a whole lifetime

– to the present when you realize
you’re thirty and are having a terrible

time managing to trust your
countrymen. By the time you are thirty,

you have been through a certain
kind of mill. And the most serious effect

of the mill you’ve been through is,
again, not the catalog of disaster,

the policemen, the taxi drivers,
the waiters, the landlady, the landlord,

the banks, the insurance companies,
the millions of details, twenty four

hours of every day, which spell
out to you that you are a worthless

human being. It is not that. It’s by
that time that you’ve begun to see

it happening, in your daughter or your
son, or your niece or your nephew.

You are thirty 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. I suppose there are
several ways to address oneself,

to some attempt to find 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 for so long, for many generations,
cheap labor. I am stating very

seriously, and this is not an
overstatement: I picked the cotton,

I carried it to the market,
and I built the railroads under

someone else’s whip for nothing.
For nothing.

The Southern oligarchy, which has
still today so very 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 watched 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 a
landlord, or a 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 a part of the town,

and if you are a Nothern 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 because
she won’t talk to you, you have

to wait for a while to get your telegram.
OK, we all know this. We’ve all

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’ve been raised to believe,
and by now they helplessly believe,

that no matter how terrible their lives
may be, and their lives have been

quite terrible, and no matter how
far they fall, no matter what disaster

overtakes them, they have one
enormous knowledge in

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
– you know, no one can be

dismissed as a total monster.

I’m sure he loves his wife, his children.
I’m sure, you know, he likes to

get drunk. You know, after all, one’s got
to assume he is visibly a man like me.

But 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 breasts, 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 a hundred
years ago, but in 1965, in a country

which is blessed with what we call
prosperity, a word we won’t examine

too closely; with a certain kind of
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
Harlem, 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 if those were

white people being murdered in
Mississippi work farms, being carried

off to jail, if those were 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
where an amendment, the

fifteenth amendment, nearly a hundred
years ago – I hate to sound again

like an Old Testament prophet –
but if the amendment was not

honored then, I would have any
reason to believe in the civil rights

bill will be honored now.

And after all one’s been there, since
before, you know, a lot of other

people got there. If one has got to
prove one’s title to the land, isn’t

four hundred years enough? Four
hundred 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, and in the

same way, the moral life of Alabama
sheriffs and poor Alabama ladies

– 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 excessive,
what I always felt, when I finally

left the country, and found myself abroad,
in other places, and watched

the 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,
if I look at a boy or a girl from Tennessee,

where they came from in Tennessee
and what that means.

No Englishman knows that. No Frenchmen.
No one in the world knows that except

another black man who comes
from the same place.

One watches these lonely people.
Denying the only kin they have.

We talk about integration in America
as thought it were some great new

conundrum. The problem in America
is that we have been integrated for

a very long time. Put me next to any
African and you will see what I mean.

My grandmother was not a racist.
What we are not facing ...

is the results of what we've done.

What one begs 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 afterall which
can be used against another person

who has got absolute power over
that person.

It seemed to me when I watched
Americans in Europe what 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 kind

of bland ignorance, condescension,
charming and cheerful with which

they’ve always pat me on the head
and called me Shine and were upset

when I was upset. What is relevant
about this is that whereas forty 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, of ever

having to deal with this reality
was a very remote possibility.

It 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 whom 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 were the only books there were.

Everyone else seemed to agree.

If you walk out of Harlem, ride out
of Harlem, downtown, the world

agrees what you see is much bigger,
cleaner, whiter, richer, safer

than where you are. They collect
the garbage. People obviously can

pay their life insurance. Their children
look happy, safe. You’re not.

And you go back home, and it would
seem that, 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’s been a

counter-image in the world. And that
image did not come about through

any legislation or 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 they’d
never been dealt with before.

This gave an American Negro for
the first time a sense of himself

beyond the savage or a clown. It has
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
myth of Negro and the myth of color

to pretend and to assume that you
were dealing with, essentially,

with something exotic, bizarre,
and practically, according to human laws,

unknown. Alas, it is not true.
We’re also mercenaries,

dictators, murderers, liars.
We are human too.

What is crucial here is that unless
we can manage to accept, establish

some kind of dialog between those
people whom I pretend have 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 is

that is what concerns me most. We are
sitting in this room, and we are all,

at least I’d 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
forty years, in America, we might have

a Negro president. That sounded
like a very emancipated statement,

I suppose, to white people. They were
not in Harlem when this statement

was first heard. And they’re not here,
and possibly will never hear the laughter

and the bitterness, and the scorn
with which this statement was greeted.

From the point of view of the man
in the Harlem barber shop, Bobby Kennedy

only got here yesterday, and he’s
already on his way to the presidency.

We’ve been here for four hundred
years and now he tells us that maybe

in forty years, if you’re good,
we may let you become president.

What is dangerous here is the turning
away from – the turning away from

– anything any white American says.
The reason for the political hesitation,

in spite of the Johnson landslide is
that one has been betrayed by American

politicians for so long. And I am 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 is saying.

And one can’t blame them. You watch
what has happened to

them in less than twenty years.
It seems to me that the City of New York,

for example – this is my last point –
It’s had Negroes in it for a very long time.

If the city of New York were able, as it
has indeed been able, in the last fifteen

years to reconstruct itself, tear down
buildings and raise great new ones,

downtown and for money, and has
done nothing whatever except build

housing projects in the ghetto for the
Negroes. And of course, Negroes hate it.

Presently the property does indeed
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 can simply are going
to be thrown out into the streets.

This is just what it does mean now. This is
not an act of God. We’re dealing with

a society made and ruled by men.
Had the American Negro had not

been present in America, I am convinced
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
Americans, 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 am not an object of missionary charity. I am
one of the people who built the

country–until this moment there is 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 is a
very grave moment for the West.

Thank you.

[standing ovation, loud applause]

Narrator: Members. 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.

[applause]

President: I am now very grateful
and very pleased to be able to call a

Mr. William F Buckley Jr. to speak forth
to this motion.

[applause]

Narrator: Now we have Mr. William Buckley,
who will need all his skill to establish a

a ascendancy over his audience, which
has clearly been deeply moved by

the eloquence and personal experience
of the preceding speaker.

William Buckley: Thank you Mr. President,
Baldwin, Heycock, Burford, gentlemen.

It seems to me that of all the indictments
Mr. Baldwin has made of America

here tonight and in his copious literature
of protest, the one that is of 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, of
a kind of satisfaction at posturing

carefully for his flagellation of
our civilization. That indeed our

white populi commands the contempt
which he so eloquently showers upon us.

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 raised or the
fact that you sit here as is your

rhetorical devise and lay the entire
waves of the negro ordeal on your

own shoulders is irrelevant to the
argument we are here to discuss.

The bravanmon of Mr. Baldwin's charges
against America are not so much that our

civilization has failed him or/and his
people. That our ideals are

insufficient or that we have no
ideals. That our ideals are rather

some sort of a superficial coating
of which we come up with at any

given moment in order to justify
our whatever commercial and

agnoxious experiment we are engaged
in. Of us, Mr. Baldwin can write his

book "The Fire Next Time" in which
he threatens America. He didn't

in writing that book speak with a
British accent that he used

exclusively tonight, in which he
threatened America with a

necessity for us to jettison...
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 of
the United States with a kind of unctuous

[Narrator speaking over him: inaudible]

... that goes beyond anything that was
ever expected from some of the most

servile negro creature by a southern
family. I propose to pay him the honor

this night of 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.
Here we need to ask the question,

what in fact shall we do about it,
Mr. President? What shall we in America

try to do for instance to eliminate
those psychic humiliations which I join

Mr. Baldwin in believing are the very
worst aspects of this discrimination?

You found it a source of considerable
merth to laugh away these statistics

of my colleague, Mr. Burford. I don't
think they are insignificant. They

certainly are not insignificant in a world
that attaches a considerable importance

to material progress. It is in fact the case
that seven-tenths of the white income

in 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 gentleman. It takes

the capitalization of fifteen, sixteen,
seventeen thousand dollars per job in the

United States. This is capitalization that
was not created exclusively as a result

of negro travail. My great grand parents
worked too, presumably yours worked

also. I don't know of 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 to please

not to deny 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 in which is enjoyed by 95%
of the other peoples' of the human race.

But even so, to the extent of your withering
laughter suggested here that you found this

a contemptible observation. I agree.
I don't think it matters that there are

thirty-five millionaires among the negro
community if there were thirty-five, if

there were twenty million millionaires
among the negro community of the

United States, I would still agree with
you that we have a dastardly situation.

But I am asking you not to make politics
as the crow flies, to use the fleeted

phrase of Professor Oakshock. Rather
consider what in fact is that we Americans

ought to do? What are your instructions
that I am to take back to the United States

my friend? 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. Heycock and
Mr. Burford or what in fact is it we

ought to do; for instance, to avoid
two humiliations mentioned by Mr. Baldwin

as being a part of his own experience
during his lifetime. At the age of twelve,

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 forty-second

street, Madison Avenue and said,
"Here, you nigger, go back to where you belong."

Fifteen, twenty years later he goes in and
asks for a scotch whiskey at the airport

at Chicago and is told by the white woman
that he is obviously under-aged and under

the circumstances, cannot be served.
I know. I know from your faces that

you share with me the feeling of
compassion and the feeling of

outraged 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 to
care that it happens. We've 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 if you get
up to me and say-

[laughter]

If you get up to me and say,
"Well is there now 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 so as to make

it predictable that if you were the
governors of the United States,

the situation would change overnight.
I am prepared to grant this as a

form of curtesy, Mr. President, but
meanwhile I am 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. [audience members yells out]

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 another civilization any time
anywhere in the history of the world

in which the problems of the minority,
which have been showing considerable

material and political advancement as
much a subject of dramatic concern as it

is in the United States, but 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 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 Pot" by Professor Glazer,

also co-author of the "The Lonely Proud"
a prominent Jewish intellectual who

points at the fact that the situation in
America where the negros are concerned

is extremely complex as the 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 find agitate the other
or is as a result of a 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 thirty-five
hundred negro doctors in America. In 1960

there were thirty-nine hundred. An increase
in four hundred. Is this because there were

no opportunities, as has been suggested
by Mr. Heycock and also by Mr. Baldwin

implicitly. "No," says Professor Glazer. There
are great many medical schools who are

by no means practice discrimination who
are anxious to receieve the trained 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

to a certain and lesser extent in the
Italian and 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. To the

people who can best do who can do it
most effectively are negros themselves.

Let me conclude that by reminding you,
ladies and gentlemen that where the

negro is concerned the dangers are as
far as I can see it 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 negros.
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 read carefully for instance the words
of Mr. Bayard Rustin, toward some sort of

a procrustean 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 negros are illegitimate
as of whites. This is a problem. How should

be address this? By seeking out laws that
encourage the illlegitimacy in white people?

This unfortunately tends to be the rhetorical
momentum of some of the arguments are taking.

Audience member: One thing you might
do Mr. Buckley is let them vote in Mississippi.

[applause]

Buckley: I couldn't agree with you more
and for, except, lest 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
negros are voting but there are too many

white people are voting.

[laughter]

Booker T. Washington said, "That the
important thing where negros are

concerned is not that they hold
public office but 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
negros having taught the negros

in Mississippi to despise Barnett,
Ross Barnett, shall we then teach

them to emulate their cousins
in Harlem and adore Adam

Clayton Powell Jr. It is much more
complicated, sir, then 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 sixty-five
percent of the white people who are

presently voting, not simply...

[applause]

I say then what we need is a considerable
amount of frankness that acknowledges

there are two sets of difficulties,
the difficulties of the white person who

acts as white people, as brown people
and black people do all over the world to

protect their own vested interests, who
have as all the races in the entire world

have and suffer from a kind of racial
narcissism to which tend to always

convert every contingency in such a way
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 in the world is the
United States of America, and it is

precisely that mobility which will give
opportunities to the negros 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

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 start 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 friend of the negro
people in the United States is the good

nature and is the generosity and is the
good wishes, is the decency, the fundamental

decency that do lie at the preserves 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 told 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 that must

come because if it does finally come to
confrontation, 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 as 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 and 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 negros.

[long applause]

Unnamed person: Will the tellers take
their places please. Voted in favor of the

motion, the motion being the American
Dream at the expense of the negro

voted in favor of that motion five-hundred
and-forty-four persons and against,

one hundred-and-sixty-four persons.
The motion is therefore carried by

three-hundred-eighty-votes and I declare
the house to stand adjourned.

[applause]