James Baldwin Debates William F. Buckley (1965)

[music]

Narrator:
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.

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 rarely... 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 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. 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 early

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 will take his
chair, and the debate will begin.

[applause]

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

the Expense of the American Negro."
The proposer, Mr. David Heycock 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 is 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 principal 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 in which
intolerance and prejudice

are meaningless terms.
Imagine, however, Mr. President,

that 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 those 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 than there are on the voting
rolls." When King wrote that letter,

335 out of 32,700

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

After a mass march to the courthouse,
237 negros,

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]

36 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. 400 students were
arrested and taken to the armory,

where many of them spent the night
on a cold cement floor. The following

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

outnumber whites by 11,500
to 6,000 people

and yet, only 300 are registered to vote.
Negros in Marion were anxious

to test the public accommodations section
of the civil rights law. They entered a

drugstore 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

negros for protesting against
this treatment, 700 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
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 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]

- 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
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 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 that in fact it 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 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 twenty 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 of what was called
"The Freedom Pamphlet,"

so I should imagine that 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.

So I've 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 because time is running short.

- Mr. President, on a point
of information, is this speaker

talking of real income
or money income?

- I'm talking of money income.
[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 35

negro millionaires. There are negro 6,000
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...

Such as the old gentlemen in the south

who was talking about
some of his wealthier brethren

and he was saying "Yes, sir,
some of these rich negros,

they put on airs, they're 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 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 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 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 quarrel 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 a question hideously loaded,
and that 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 as to
be scarcely aware of them.

A white South African or
a 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 defend
French reasons for having ruled Algeria.

The Mississippi or the 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 of 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 must now here call the Western or

European system of reality.
What white people in the world--

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 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, 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 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, 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 you 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 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, for so long, so many generations,
cheap labor. I am stating very

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

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

someone else’s whip for nothing.
For nothing.

The Southern oligarchy, 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 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 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 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 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 that, you know,
he likes to get drunk.

You know, after all, one’s got to
assume--and 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, we have

the 15th 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 don't have any
reason to believe 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 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, 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, 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 Frenchman.
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 though 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 absolute power over
that person.

It seemed to me when I watched
Americans in Europe that 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 with the same kind

of bland ignorance, condescension,
charming and cheerful with which

they’d 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 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 are 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 a 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, 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 what concerns me most. We are
sitting in this room, and we are all,

at least we’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 did not hear,
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 barbershop, Bobby Kennedy

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

We’ve been here for 400 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, has 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 simply are gonna
be thrown out into the streets.

Which 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 am 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
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.

[loud applause]

Narrator: 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.

[applause]

President: I am now very grateful
and very pleased to be

able to call Mr. William F Buckley Jr.
to speak fourth to this motion.

[applause]

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

establish ascendancy over his audience,
which has clearly been so 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, that 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 a kind of unction,
of a kind of satisfaction at posturing

carefully for his flagellations
of our civilization. That indeed,

quite properly, 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 raise, or 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 or that we have no
ideals. That our ideals, rather,

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

given moment in order to justify
whatever commercial and

noxious 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 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 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
mirth to laugh away the statistics

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

certainly are not insignificant 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 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 grandparents
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 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, 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 35, 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 am
asking you not to make politics as

the crow flies, to use the fleeted phrase
of Professor Oakshock, but rather to consider

what in fact is it 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. What in fact is it we
ought to do, for instance, to avoid

due 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 42nd 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 underage
and under the circumstances, can't be

served. I know. 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 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, 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 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 courtesy, 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 member
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 is 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 that there is

is a charlatan and
ultimately a boring man.

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 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. Heycock and also by

Mr. Baldwin implicitly. "No," says
Professor Glazer. There are a great many

medical schools who by no means practice
discrimination, who are anxious to recieve

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 and 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. The people
who can best do it most effectively

are negros themselves. Let me conclude
by reminding you, ladies and gentlemen

that where the negro is concerned,
the dangers, 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 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 we address it? By seeking out laws

that encourage illegitimacy in white
people? This unfortunately tends to be

the rhetorical momentum that
some of the arguments are taking.

- One thing you might do Mr. Buckley is
let them vote in Mississippi. [applause]

Buckley: I agree.

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 that

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, 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, not simply...

[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 the races in the entire world

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

convert every contingency in 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 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 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 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
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 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 must

come because if it does finally come to
a 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 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 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]

President: Will the tellers take
their places please? They voted

in favor of the motion, the motion being
that the American Dream is 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]