The 40th anniversary of the fulbright scholarship program. Future speakers include James Buchanan on january 23 and John Harrington on fairbury 19th. If you have questions for our speaker, please write them down on the part on your table and send them to the front. I will ask as many questions as time permits. I would like to introduce our guest. Please stand when i call your name. Please withhold your applause until i am completed. Bernard shaw of cable news network, Lita Williams of the new york times, adrian farrell, a member who organized the lunch, a member of the french embassy, randy allen from pyramid video, dorothy of the washington post, finley lewis for the Minneapolis Tribune and ernest white of washington living magazine. [applause] host our guest today, James Baldwin, offers a lesson for those of us who are readers and writers. A message of clarity, wisdom, and determination. The message needs to be heard. 23 years ago 33 years ago, his first book, go tell on the mountain, was published. 23 years ago his essay Brought International claim. The road has been a climb into deeper respect from his peers and reaffirmation of the message and essays in more than a dozen books. There have been times when his message has been controversial. He criticized the american establishment for failing to meet with ho chi minh and fidel castro. He argues the myth of White Supremacy is crumbling and television has obliterated televisionory and has left an absence of a feeling of community. He says while the u. S. Was willing to liberate grenada, it has not done the same for detroit or new york. He says the drug and alcohol problems of the inner cds went inner cities went unattended. Strong words from a man who is too shy to approach Langston Hughes in harlem. Mr. Baldwin says there were two harlems. The black people who lived on the hill, and himself. ,ho you called a raggedy, funky black shoeshine boy. He was born in new york city, 1924, the first of nine children. The grandson of a slave. The son of a preacher. He grub in harlem speaking the gospel. After graduation he had many jobs to support his writing. He has been published in harpers and commentary. By 1948, feeling frustrated, he moved to paris. As was the case for many artists, paris was an important breath of fresh air. He felt as though he came out of a dark tunnel and found himself underneath the open sky. He now divides his time between new york city and southern france. Please help me welcome James Baldwin to the National Press club. [applause] mr. Baldwin thank you very much. Good afternoon. I am pleased to be here. Im a little surprised when i knew what was going to come course,ven my luck of the white house was not in trouble. [laughter] and now, i am terribly aware of the house on the hill which is in trouble, which means we are. Im going to improvise what is on my mind and then you can ask questions. And then we can have a kind of wrap session. If the white house is in trouble, we are. The question is, how we got there . I have some suggestions. Subjective suggestions from my life. It seemed part of it what i call the view from here. That implies a great many things , first, i am speaking as an american citizen, as the grandson of a slave, as a product and a member of a certain democracy. And a product and issue of a certain complex history. Someone who represents a very complex country which insists on being simpleminded. Simplicity, it has occurred to me more than once in my somewhat stormy life, is taken to be a Great American virtue, along with sincerity. The result of this is if you are simpleminded enough, you can become, i did not want to go that far. [laughter] as long as you are sincere in what you say, you dont have to know what you are talking about. [laughter] these are the american virtues. Two of them, anyway. One of the result of this is that immaturity is taken to be a virtue. So that someone like the late john wayne, who spent most of his time on screen admonishing indians [applause] had no necessity to grow up. In a movie made during the witchhunt era of American Life when joe mccarthy, a very sincere man, was finding communists everywhere, someone my sonovie called john. The story of a woman whose son turns out to be a communist defector. She cooperate with the fbi to save her sons soul. Very well. But she says at one point to her husband, an American Legion hero, the model of simplicity. And he understands that his son is really a communist. How does he understand this . Because he is such a virtuous american and he is willing to put his son to death for being a communist. I did not make that movie. It may not have made a lot of money, but it represented the climate of the time and something profound in the American Experience or american refusal to accept experience. One thing that has always contributed to the adoration of innocent is adoration of immaturity, so what we get representing us, a postadolescent who was almost 80 years old. [laughter] and we think of this as a virtue. One of the things that has always afflicted the american reality and the American Vision is this aversion to history. History is not something you read about in a book. It is not even the past. It is the present. Because everybody operate, whether we know it, out of assumptions that are produced only by our history. The history of our country is not bloodier than other countries, but it is bloody. It is not more criminal than others, but it is criminal. It is not worse than the history of france, england, or any country we can name, but it is different. For severalnt reasons. A few weeks ago i happened to have a tv set on. It aimlessly for a while and then did it deliberately. I was watching images, all of them bloody. Guns, all kinds of weapons, corpses, cowboys and indians, good guys and bad guys, and for seemed to me that these compulsive set of images, i was watching a person who was very ill and trapped in these images. Could not be released from them. These images come out of the history which we always deny. It is important to recognize that we did steal the land from those who were here before us. We stole it. A treaty with those known as the american indian. We are not talking about the past, we are talking about the present. We did enslave millions of people for no other reason except they were black and we made a lot of money out of slave labor. This is not uncommon. It is part of human history. But it is one thing to do something, and another thing to deny it. The document of manifest destiny reassured all White Americans that as white people is regard ed as civilization, they have the right and the duty to exterminate whatever stood in the way of the superior civilization. It could be argued that slavery is a strange road to take in order to civilize someone, but that was the argument, so that we can see, examine the legends, the discovery in africa, the noble savage. With the twinkling of the eye package, i wase in the back lot, singing and dancing, the noble savage transformed into the happy darkie. We are living with these myths today it corrupts the view from we are living with these myths today. It corrupts the view from here. Happened, inhas the effort to deny whence we came, we have had to make up a series of myths about it. And myths cannot replace reality. The reason native americans are called indians is because of a monumental error on the part of r sent out by by Queen Isabella of spain to find the passage to india. Chris got lost. [laughter] and when he woke up and saw people surrounding him, he had to tell Queen Isabella something, he said, these are indians. And he took one back to spain. In a similar way, once i became the happy darkie, because if i ie, i was aappy dark slave. If i was not happy, something was wrong with slavery. So i had to be happy to keep the master happy. Out of this profound misapprehension has come a system of reality, a system of ideas, a system of thought, which makes reality really hard to reach. When the slave was discovered and put in chains, obviously he was debased, along with women and children, but he was not the only creature who was debased at that moment. The man, the people who put him in chains had also become less then human and debased themselves. With a further disadvantage. Whereas the slave must know the master, because the master, the slaves life the is in the masters hand. The slave can fool the master because the master wants to be fooled. My father, all the years i lived with him, never dreamed of telling a white person the truth about anything. It never entered his mind to do so. He did not care what they thought or if they lived or died. He loathed them. My turn came too. I can see what happened. It is important now that out of this endeavor, what we call the White American has created what he wants to see. The reason that is important and terrifying is because when the same white man looks around the world, he sees only the nigger he wants to see. And that is mortally dangerous for the future of this country. For our present fortunes. The world is full of all kinds of people who live quite beyond the confines of the american imagination and who had nothing to do with the guilt ridden vision of the world which controls so much of our life and thinking and paralyzes very nearly our moral sense. We are living in a world in which every body and everything is interdependent. The world is not black or white. The future of the world depends on everyone in this room, and that future depends on to what extent and by what means we liberate ourselves from a vocabulary which now cannot bear the weight of reality. Thank you. [applause] mr. Baldwin, these questions come from the audience. I will ask as many as i can. Theres a wide variety. There is a movement of brilliant young women writers like toni morrison, alice walker, and others. Can you please comment on the influences, including yourself, that have produced this movement. Mr. Baldwin that is by no means an easy question. Partly because i know all of those ladies, they are friends of mine. Little frightened because im afraid to leave someone out. But anyway, i know them all. I am not sure i can answer your question. I think the arrival of toni and maya and alice walker was in a way inevitable. It had to come about because of the role that black women have played in this country and in the lives of black men. It has always been a very troubled and even dangerous role. Because of the position of the black man in this republic which makes the situation of black women who have to respect their fathers and find a way to protect their sons and lovers without emasculating them, it is time she be able to tell something of that story. This is in some senses a condemned mend. Condement. I welcome the ventilation of a family quarrel. What they have to say is somewhat terrifying, but true. As with influences, i do not know where to begin. I would have to go back to wb dubois. The influences of black people to clarify the role of black people because most white historians, like most white commentators, until today, are so busy justifying, they can only lie about it. So for toni and maya are excavating us all from a dangerous myth. Tom do you feel the problems of Southern Africa are properly framed by our media where should the issues be examined more closely in their own african content . Mr. Baldwin i think the American Vision of africa is compulsively defensive. South africa implicates everyone in this room. It brings into question, he reveals, the real meaning of the civil mission, because that is how africa was civilized. But the process, no matter how one might want to pretty it up or what hollywood has told us, the african context cannot exist in the american imagination. One of the reasons for that is that it brings into focus in the uneasy american imagination, the real role of black people in this country in the uneasy american imagination. The true meaning for the black people here, that white people have never accepted the real meaning of it and are not able to imagine, even though it is absolutely true, that this has not, never has been, and never will be a white country. We have been here together too long. The vocabulary which we are avoiding has to deal with that before dealing with anything as vivid, dangerous, or overwhelming as the south african situation. Tom a related question. Do you think this administration, the reagan administration, has a different attitude toward the black population in south africa and the concern about the nationalists in nicaragua . And if so, is this racial . [laughter] mr. Baldwin lets be blunt. I dont think the administration is concerned with nicaragua. It is concerned with its interest. What strikes me is that both nicaragua and south africa are expected to remain the pawns of the socalled free world forever. Of course we are against the freedom of south africa, because that means communism, or so they say. They are against freedom in nicaragua for the same reasons. I do not have the slightest notion in either case. And it is racial. [laughter] a question or wants to know if you have seen the movie, shes gotta have it . If not i will tell you about it after the luncheon. But theyre not interested in my opinion, they want to know what you think about the movie. Mr. Baldwin i have not seen it. [laughter] tom we will go to another question. A number of black male writers who have criticized the portrayal of black men as abusers, rapists, and addicts, a portrait often drawn by black women, often perpetuates a negative stereotype. Do you feel the image of black men is being falsely portrayed . Mr. Baldwin i think it has always been a false image. You cannot blame it on black women. The most controversial of the books and movies, well, i thought the movie was awful and i thought to give me that black man, you have to tell me more about him. Black men can do all of those things. But then there has to be something wrong with them. You have to let me know something more than the catalog of this mans brutality. If he were white, he would be he would be portrayed as sick and you would hope he gets well. The black image is very different. All you have to do for that is the black. It is an image of black people that is not entirely alice walkers fault. It is the way the public sees black men since they have heard of black men. It has had a terrible effect on black women. And in that context, the motive is to be liberated from these images by exorcising them really. Then amen. Freedom is very difficult to achieve, and the process is awkward. Sometimes you have to hold it up to the light and see where it comes from and if you can live with it. And if you cannot live with it, get rid of it. If that answers your question. This was written as you are answering that last question as a followup. Could you go into detail about the comportment of todays american black male. Mr. Baldwin what should be the role . I Say Something a little difficult. Going back into my own history. What should be the role of the comportment a difficulty about being a black man in this country has always been the difficulty of being a white man because it is assumed and no one has questioned it. The black man wants to be a white man. White men, as i have observed, im not sure they want to be white. It has to be exhausting. [laughter] flexing your muscles and conquering the world and smiling. [laughter] it wears them out. In the presence of white people, you are watching an imitation and you realize you cannot imitate an imitation. Therefore, the black man in todays america has to be what the public feared it was, he is a man, and a man cannot be told what to do, or defined by others. Theres nothing new about that. What the question really means is how should we alter the american model so both the black man and the white man can be free. That is what the question means. Tom i apologize to the person who wrote this because i am having trouble reading it. I will get through it as well as i can. You talk about facing reality at least by White America. Dont you think its time for black america to realize that a great deal of its problems are trying to blame them on the past and White America . Isnt it time for blacks to face up to their own to other realities . I think that is the general drift of the question. Excuse me. Mr. Baldwin i have heard that before. I do not think that black people in general can be accused of blaming their situation on the past, or indeed blaming it on anybody. Situation is much too vivid, too terrible for that kind of selfindulgent, but history is not the past, the situation black people in this country is abominable because this is a racist country. And every institution is racist is a racist institution. And the last thing the public wants is an autonomous black community. Anywhere. Everybody knows for example that if you build a school in a ghetto, you build a disaster factory. The answer is not to go to another neighborhood, the answer to that is to rebuild the city so that human beings can live in the city. Cities are not supposedly built for money, to make a few people rich. If you want to deal with it, you have to go there. In the meantime, limiting the black community for being upset about the community, community has always been at war with the republic. When we tried reform some time ago, the School Strike in harlem where blacks and Puerto Ricans came into the school declaring themselves responsible for the education of their children and a successful strike. I was there. It was broken by the United Federation of teachers and the city because they did not want the billions of dollars, which is the education system, they didnt want the money controlled by blacks and Puerto Ricans. That is what we are up against. There is no point in blaming black people for it. [applause] tom a few questions related on a somewhat different topic. Why did you choose france as one of your residences . Do you consider yourself an exile or expatriate . How would you compare the french attitude toward blacks with that of america . Is there as much racism in france as here in the states . Mr. Baldwin i went to france in 1948 when i was quite young. I went there with 40, no french, a oneway ticket. In other words, i was getting out of here. I did not so much go to paris as leave new york. I left new york because one day, if i was called nigger one more time, someone was going to die. And i did not care which one of us it was. Know what did not would happen in paris, but i knew what would happen here. I grew up in paris and i came back. I never would have gone south if i stayed here. If i stayed alive, i would have been a junkie or prisoner. I would have been in no state to go to montgomery, alabama. I do not consider myself an exile or expatriate. I stayed until i grew up and now i am immune to it, i suppose. The doctrine of White Supremacy, racism, comes out of the socalled old world. It was not born in america. It was brought here. When i first went to europe, the french said, you must be happy to be here. We do not treat negroes the way they do in the states. We are not racist like americans are. I looked around me. I could see the reason they could be so tolerant, or so they thought, was because they did not have any niggers in paris. [laughter] they were working for them far away, in senegal, algeria, and so forth. It was not part of the social fabric. It was good for me in a way, except my mama did not raise no fools. I realized almost at once that the algerian was the nigger in paris. I was poor i was in the same , hotels with them, sleeping in shifts. I know the way we were treated. In a way, that is what drove me home. I could see what was happening in my country was the same thing was happening in france. French, i cannot do anything in france. So i came home. Now the doctrine of White Supremacy which seemed to have affected europe less, london, paris, berlin, belgium, it has come back to europe and the same thing is going on in the european cities as is going on in the american cities. For the same reason. How would you compare the artistic and creative climate in france to that in the United States . Mr. Baldwin i think it is fair to say the European Experience is old enough for them to they are not afraid of artists. It does not mean they love them. Or that they respect them. They just know that someone like that is bound to come along, so they tolerate it. If you live long enough or are safely dead, they build a statue to you. In the meantime, you are on your own. [laughter] questioner asks, as a white person reading your stories and books, i feel a great deal of hatred against the white race. Did i misinterpret . [laughter] mr. Baldwin a great deal of hatred . Tom prejudice and hatred against whites. Mr. Baldwin i dont think so. My life is too short. I do not see prejudice or hatred against whites. [indiscernible] i think whenever a black person tries to tell the truth about a situation to white people or people who think they are white, because white is a state of mind, even a moral choice. A state of mind, if my testimony is true as a black citizen of this country, or would be citizen of this country, if my testimony is true, then the american myth is a lie. When this collision happens, i am accused of being prejudiced against white people. I have better sense and do not have much time. I do not have a white person locked up in my skull, Walking Around every day and every white hour. People have a black person locked in their skull and that is why they treat black people the way they do. You see what i mean . Here, youal questions can choose what to answer. They deal in the same broad topic. How would you assess the state Race Relations in america today. How many changes do you see, what are the true issues for American Civil Rights leaders today . And so on. You will see them all here. [laughter] mr. Baldwin its a difficult question to answer seriously, posed inhe question is such a way what i would really like to do is an idea maybe we can take hold of in this room. I want to establish modest proposal, white history week. [laughter] [applause] it is history that produces these questions. It is late in the day to be talking about Race Relations. What are you talking about . How can Race Relations deteriorate or improve . I am not a race, and neither are you. [applause] mr. Baldwin we are talking about the life and death of the country. One of the things, i am not joking when i talk about white history week. One of the things that afflicts this country as white people do not know who they are or where they come from. You think i am the problem. I am not the problem. Your history is. As long as you pretend you do not know your history, you will be a prisoner of it. There is no question of you liberating me, you cannot liberate yourselves. We are in this together. When white people talk about progress, all they are saying or all they can be by progress is how quickly i become white. I do not want to become white. I want to grow up. And so should you. Thank you. [applause] tom with the death of malcolm x and dr. King, black america lost some black leaders. With the shift to politics in corporate america, is this a positive change in the right direction . Mr. Baldwin im not sure what they mean by corporate america, and what that has to do with human freedom or democracy. A change in the right direction, i think the future is not as simple as americans would like to think. I am not convinced a machine will resolve many problems. We have to confront that but i think if we do not share the earth, we are going to blow it up. I think we have to rethink everything we think is true now, because it will not be true tomorrow. A future that is coherent and safe, but the moral choice we have yet to make does not guarantee anyone in this room has a future. The only way we can accommodate ourselves to that create our recreate our to vocabulary, which includes the human race. We are all at the mercy of the european vision of the world and that vision is obsolete. What is the proper role of the black politician today in American Society . Mr. Baldwin i would think its to do what some people are doing , to resist the definitions, to instruct, and to attempt to liberate the children who are the most crucial issue, and to have the courage to contest the american reality. It may sound outrageous, but consider this. When i was born, when i was growing up, various people blew themselves up at home made stills, and died drinking bathtub gin because alcohol was illegal and dope was legal. It did not mean people stopped drinking. Not all. It just means that various people may tremendous fortunes out of illegal liquor. In various people died out of illegal liquor. A new form of crime was created. That is all that happened. To get to the heart of the dope problem, legalize it. That destroys the profit motive and saves the children. No one who can afford it will go to jail. Its a law which in operation can only be used against the poor. Thats the bad law. Anyone. As not stopped it just puts some people in jail and some people under the ground because a whole lot of money is made on the antidope law which does not work. That is something a black politician might suggest to a white politician, if you see what i mean. What contemporary topics interest you the most these days . Mr. Baldwin i think i am obsessed with the future of the young. The elders are responsible for that. I learned a lot from young people. They are not like people my age. I was on the road to find out what was true. There are many things in the people i met, but none of those things the truth i think is the elders have betrayed them by throwing jag wires at them ers at them, jagu tv sets at them and other paraphernalia instead of trying to teach them, raise them, instead of loving them, they have been abandoned to the dream of safety and children, unlike their elders, are not easily fooled. That is what fascinates me today. Host would you comment on inka and the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to him . Was that a political act . Mr. Baldwin certainly it is a political act. On the other hand, concession, perhaps. But he deserves it. It is a political gesture. It might not have the effect the academy hopes, but it is a symptom of what has to become. Its impossible to answer, because the suggestion is the policies of tomorrow, it will not be that way. No one in the room now really knows what a political gesture means because no one can envision the future it is meant to bring about. If that makes sense to you. Tom why do you believe simplicity is an american virtue . Isnt the simple man, the virtuous model in most societies, certainly in communist states where dissent is unpatriotic. Why do you believe simplicity is an american virtue . Isnt the simple man a virtuous model in most societies, certainly in communist states where dissent is unpatriotic . Mr. Baldwin dissent is unpatriotic everywhere. The purpose of the state is to remain the state. Theres nothing romantic about that. I did not say simplicity is an american virtue. I said americans think it is an american virtue. Isnt this simple man as the virtuous model the same in most countries . It depends on what you mean by simplicity. Simple does not necessarily mean simpleminded. No man is simple. It is a contradiction in terms. Every society is a model of itself and it is false. No state is anxious to have dissenters in it, including this one. There is more than one way to skin a cat and more than one way to silence a dissenter. Another one of these threesomes we are going to try to make into one question. Arent you perpetuating the whiteblack problem by criticizing whites and glorifying blacks . They are supposed to be the same. Black history week and similar days keeps us separate. Do you feel racism is accurately decided as a reason for so many of todays problems . Mr. Baldwin i was not joking about white history week. I was told when growing up that George Washington could not tell a lie. And did he or did he not chop down the cherry tree . I forget. Im serious about that. White americans do not know their history and that is one of the reasons they are in trouble. When i suggest white history week, im not making a parody of black history week. I am suggesting the truth about this country is buried in the myths that white people have about themselves and the myths have to be excavated by white people. I might know the history of this country better than what a teacher is trying to teach my child. It is in my interest to understand it in order to be liberated from it. Most White Americans cling to the idea of being white because they dont want to find out what else they might be. But if i know that i have black and white ancestors. So do you. No one in this country can prove they are white. No one would dare try to prove that. I am not trying to glorify black people or denigrate white people. I am trying to point out that we are connected and the connection should be our triumphs and glory instead of our shame. [applause] tom before the last question, i would like to present mr. Baldwin with a certificate of appreciation for appearing at the National Press club as well as a National Press club paperweight. [applause] i know we have asked many hard questions. Some might think this is the hottest of all. Which of your books do you consider the best, and why . [laughter] [applause] mr. Baldwin i think every writer has two answers to that question. The first is, the next one. Its true. If i had a favorite among those published, he is always a little afraid to say so. I will take a chance. The reason the author has a Favorite Book often is because it was so badly treated. Its like having a child of yours badly treated unjustly. You should not have treated him that way. ,ow that im thinking about it its tell me how long change has been gone. [applause] host i would like to thank our guest, mr. James baldwin for appearing at this National Press club luncheon. This concludes the luncheon. Thank you. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. 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