About africanamerican fatherhood have been used in this conversation that we seem to be having about race for really hundreds of years. Well, i almost dont even know where to begin. Answering that question, though the topic of my talk invites the question. Part of what i think, what i find striking about baldwins mention there is just that part of the reference where he says the past has disappeared which is to say baldwin is saying black men have never really been able to have the experience of having fathers in the United States. And that is not, and that legacy and heritage is nothing new. And its really in some ways not a choice. Its an a tradition that had been imposed firstly by outside that created a kind of reality. That we still see today. That reality is the same reality. So much of what i see baldwin doing and why i want to keep coming back to that i picked the cotton line is that baldwin really insists if we want to take race seriously we have to collapse our sense of racial difference. Otherwise we get the sense that things are about decisions that people are making today and we privilege those decisions or see them as more important or we see them as decisions in the first place when in some important ways they are not. It. I seoully just wanted to pick up on something from susans comments earlier about baldwins understanding of the interconnection, the familial lines, and there was a wonderful line that i now cant reproduce about the insist with usness of american genealogy. And baldwin, in the taped version makes a moment terry comment where he says my grandmother never raped anyone. And i think thats also a way of turning the tables on illegitimacy and who counts what does a legitimate family look like . And thats also there although its not in the New York Times transcript. I think we have time for at least one more question. Maybe a couple. Thank you both for being here. This is really interesting. So my question is about your piece on fathers and it strikes me that libertarian conservatism is the most fatherless brand of it. And so im wondering, is the, what many probably see, at least i see, the libertarian turn in modern conservatism, what does that mean for the fatherly reproachment between whites and blacks and what are the repercussions of that . Thats a great question. Well i would defer to some of what we heard earlier about what has been a kind of, what had been a conscious strategy on the right in some places, and now i think is an unconscious strategy on the right, and maybe even not, not maybe even, and certainly not exclusively on the right, where if by adopting the language of a kind of laissez faire politics in terms of economics in particular youre actually saying a lot that has to do with race without saying a lot that has to do with race. Its hard for me to see contemporary libertarianism as anything other than that which isnt an adequate answer to your question, but i want to think about it some more. I saw a gentleman with a hand up over here. I think this will be our last question nick, yes. Cool. So my question has to do with the debate that we saw yesterday. And i thought that one of the most powerful moments was when baldwin almost mourns the southern white human and says that three are a victim in a way of slavery, perhaps even more so than all of the persons that they enslaved, in that their morals, that which makes them initsly human have a trophytrophiedatrophied. How important would you both say that baldwins own africanamerican heritage was to that argument that he made, regarding the horror that he felt for this loss of morality . Well, to go back to the question about double consciousness, dubois says the American Negro has been gifted with double sight. Its a curse but an intellectual blessing. I think we see that. To the extent that we see that baldwin does better in this debate its because he has a Vantage Point of double consciousness, and in this case i think it allows him to be more generous and to be more empathetic than buckley certainly is able to be. I think also i agree and i would also add that for baldwin the language here often uses is of maturity and not being able to evade certain kinds of very difficult truths. And this is a feature of other thinkers as well. One of the most powerful moments in duboiss souls of black folk is where he says its a terrible thing of being haunted by the ghosts of an untrue dream. Hes talking about the lost cause. He knows how horrific it is as a vision, but he also understands that sense of loss. And i think this is where baldwins emphasis on love. Its more complicated than a purely, other regarding a gothic love theres a nur otsic component to it as well, but heres where he reaches a point where he sees the human even in the woman or the man who would treat him inhumanly. We go to the young woman who is next to the gentleman who has the question shell get a chance. The mic was so close. My question is also about the, your talk on fatherhood. Baldwin is fairly critical of masculinity. He has an essay thats critical of american masculinity as well as giovannis room which is i have critical of the traditional sense. And i was wondering how you thought that would have influenced his opinions on fatherhood and how you thought particularly this this debate. Well, part of the way i read giovannis room is that baldwin goes to europe in part because hes trying to get out, right, hes not just trying to escape david. Hes not just trying to escape, hes trying to escape questions about sexuality and american masculinity. And much like baldwin would say he finds hes anchored in those american conceptions about race three thought that he could evade. David finds hes anchored in those definitions of masculinity as well. Hes in some ways an anguished lover in terms of the way americans think. Hes tied to them and defined by them too. I cant add to that. It. Well, theyve exhausted their energies in our behalf. So i want to thank you again on behalf of the audience and please join me with that. [ applause ] more American History tv tomorrow with highlights from the cspan cities tour. First we journey to key west, florida at 8 00 eastern. Then tulsa, oklahoma and st. Augustine, florida. Later a stopover in topeka kansas. All tomorrow night on American History tv here on cspan 3. The cspan cities tour is partnering with our cable affiliates as we travel across the United States. Join us and Cox Communications this weekend as we learn about the history and lit rary life of omaha, nebraska where the club was one of the first advocacy groups fighting for racial kwlts. They had a reputation as a city that when you came in if you were black, you needed to keep your head down and you needed to be aware that you werent going to be served in restaurants. You werent going to be able to stay in hotels. And when the de porres club began their operation, the term civil rights they used the term social justice because civil rights wasnt part of the national lexicon at that time. The idea of civil rights was so far removed from the idea of rights was so far removed from the idea of the greater city of omaha or the United States that they were operating in a vacuum. They were operating without a net. There were not those support groups that were not the prior experiences of other groups to challenge Racial Discrimination and segregation. We look back to the Union Pacific and how the construction of Union Station helped omahas economy. Union pacific is one of the premier Railroad Companies of america. It was founded in 1862 with the Pacific Railway act signed into law by abraham lincoln. So it combined several Railroad Companies to make Union Pacific and then they were charged with building the Transcontinental Railroad that would connect the east and west coast. So they started here, were moving west and Central Pacific started on the west coast and was moving east. And they met up in butagh. Thats really what propels us even farther. We become that that point of moving west. The gateway one of the gateways to the west. See all of our programs from omaha saturday at noon eastern on cspan2s book tv and sunday afternoon at 2 00 on American History tv on cspan3. Cuba is the first country in the world to be recognized as the World Health Organization for eliminating mother to child transmission of hiv and cyfilus. Then president obama will announce the opening of the Cuban Embassy in washington and the u. S. Embassy in hava fl a. Well have that live on cspan at 11 00 a. M. Eastern. When congress is in session, cspan3 brings you more of the best access to live access to hearings, news conferences and key events and every weekend its American History tv traveling to Historic Sites discussions with authors and historians and eyewitness accounts of events that define the nation. Cspan3, coverage of congress and American History tv. Princeton University Professor of religion and africanamerican studies on James Baldwin and race in america. He was the key note speaker at a symposium marking the 50th anniversary between baldwin and conservative william f. Buckley. They debated the question has the American Dream been at the expense of the American Negro . This was host eded at college in menenville, oregon. Its difficult to imagine this as a key note given the first two panel these morning, right . So i want to add this as my contribution to the conversation. Is that okay . Its reflective of my leveling impulses plus the brilliance that has been on display is indicative of what it means to think seriously in public with others. And i just want to join in that effort. I want to thank nick. Is his spirit amazing . Just and that smile, hes constantly smiling. So this is my first time to oregon and its my first time here and ive been literally overwhelmed, literally, patrick, overwhelmed by the beauty of this place. And it reminds me of my own experience when i first got out of graduate clej school. My first job was at bodien college in maine. Im a country boy from mississippi, my wife is from jamaica. And we were in maine. But it was an amazing experience and i feel that here. So thank you for giving me the opportunity. So this is reflective of some preliminary thinking. Some of it is from my new book democracy in black how race still governs the american soul. Some of it was motivated by the conference. So let me just jump in okay . And you tell me whether i make sense or not. So this afternoon i want to think about blacklivesmatter in a different register. One that connects with the extraordinary insights of james or jimmy baldwin. These reflections were triggered by recent citations of baldwin in the context of current protests and serve in a way as a kind of run up to a more extensive engagement with his disturbing book on the atlanta child murders, the evidence of things not seen. Theres something about baldwins attention to the death of those babies that seems relevant to me today. To put it bluntly, jimmy is everywhere. People especially young people, seem to be reaching for him as a way of accounting for the latest disaster, the latest panic around race that has defined this country since its beginning. When you think about the protests and the damning reality of deaths baldwins words come to mind. Quote, america sometimes resembles an exceedingly monstrous minstrel show. The same dances same music same jokes. One has done or been the show so long that one can do it in ones sleep, end quote. So to be sure, there is something familiar and wholly unprecedented in the current chaos. Now, my thoughts, as i said are preliminary. They are incoate. They reflect my efforts to think about baldwin as a kind of exemplar of tradition that takes a particular shape under the conditions of domination. I want to suggest that blacklivesmatter reflects this tradition in particularly interesting ways. I will say a bit more about that later. And and, of course, against the back drops of the recent deaths in baltimore and the deaths of so many black men and women at the hands of the police, the significance of blacklivesmatters makes a dinners. Circumstances that seem to be a constant feature of what it means to be black in this country and im not being hyperbolic here. I found myself the other day wishing my son were 7 years old again. He was adorable at 7. The vexation of the teenage years were far off and he still liked me. But i said this not because i find myself having an empty nest unbearable, although at times i do or that i long to raise a teenager again and inevitably he would be a maddening teenager again. I just thought, even that he would be safer at home. With us. Now, my son attends brown university, but that doesnt matter. He is subject to a kind of procarety that comes with being a black person in this country even with a black man perhaps especially because a black man occupies the white house. At any moment some officer or man could see him as a threat and back of the value or the lack of value he can easily suffer premature death that feature of black life that makes it, among other things, so distinctive. One could think about the fact that premature death as one way of cashing out what we mean by the condition of black living, think about it this way. Wb. Deboys answered the questions by pointing our attention to the back of a jim crow car. But that was only one manifestation of the fact of black living in this country. The underlying reality is that we are all exposed to premature death, death by a thousand cuts. The landlord the land lady. Remember baldwin yesterday . Right. So if you want to know the meaning of race lets look at the rate of death. Exposure to premature death. All of those black parents in public mourning their babies. As you will no doubt recall blacklivesmatter emerge as a heartfelt ral rallying cry in the aftermath of Trayvon Martins death and the acquittal of George Zimmer marn in 2012. Patrese came up with the hashtag to forcefully assert especially given the contrary evidence, that black People Matter. The organization puts it this way, blacklivesmatters is working for a world where black lives are no longer systemically and intentionally targeted for demise, we affirm our contributions to this society, our humanity and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression. Weve put our sweat, equity and love for black people into a political project taking the hashtag off of social media and into the streets. The call for black lives to matter is a rallying cry for all black lives striving for liberation, end quote. So blacklivesmatter works on a number of registers right . So think of it only as an assertion of the value of black lives limits its ames and purposes. It is a mobilizing, it is an organizing tool in this particular moment. It is a form of political critique and an ee voktive imagining of the political my gesture to the political theorists in the room. I dont have the space to vindicate this last claim but i think it is important and theres a long footnote to show you that im thinking about carl smith here. In fact, to reduce the hashtags meaning to an assertion of the value of black lives i believe misses the point altogether. Even in the previous description, the young women quote, affirm our contributions to society, our humanity and our resilience in the face of they are arguing our humanity quote . When we see young people in the street chanting black life matters, it works lion like an incantation. The challenge is not only forms of policing that authorize particular communities, but also current social, political and economic arrangements that cut short the life chances of black people, practices and arrangements that lead to premature death. So to my mind, the hashtag isnt simply about asserting the value of black life that is already known. We shouldnt have to assert our humanity in 2015. The price of that ticket to echo baldwin echoing has already been paid. You all all right . Okay. So hashtag black lives matters registers the unseemly belief and it is a belief based into the dna of this country that white lives are valued more than others. And this, i believe, is at the heart of White Supremacy. White supremacy is more than bad people in hooded robes burning crosses and screaming the word nigger. They are the loud races. They choose to let everyone know within earshot what they believe and they are easily condemnable. White supremacy instead looks at the way a society organizes itself and whom it chooses to value. Apartheid in south africa jim crow, nazi germany, all of these are clearly societies organized by White Supremacy. In each case, white life is more valued, it determined where you lived, which schools you attended, what jobs were available to you and reminded you daily of your status and station in life. And to my mind thats what White Supremacy is in a nutshell. It boils down to a set of practices. Informed by the fundamental belief that white people are valued more than others. Now, in no way do we live in a society like nazi germany or apartheid south africa. But we do live in a country where black people confront every day the damning reality that we are less valued. It is experienced in the built environment of this nation. Take a look at klarissa haywards a brilliant book, how america make race. Ill tell this story as an aside. I grew up in a small town and my dad was the second black man to be hired at the post office, thank god for the postal service. It gave me an opportunity to grow up in a middle class family, right . But we lived on the east side of town and so we crossed the tracks and we were the third black family to move in into up on the hill. And i was playing with a tonka truck with my new neighbor and you remember those old tonka trucks, if you hit your hand with it, it would really hurt. I was playing with my tonka trucks and all of a sudden i heard this voice stop playing with that nigger. And my new friend looks at me astonished, and i grab my truck and i go inside and i tell my father what happened. The first time i had ever been called a nigger. And my father as if the past literally rushed upon him, his eyes ablaze with rage ran outside. Now, usually but wanted to locate this moment as an example of what happens the moment in which a black family achieves the socalled American Dream, a child is wounded by the racial he epi fete of some adult. But actually i had been called a nigger way before we moved into that neighborhood. When i lived on the other side of town they didnt have paved sidewalks. On the other side of town, when it rained hard, it flooded. On the other side of town, those of us who were really good at baseball had to play on a narrow baseball field where the weeds struggled to battle with the bases. On the other side of town, i learned in the very way in which i live my life that something about me was somehow less than. Im getting ahead of myself. Let me get back to the text. In no way do we live in a country like nazi germany. But the data is clear, africanamericans suffer chronic double digit unemployment. We live in a nation, we lead the nation in rates of heart disease, cancer, hiv aids, africanamericans make up nearly 1 million of the 2. 4 million americans in prison. When we think about the differences between whites and blackes and High School Graduation rates, among those with College Degrees mortality rates and access to health care and levels of welt differences in salaries with the same level of education and the percentage of children in poverty, we can see that in this country, independent of individual acts of racism, white people particularly those with money matter more than others. And im mindful of aermts arguments like buckley that attribute much of the state of affairs to the pathologies of black people. Buckley mobilizes his argument and i said in the footnote here, in response to baldwin by citing glazer here, buckley shifts the blame after citing the progress that baldwin himself represents on to the shoulders of black people and baldwins eyes, as you recall were ablaze upon hearing the nonsense. But answers to but he answers this argument clearly, i think in an essay that he wrote in 1964 and that was published in playboy entitled the uses of the blues he writes, quote the fact that Harry Belafonte makes as much money as, say, Frank Sinatra doesnt mean anything in this context. Frank can still get a house anywhere and harry cant. When we talk about what we call the negro problem, we are simply evolving means avoiding the facts of this life because in order to face a life like billy hollidays or one like mine, White America has to accept the fact that what he thinks he is he is not, he has to give up, surrender this image of himself and apparently this is the last thing White Americans are prepared to do. End quote. While buckley is clear about this, he said, if it comes down to americas pressure ideals, they will fight the issue to the death. I want to suggest that we understand black lives matters, the hashtag, as a rejection of this belief pp of White Supremacy, that its not just an assertion that black People Matter. More to the point it rejects the belief that white lives are presumed more valuable than black lives. And it is that belief, the view that animates so much of the mess that has undermined democratic life in this country which limits our ability to reach for higher excellences. And i mean this for both black and White Americans. Our ability to reach for higher excellences. Now, i use this language perfectly. I want to think about black lives matters in the tradition of what im calling black democratic perfectionism that is a radicalization of black individuality in the service of justice. Within the movement, we find an incensance on the expansive of black lives on the forefront are black members of the lgttu community and other challenging the state and narrow conceptions of leadership all in the name of a robust form of black individuality and i dont mean some ideal of individualism one might find in turreys book, if you know who im talking about. My model for this view is jimmy baldwin. In hiss say, the uses of the blues, baldwin clearly states what he takes to be the negro problem quote, im having talked about what happens to you if having escaped madness or suicide or death or yourself, you watch your children growing up and no matter what you do no matter what you do you are powerless. You are really powerless against the force of the world that is out to tell your child that he has no right to be alive. And no amount of liberal jargon, no amount of liberal jargon and no amount of talk about how well and how far we have progressed does anything to soften or to point out any solution to this dilemma. In every generation baldwin writes, ever since negroes have been here every negro mother and father has had to face that child and try to create in that child some way of surviving this particular world, some way to make the child who will be dis despised, not despise himself. I dont know what the negro problem means to white people, baldwin writes but this is what it means to negroes, end quote. Remember that moment when baldwin says, youre 15 and then you turn 30 and as a grown man you look at this, but then you look and you look at your son, you look at your daughter, you look at your niece and your nephew and you see in their eyes that they have succumbed to the belief that they are worth less. Here baldwin foregrounds the idea of White Supremacy that i put forward earlier. That the fact of growing up of coming of an age in a place that dense you standing deshorts ones view of yourself and disfigures ones character. It arrests your capacities and in that light it is with great effort and daring and risk that one picks up the task of selfkraegdz in such a world. This is what he tries to convey to William Buckley and the Young Students at cambridge, right . He names it as White Supremacy in the context of the debate, but by the time his comments reach the New York Times that phrase is redacted. An ambiguous pronoun stands in its place saying i have to speak as one of the people who have been most attacked by the western system of reality. It comes from europe. That is how it goes to america. It raises the question of whether or not civilizations can be considered equal or whether one civilization has a right to subjugate, in fact, to destroy. Another, apparently naming White Supremacy was a bit too much for the liberal pages of the New York Times. Nevertheless, here baldwin insists on a sense of perspective, how the question of who we are gets handled, managed and pursued under adverse conditions matters. It matters that one bears the brunt of the police baton and if one does not. Both may be inheritors of Ralph Waldo Emersons call but the difference matters greatly as baldwin writes, quote, to persuade black boys and girls as we have for so many generations that their lives are worth so much less than other lives and that they can live only on terms dictated to them by other people, by people that despise them, it is worse than a crime. It is the sin against the holy ghost, end quote. And this is and it must be said without any concern for hurt feelings or guilt this is undeniably White Supremacy. So baldwin, for me makes explicit the primal scene of instruction. It is a context in which black people are seen as disposable. This scene in all of its messiness casts in relief what stanley calls emersonian perfection perfectionism. We have the taveng before us to ascend to higher norms of excellence. But this task isnt rooted in some fixed destination or final resting place of perfection. He used the image of the spiral stairs going upwards, each step in leaving others blind. That final resting place difference for each person. Lifes journey consists of better and more excellent versions of who we take ourselves to be. Each experience of significance calls us to a higher sense of ourselves and requires the abandonment of older versions. My dear college, Jeffrey Stout puts its best, quote, the higher self congeels outs of the higher or excellence. Excellence and sacred value of the kinds of glutness that matter most for living well, end quote. But the daunting challenge of seeking a higher erer self in a world that denies one standing. You see, the daunting challenge of seeking a higher self in a world that denies one standing gives new meaning to deboises cry of two unreconciled strivings that threaten to unhinge. For us, life aint been no crystal stairs. So to embrace perfectionism across the proverbalal tracks requires something more fundamental, it requires a confrontation with what baldwin calls reality. And reality for him is a denote tafb term for whatever happens in experience the doings and sufferings of people transactioning in environment that result in joys and precisely because white people are seen as more valuable than us. A few that distorts who they take themselves to be. And every time we interact with them baldwin suggests we have to risk ourselves. Baltd win asouthwest certificates perfectionism in such a context are you all all right . I want to check on you. Ive got a little baptist preacher in me. Are you all right . All right. I went to morehouse, after all. Baldwin asserts a form of perfectionism in such a context and that assertion requires an encounter with the ugliness of who we are and a rejection of comforting illusions that hide the lie and all of the rot. Both obscure the goodness that matters because our moral and ethical senses are so profoundly distorted. As baldwin put it coat, american white men are not prepared to believe my version of the story to believe that it happened. In order to believe that, they have set up in themselves a fantastic system of evasions denials and justifications which system is about to destroy their grasp of reality which is another way of saying their moral sense, end quote. Now this adds another layer of xlxty to the context of the black democratic perfectionism he commends. It is not just White Supremacy. It is not just the fact that life as it is in this country says over and over again to the black child of 15 and to the black woman of 40 that you are less than. And it says there in every possible way. It is the maddening fact that the country denies what it has done and continues to do to black people. A kind of willful ignorance. Wolfe blitzer could report on ferguson and said i cant believe this is happening in 20th Century America and a few months later report on baltimore and he said i cant believe this is happening in 21st Century Black america. Huh . As if baltimore or ferguson is somehow a surprise. Just as harlem and watson and detroit were shocking some 50 years ago. The innocence is the crime, as baldwin noted and the corroborates what he americanslessly described as the monstrous quality of this place. Quote, there is something monstrous about never having been hurt im about to cry never having been made to bleed, never having lost anything never having gained anything because life is beautiful. And in order to keep it beautiful, youre going to stay just the way you are. And youre not going to test your theory against all the possibilities outside. America is like that. The failure on our part to accept the reality of pain of anguish, ambiguity of death has turned us into a sometimes monstrous people. Were the lost boys in never neverland, refusing to grow up. So the reality of White Supremacy and its repeated evasion or outright denial makes the idea of abandoning older versions of ourselves [ expletive ] near impossible. We seem to be comfortable right where we are. Trying to give content to the trap. But for black folk, especially those who languish in the shadows of american ghettos to stay right where we are means to surrender to death. So baldwins insistence on reaching for higher forms of excellence under captive decisions demands an unflinching encounter with the uses and boos of the past. He wroes, quote, history has nearly no one seems to know is not merely something to be read. And it does not refer merely or even practice landlord to the past. On the contrary, the great force comes from the fact that we carry it within us. Are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways in history. Its literally present in all that we do. He continues, i could scarcely be otherwise since it is to history that we owe our frames of reference, our identities and our aspirations and it is with great pain and terror that one begins to realize. Its in great pain and terror one begin toes assess the history one is placed where one is informed ones point of view, in great pain and terror because thereafter one enters into battle with that historical creation ones self in attempt toes recreate ones self in accordance with a principal more humane and more liberating. Just as an asine side, baldwin is doing this as ae grappleing with his own stepfathers rage. I was talk about you have to well, anyway, we can talk about it over q a. Such an approach to history requires a black self in particular that isnt reduceble to sociology. Those flat statistics and stereotypes that trap americans in the farce that is race relations. Im not talking about that version of the story that trades in the Willie Hortons and bigger thomass, the wealth there cleans the thugs of the world those black people who are natively criminal or because of their woeful circumstances destined to be criminal. Im not talking about that. Instead, black democratic perfectionism requires a selfwith a rich and complex infear orty right . What William James refers to in the varieties of religious experience as that two storied self selfan interior that has been terribly wounded by what Tony Morrison describes as a nastiness that will dirty you on the inside. So you see the difficulty. Baldwin demands perfectionism in a history that denies black selves any stand in. He demands in a world that reduces us to flat predictable characters and nair raves its history to such description. Both are bound up constrained of an idea of history that corroborates the lie that some People Matters more than others. But, again, this is not some preoccupation, some private affair without public consequences. Black democratic perfectionism has radical implications for the order of things. As jimmy puts it quote when a black man or woman i would ask whose destiny and identity have always been controlled by others decides and states that he will control his own destiny and rejects the identity given to him by others, he can talking revolution, end quote. So when those young people in baltimore decide that theyre not going to commit themselves to the state of living, right theyre not going to resign themselves to this any longer, they are stepping out of the orbit in which they have been assigned. And the moment we start doing that all hell breaks loose in this country. Every single time. Im getting carried away. Baldwins witness about what kind of society we hope to live in and what kinds of person we aspire to be as well as claims rooted in care about the historical depths of where we now stand. That is about the enduring legacy of White Supremacy that deformities selfformationes and about the history of struggle that constitutes the back drop of current efforts. His democratic perfectionism is situated in the histories of black lives in particular and American Life more generally. Stories that narrate the litany of events and the chorus of voices. Black voices. These histories carry with them an ethical ott that the struggle and sacrifices of so many require of those who are to be immediate been fisheries. Thats all of us. A commitment to treating ones fellows justly and to ensuring a society where all can flourish. That is a society in which all of us can reach for higher excellence. In vocationvocations of that horn im coming home. Invocations of that historic can spur as the wind beneath our wings with the Creative Engagement of the present or they can limit the range of actions to a still ostracized set of practices that keep us right where we are. Baldwins democratic perfectionism commends the former. He insists that we look at our experiences squarely in the face and challenge directly the idea that white People Matter more and that they can create a world that is comfortable with the senseless death of black people. Now, remember white people isnt the kind of antrological category. Its a political attitude. Its an orientation to the world. Black people is a condition of living defined by the experience of premature death. Now, to my mind black lives matters, at its best, works in this register. Young people all around the world are challenging the underlying assumptions of White Supremacy. They are putting their bodies on the line disturbing the peace and asking hard questions and taking very rude positions, end quote. This is what our moment requires. Turning our backs on the status quo and demanding what dr. King called a revolution of values, a revolution of what we actually care about. But it also requires that we abandon older versions of ourselves, from Political Engagement and confining ideas of black community and obligation. We can no longer suffer from what i want to call catalipsis, that political condition characterized by rigidity and fixity of posture. It paralyzes us keeps us where we currently are and allows for a black Political Class to exploit that fixed position in the name of progress and desensitizes us to the pain and terror of what it means to be black in this country. In short, it is that condition which keeps us trapped. But these young folks today are daring to break free. With all the complications that daring and risk tell. They are asserting the uniqueness and distinctiveness of their own voices. In short, they are daring to be and that if i understand baldwin correctly, that is a revolutionary act in this country. As he put it in a short piece written in 1959 titled, quote, a word from writers directly to reader, quote, what the times demand and in an unprecedented fashion is that one be, not seen but one be outrageous, independent, annarchical that one be thoroughly disciplined as a means of being spontaneous, that one resist at whatever cost the fearful pressures placed on one to lie about ones experience, end quote. To my mind, black lives matter at its best in formulation courageously and to take a phrase from henry james that baldwin loves, they act at the pitch of passion. Thank you. So we now have time for some questions. Please raise your hand high and wait for the microphones to come to you so that the cspan folks can pick up your comments. Hello. Thank you so much for that speech. So speaking on a very intimate like, personal and domestic level and starting at a very young age, if a young black girl or boy must one day, if they have any chance of being liberated at least intimately and individually but their parents have not reached this liberation themselves from the very real reality in america that black lives dont matter as much as white lives how does a young man or woman without the help of their parents, do this . And going back to fathers and the importance of fathers. If they have no way to show their children a reality in which black lives, as they truly do, matter equally as much as anyone with different complexion, how does a young boy or girl go about doing this before they hit being a teenager and going to high school and really being told that they dont matter as much as their white fellow students . Thats a great question. And consistent with who you are. It happens in spite of. It happens in communities. It happens in the fugitive pockets, right where your humanity is confirmed and affirmed. Where you acquire the resources to begin the work of selfcreation. Its hard. Remember in the baldwin is saying everyone is they hit a certain age and earn is trying to figure out what theyre going to do because they see what awaits. And remember, he runs into the church and he called it a gimmick. Right . Its its his illusion. To invoke eugene oneal, i cant taste my liquor hicky right . So we find these resources, right, in spite of baldwin actually refers to these folk as spiritual aristocrats in our midst. How do they muster up the resources and the energy to be in the way that theyve been . Right . How do we where do these kids come from who went to little rock . Where do these kids where do they show up right . The kids who showed up in birmingham. Those kids, 18 and 17 and 19 thats how old buckley was when they left howard and went to the bows of the south. So there are resources that are had that i can find. So, for example, my relationship with my father has been complex. I was allude to go this earlier. And its been complex because he will to navigate mississippi. So hes rageful. And i didnt use the past tense. But there was some love that was engulfing in the midst of it all, that was enveloping. It became the cocoon out of which i could at least find some resources. So i dont want to paint a desert. Right . But i do want to paint the conditions under which the difficult conditions under which rose ves to bloom. Does that make sense . Thats my reference to tupac. Does that answer the question . Yeah. Cool. Well, there are a lot of points regarding feelings of white guilt, the problems with white independence, White Supremacy, a distorted image of self and the concepts of privilege. And a lot of people will and do say that i am the problem and a lot of white people that come from privilege the problem. And i know a lot of white people, including myself, who have the desire to help to be an ally to fight for the cause of equality, but at times its difficult to reconcile that with the feeling of being the enemy or the problem at times. How should i and other people handle that feeling . Is it not my right to feel that way . And how should i be involved in the cause as a person who sometimes seen as the issue . Thank you for that question. And im trying to figure out how to answer it. Because its been asked since we were snatched and brought over here. I can imagine how many times douglas had to answer that question. How many times Andrew Cooper had to answer that question. Malcolm and martin and miss baker, right . It seems to me that part of what has to happen is that for us to understand that whiteness is a particular political position that we occupy, right . That White Supremacy is a particular why would ideology, that has at its core the belief certain people are valued more than others. And that part of what we have to do is engage in a relentless critique of that at every turn. That there is no necessary relationship between who you are, right and you standing and an idea of being a white person. Does that make sense . Are you sure . Im not sure it makes sense. So im trying to what im trying to suggest is that there has to be these moments where we we relentlessly critique and this is what im learning from jimmy every day. We relentlessly critique, right a frame of reference that accords certain people standing and denies others. Right . And thats not about guilt, right . Its just about confronting the reality of what fundamentally organizes this place called america. Right . And its not my task, right to give you the resources to do that. Its not my task to afford you a moral holiday because you can go about feeling good about yourself in your alliance in that struggle. I cant do that any more. Its part of the dance. Right . So what we are to do is kind of just engage in that difficult work, right . Confronting daily the reproduction or the consequences of the belief that some people are valued more than others. Its not helpful. I just didnt want to sound like malcolm, you know what i mean . That was my instinct. No, im just kidding. Its a hard question though. My question is do you think the problem will ever be solved of this . Somebodys life is valued more and how long do you believe it might take before this problem is, in a way, solved . I have to believe. You know, im amelirous to invoke that word that bill buckley invoked. Im amealus so im not an optimist. The pessimist is just the optimist who pitched his ideals too high, right . So im neither an optimist nor a pessimist. I dont have this idea that this is the best of all possible worlds nor am i sitting in my classroom drinking sherri declaring it all goes to hell. I believe salvation is contingent upon us, what we do. Right . Its in our hands right . As baldwin would paraphrase, jimmy, were sons of [ expletive ] and miracles at the same time. So its what we do. And it requires an honest assessment of where we are, an honest assessment. I cant and i cant go about the work of making anyone feel comfortable any more. I cant do that. Right . Its its part of the dance. So we have to tell the truth. We have to look the facts of our experience squarely in the face because its in our hands. And if we continue to buy into the illusions that hide the rot, then we cant confront the rot, right . We cant confront it. So we have to tell the truth. Right . Tell the truth and whatever follows from that follows from that. And i can say that. Some people say, well you can say that because you have tenure at princeton youre privileged, yes, thats true. But we have to we can no longer dance to that. So its in our hands. Now what does that mean in terms of timetable . Im not sure. Its a Long Distance run. I see i see what baldwin related. I see knit my own sons eyes. What does it means when Police Officers in providence stop him as hes doing an ethnographic assignment in a rich park and they pull up on him and say, what are you doing here . Who are you and why are you here . And he says im doing