Philistinism and the Black writer; Negro writers conference

This morning I was going to talk about philistinism and the negro writer. When my head first opened that is when I was late. High School Early College when first I came to realize that there were things in the world that I didn't know anything about and that these things were very valuable. When I first heard the term Philistine I thought it meant people who just didn't like culture unquote things. But then growing up. I always a den of FOD strangely enough with Stephen Dedalus and I thought constantly about art and people who hated art. I hated. But I came to realize later on that Philistinism. That is say a disrespect for spiritual values or non material values. This permeates all parts of American life.

And let's say it's only the naive. Or say those people who were separate enough in the society to still believe in God as Spirit as a Holy Ghost. It was only those people who could connect themselves in some kind of anti Philistine attitude simply because as I said before they didn't have anything they didn't have any material wealth to revere. But most Americans are philistines most Americans do value things rather than spiritual value or the spirit and even most American artists are philistines. In fact I think of most American artists as being exactly what America is only having perhaps a better cover story. That is they reflect usually the exact thing that America is what they want is something that America wants

only they can usually say describe their own intentions as being artistic. The negro is connected specifically this way. He has a chance naturally to go around such things but of course it's too much to ask. Everyone everyone say not to respect materials rather than say what's in them to do. But paradoxically the Negro is also also more susceptible to it especially as an artist since he usually needs more money or needs more of that weird affection called prestige. Which is the embrace that Philistia. Offers. So that say you find a talented negro like they say a talented man. Who is willing to throw it aside very easily for the sake of a few dollars or what might seem to a white man no money at all.

But say for a negro might seem to be a great deal of money or a great deal of prestige so that say being a head nigger even though that's something that might be unspeakably low in a white man can white man's consideration that this kind of inbred. Philistinism this kind of refusal to accept the world as a place where anything can happen. And that anything is valuable. It's a kind of home grown black Philistinism. But for the writer then because I've always thought of writing as a moral charge that is basically I think of the Artist as a moralist as demanding a moral construct of the world as asking for a cleaner vision of society and always asking that no matter what your response that say it be as Ezra Pound said a new that you make it new that you respond newly and personally and singularly.

I wanted to say something about the ol Vanguard since people usually connect me with that and say the opposition to Philistinism. But I don't think I'm going to go off into that. Rather I want to read say sections from a piece I wrote which now I see is about Philistinism. And it was in the New York Herald Tribune a couple of weeks ago and the name of the article as I wrote it was called Leroy Jones talking and the man corrected my grammar and has Leroy Jones speaking so. He must know. But I want to say something else about art and how one gets into art if there are people here who think of themselves as possibly writers are want to be writers. When I went to high school I went to a white

high school in high school 97 percent white. There were six Negroes than twelve negroes in the school. And after that I went to Rutgers for a year and suddenly one day I decided that I had had enough of that part of the world and I wanted to see the other part of the world so I went off to Howard. And when I got to Howard it shocked me into realizing the hysterical sickness of my father's which now I just now come to understand a little more. That is I hated my father in the sense of him not being as someone said a man let's say a man who has a degree who has to run an elevator and I didn't understand. I didn't understand and now I come to see why this is possible a little more clearly. But yet Howard shocked me into realizing how desperately sick the Negro could be how he could eat himself up inside and realize or not

realize that finally it was the society that had proposed the sickness to him. For instance a story I told her that hill and to a lot of people which I suppose has become apocryphal at Howard. A friend of mine and I were sitting on the campus. He is now a lawyer in Philadelphia. We were sitting on the campus one day and a watermelon truck passed our wagon and we were studying so I said let's go buy a watermelon so I bought this watermelon we were sitting at Howard University there was a binge in front of me. What's called Douglas hall was then this was one thousand fifty two. And so Tom Weaver this boy I was with had to go to class so he went to class and I was sitting there sawing on this watermelon. So the dean of men who might still be the dean of men whose name I will not mention but he's the dean of men and if you look at up. You'll find out who it is.

The dean of men came up to me and said What are you doing. You know and I said well what do you mean when I do I'm just sitting here. And he said why are you sitting there eating that watermelon. And I said well I don't know I didn't know there was a reason for it I was just eating it. And he said throw that away this instant you know. And so I said Well sir I can only throw half of it away because I only own half of it. The other part of it is Mr. Weaver's and he's in class so I have to wait till he comes out and gets it. And he said Do you realize you're sitting right in front of the highway. Do you realize that this is the capstone of Negro Education. Do you realize that you're compromising the negro. So. That shocked me along with a number of other things as for instance the man who's the char in charge of the music school there I won't name his name either. But if you look at up. Sterling Brown and some other men and some other boys and Professor Sterling

Brown and I wanted a jazz concert at Howard this man said that jazz will never never be played in the music an arts building. And then when they finally did like jazz and it was Stan Kenton. So it's this kind of thing this kind of confrontation with this sickness that is a man convincing you that you're inferior to him and then you believing it and then conducting your life that way. So that I find myself now reacting to Negroes who talk about good hair I react very suddenly who say as we were just talking who think somehow that being light skinned is somehow preferable to being dark. It's weird especially if you're dark to think like that and to not realize that this is something they have put on your back to carry around so that you can't straighten up and confront them as man man rather than man and guess what. When

I went to the army it shocked me into realizing the hysterical sickness of the oppressors. That is finding out how my own people suffered when I went into the army I saw how say the oppressors suffered by virtue of their oppression by having to oppress by having to make believe that this weird hopeless fantasy they had about the world was actually true. They actually believe that and this weight is something that deformed them almost. And finally more hopelessly than the black man. But let me read some of this piece now. Call Leroy Jones speaking. And just read sections of it because it is probably long. Yes.

The pro-law which is very romantic and which is probably offensive I right now full of trepidation because I know the deaf the society intends for me. I see Jimmy Baldwin almost unable to write about himself anymore I've seen Dubois write Chester Himes driven away. Ellison silenced and fidgeting away in some college. I think I almost feel the same forces massing against me almost before I've begun. But let them understand that this is a fight without quarter. And I'm very fast. For those of you who do not know my name I am what is called a negro writer. I write what is often called Negro literature. What these terms usually mean I mean somewhere below the veil of anxious politeness smart Americans think of as their image is that the people who can be tagged with them produce a variety of writing that should be thought of as second rate. The reasons for this low estimate of black writing have not I think been fully understood. And I mean the estimate made by the official estimators the deciders of what is of

intellectual hits emotional value in the society. That is what can be carried off and deposited in that huge junk heap of useless artifacts called culture. Who are these estimators. I can begin by saying these are the same people the same minds who would teach unsuspecting high school children that American literature is Longfellow when we have had great poets like Whitman and Dickinson and what is the basis for their estimates. What pushes them grimly and consistently toward ideas and intellectual pensions that are only sanctified by mediocrity. Probably their lives. I would say and the intellectual graceless n'est to which those lives are anchored. The last refuge of the basest Puritan colonial temperament a temperament that in purely social terms could send Ethan Allen to the hills or Robert Williams into exile in Cuba. This temperament canonised and strengthened becomes an academy or institution or establishment though I am speaking now specifically of Arts and Letters

and it is a Democrat with a temperament that controls but not necessarily animates the society at all levels. It is a temperament whose champions can speak ecstatically of progress yet allow such a thing as Harlem to exist and thereby spell out the law of their intentions and make no mistake. Harlem is only a quick example exist only because the establishment this temperament controls needs it to exist. If it did not want that place in the nightmare of its implication to exist Harlem would be removed by the time this article appears. The people who are committed to waging war around the globe to maintain the glories of our natural advantage are brothers of the people say who thought that How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying deserve the Pulitzer Prize. RATHER And ironically they are right since that prize has long been removed from the concern of people interested in telling about the world as it really is rather the Pulitzers today are relevant merely to people interested in flattering those shabby pilgrims whose

word in this life at least is law. People the poet Charles Olson spoke of as the pips of progress. But they are not merely people they are sadly a nation. I will make my case clearer. A negro writer if he is to get at that place in his being the place where Art lives must do as any other artist does that is find out what part of that being is most valuable and then transfer that energy again paraphrasing a lesson from where he got it on over to any reason. An artist any artist must say where it is in the world that he actually is. And by doing this he will also say who he is no matter what a man tries. The products of his thinking indeed the products of his life will identify who and where. For most Americans this is unfortunate since they are weakling murderers and liars. And the place where they live is named after them. Even if the plastic sign on their desk says poet. Another on the door says cop out you but one of the

artist black or white who does not have such signs to confuse reality. What if the art is to remain simple minded and that he believes that everything is valuable that men have experienced because poised around that experience and it is available as light is our air. There is only darkness or not even that. What of that man. What can such a man and I aspire to be such when I'm not drugged or drunk. What can such a man hope to prove by continuing to live in this hip flop house of the universe. I suppose you can prove only that even here some actual reality not lies or flattery or soap selling some real feeling perhaps can continue to exist even under the most adverse conditions as Dante saw Beatrice even in hell. For one thing the denial of reality has been institutionalized in America and any honest man especially an artist must suffer for it. That is how the institution perpetuates itself through the suffering of the honest or the

naive. The artist is must be both. For he is a man who would say not only that the king has no clothes but from C but proceed from there to know how badly the sovereign is hung. Such a man is of course crazy. Just as I am something like Christopher Smart or Blake or Rambo or Alan Ginsburg. I aspire to the craziness of all honest men that is the craziness that will make a man keep talking even after everyone else says he shouldn't. As a relevant aside when we Negroes could force institutionalized dishonesty to crumble and its apologizes break and run would be to turn crazy to bring out a little American Dad or Annette Coleman style and chase these perverts into the ocean where they belong. See if Negroes just stop behaving stop being what Charles desires and just flip. Go raving in the streets screaming in verse and honest history of America walk off their jobs as they should have done in Birmingham after those children were murdered and watch the country grind to a halt. The owners cracking their knuckles as they

got out their gold guns and got ready to blow out their own legendary brains. It is a good and practical idea. Why don't you try it and it grows. In America I haven't lived anywhere else as long the art that is most admired is an art that will tell the basest elements of the society that they are still gods or at least interesting by basis. Elements I do not mean the poor Mr. Lewes and I do not even mean the George Wallace's or Ross Barnett who are after all only stooges for the mighty sense they have to take abuse. The mighty never take abuse. I mean the owners and managers and all the officials of the society the influencers the make out artists and the Stooges the fashionable disengaged disperses the lawyers all the talented compromising swine who will smile in your face knowing your life is in their hands. It is not merely big business that is responsible for the hopelessness of the society but all the people in this nation who somehow benefit by their owners conduct.

All the people who somehow have something to lose. I have only one question to ask such people. That thing you have to lose Where did you get it. Is it yours. But there are people in America not responsible for the filth of its image. What is that image ask any Latin American. Most Negroes for instance are not responsible for nor are they represented by the consistent insipidity and vapid ness and again the denial of reality flashed at us constantly through the mass media of the society. Those are the owners minds. Negroes are not owners. No not even those flashy tokens of the missionary mentality. They are just liberals jibberish most Negroes can say of the mass media that's why doing that stupid thing not me and be right essentially. But even so negroes had better dig themselves and find out what they really want. Some men like being slaves. Others would rather die. Any honest men in America separate or separate himself black or white from the gloss of the American image. But by being separate from that image a man is also setting himself up to be

murdered one way or another. Specifically the rider in America. If he would be canonized along with the mediocre and the misunderstood must reflect the mores needs etc of the establishment that is his poem must not only be understandable but gratifying to that establishment transforming its essential filth into some delightful euphemism even presidents can quote without fear of saying something meaningful. A poem or play should even beatify that establishment. Perhaps in a pastoral recollection of the joys of luxury is ignorance. This Connecticut landscape would have pleased Vermeer as one poet can of Coke has satirized such glorious banality. But the artist the poet or the playwright who would actually say something about the actual world of living and dying is in trouble. Very few people in the society are interested in such a place as the real world. Were they really interested in reality. Not a sociology or style but as intellectual and emotional fact than the suicidal core of the society would

swell and explode and perhaps even the owners might be faced with the fact of their evil. Hopefully just before they did themselves in. The negro writer is in a peculiar position because if he is honest most of what he has seen and experienced in America will not flatter it his vision and experience cannot be translated honestly into art by euphemism. And while this is true of any good writer in America black or white is a little weirder for the negro sense if that negro is writing about his own life and his own experience his writing must be separate from what the owners and estimators think of as reality. His writing must be separate not only because of the intellectual Gulf that causes any serious man to be estranged from the mainstream of American life but because of the social and cultural estrangement from that mainstream that it has that has characterized Negro life in America. The mainstream mentality does not even know what a negro is. That is why it keeps asking what does the negro want. What does any man want to be left alone with his life and have some hope of making that

life what he wants it to be. And negroes when they make art must also carry the weight of white American social and cultural stupidity as well as the ordinary burden of Art's responsibilities so that for instance when a Negro shows up in a play the mainstream mentality can only see that negro as an advertisement for the NAACP but very rarely as a man but negroes are men and their minds and emotions have human shapes which cannot be categorized. Even admiringly by the missionaries or their opposites. The most white Americans the Negro is a shadowy abstraction reflecting the sterility of their own needs. They can think of negroes only with abstract non-human concepts. So that for example some critic can say of the character Kali in my play Dutchman that he is quote not negro enough quote. Meaning Of course that this critic has a definition of what a negro any negro is or the same critic can say of Clay's death that he does not die the death of a Negro but of a naif but can a Negro be a naif. And what is the death of the negro. Has that been

institutionalized too. Another recurring criticism of the play Dutchman was that the white girl Lula was too crazy too neurotic too extreme etc. critics wanted also to know and what I think ought to be understood as an obvious paranoid plea for quote understanding whether this girl was meant to stand for all white people. But how can one white person be all white persons unless all white persons are alike. Are they. It is equally stupid to think of the negro boy as all negroes even though as I've said most white people do think of black men simply as Negroes and not as individual men and women. I showed one white girl and one white and one negro boy in that play and the play is about one white girl and one negro boy just them singularly. And what I hope was a revelation of private and shared anguish. I hope that because I dealt with this anguish specifically it would somehow convey an emotional force from where I got it. The discovery of America on over to any viewer but for the feeble minded black and white are always the most important aspects of anything not what a thing really

is but how it must be made to seem if it is to accommodate the silly vision of the world they are stuck with. But I will say this if the girl or boy in Dutchman has to represent anything I mean if she must be symbolic in the way demented academicians use the term she does not exist at all. She is not meant to be a symbol nor is Kali but a real person a real thing in a real world. She does not represent anything. She is one and perhaps that thing is America or at least its spirit. You remember America don't you. Where they have unsolved murders happening before your eyes on television. How crazy extreme neurotic Does that sound. Lula for all her alleged insanity just barely reflects the insanity of this hideous place and Clay is a young boy trying desperately to become a man Dutchman is about the difficulty of becoming a man in America. It is very difficult to be sure if you are black. But I think it is now much harder to become one if you're white. In fact you will find very few white American males with the slightest knowledge of what manhood

involves. They are too busy running the world or running from it. My God where are we. What is this place. What is the reason. And in this most prosperous of all utopias for the existence everywhere in it of filth ignorance cowardice. Thank you thank you. We are like the florist draws ladies and gentleman. My name is Luis alimony. I miss the johns I'd like to ask you same question I asked you yesterday because I didn't understand your response I think it's an important question and I don't know whether it has an answer or not. And the question is simply this.

All of us here want to write and express ourselves and we're afraid some of us are anyway. And I sense a new and unafraid in this courage. And the question for me personally is well how in this crazy culture can I stand up and speak like you without being shot without losing my job. Etc. I don't I don't know. As I said before it's it's. It's it's so singular so personal. You know it's personal in this. You know I don't know say what the pressures and connections you have I mean I don't know who you feel responsible to. You know we all feel responsible to some ideas some people. I don't know what you feel responsible to for me for instance. I never had anything in America I mean I don't have anything going for me in America

in the sense of vested interest no matter what you might think. And what I was saying before this man I mean. I could see it all tomorrow I cry. But in terms of having things here that I'm pulling for. The only thing I think that you could do if you wanted to write would be to pull for some kind of honesty. I don't think you can be a good writer unless you're willing to put yourself on let's say the chopping block. I mean I don't see how you can because no matter if you say if you describe a flower. Precisely somebody is not going to dig it somebody is going to say there's something wrong with you if you speak in metaphors. If you say just stop using cliches The Way We Do you know we speak in cliches. If you stop and begin to use metaphors speaking metaphors people would you know think you were crazy even.

I mean it's that the the thing you're talking about. What do you have to do. You just have to find out I think what you want to do not what you want to do as what everybody else does and it's easy. But if you somehow think that you have something to say that might not be what everybody has on their mind then it's going to be difficult. There is no way absolutely no way it won't be difficult. Absolutely not. I don't know what to say it's you have a choice just like everything else it's a choice it's either or. You know you can't have your cake and eat it too. Or maybe you can but it's difficult. You either have to say what it is you think is very valuable for you to say or subordinate that to the what else is happening. But understand this that you're only going to be here once that you know of and you better as they say in the Christian church you better make sure this is the way you want to do it. You know make sure workout your

own salvation with fear and trembling. They brought us to Los Angeles. We hear a lot of these lectures about the problems in America today and I agree with everything you say I'm not arguing that I want as you wish to add to my information. We hear a lot about America and the society and the stupidity which we all have to live with privately puke every day and it's everywhere and then I look at a broad and I look at Germany which was the symbol of philosophy and music and science and art and culture and so quickly they became barbarians and I wonder if America's problem. In order to solve the American Negroes for all of it and even the poor Americans don't even know they have a problem we don't have to keep going farther to the roots and break away this myth of Sunday Christians and young Kipper Jews and so forth and break these mills before the vision they will even come. They have the idea that there are still religious and in order to

go anywhere. How are we going to break these myths that allow this Philistine idea to take hold as a substitute for really a basic lack of religious faith that was born in a man before these other institutions took a hold of them. Well you're talking like you're right. Gee most of America controls the world. America runs the world. No America runs Europe. Europe gave us the background of its culture that Christianity as it came over across the ocean came we talk about these Puritans now I think have to go farther than you know I don't American Christianity only units of the school I had church had anything to do with Europe. I mean there are a church and everything I mean influences certainly didn't help people to break myths to understand each other. No well American stop being religious. You know this was the repository for humanism in the new were I mean the New World was they were interested in humanism man is the measure that's post Renaissance thought the

church died in medieval times I mean the church and say when Henry the Eighth created the Church of England then it was a church run by economic minds there was no more. That I did you know illusion though there are religious and truly just used to justify murders rape. Men have to keep on digging out these dirty roots like cancer before you really can. More people have a vision of their own capacity. Well I think what I was always saying America controls the world they're always trying to say things like they're trying someone else trying to rule the world the Russians are trying to rule the world with Americans rule and now they run it all over every place I've been they run it you know and every white country. Tries to be like the Americans you talk about Germany Germany in Japanese for instance were enemies and second world war but now they're among the richest countries in the world whereas the Indians etc. who are our so-called allies are still still starving to death. The Americans run the world when they talk about

somebody else trying to to rule the world they mean to take it away from us and take it away from Americans but they run it now and the filth in it. They are responsible for it. Again you do you what can you do the average. I was talking to Mr Rexroth last night. It's not even a classic revolution a revolutionary situation because here for the first time you have. A mass oppressing a minority say that Americans now the majority of Americans the middle class american think what's going on here is great. You know it's fine. They don't want to change it. And that weight that oppressive weight crushes the minority usually the classical revolutionary situation was the small pampered group oppressing a majority and the majority overturns them but now you have it reversed so now we have to figure out something else to do. Eva Rutland from Sacramento California. I don't know really whether I have the right to say this because I haven't lived anywhere but in America.

But I think sometimes we are because we do have many sicknesses. Inclined to be a little hard on ourselves. I think that we are trying. A negro protest movement is not only by Negroes but many white people as well. And I agree with you that this is one of the ways of solving our problems and we are rather overloaded with things. But I think sometimes we enjoy these things and perhaps there is a crime in enjoying things when others don't have things. But we are reaching out toward others. I think that the Peace Corps and other ways we are really trying and I would like to give you a quote from my husband who does travel in many countries over the world and as he

goes about he has many offers to live in other countries. He never wants to go and has said of some of them. I would rather be a nigger in jail. Enjoy it. Well gee I don't know what to say. I say this most I would say this though to you first most of the suffering in the world is caused by Americans. Most of the deprivation and I've been different places only. You go to Puerto Rico you go I mean you go to places in Europe and any black people any Latin American country you go to Cuba Mexico and you see those people you see how they have to live and you see say these Americans carrying that bread out and out money on it or the American food company and the sugar company is an International Telephone and Telegraph.

You see them carrying that money over there and building these huge beautiful homes and living like kings while half three quarters of the people in the world are dying don't have enough to eat. Do you know that most people in a world of bodies hurt them because they don't have enough to eat their bodies hurt them. You understand that you see some fat white man walking around with no idea what the world is and you going to tell me that we can somehow love them you can't. You have to instruct them. Yes but that only goes so far and then the teacher would hit you on the knuckles if you didn't understand. You know but what I'm trying to point out is that for the sake I said have a natural advantage of luxury so that even say the slaves think of themselves as somehow being well-off and being better off than those people over there that those people over there suffer from the same kind of oppression from the same kind of division as the negroes here. At the same time for the same reasons people using then using their labor using up their lives their biographies for personal advantage for unnatural advantage a man say discovers Well look there's a girl in Saudi Arabia. I was in Saudi

Arabia in the Air Force this oil is billion dollars of oil there's a couple of million dollars a day shoot out of the ground natural wealth. Those people live I can't describe to you the filth the ignorance that they live in there. And where does that money go golf. It comes back here. And so somehow you have a kind of halfway luxury and you think that you're well off. Well let me tell you you go to Brazil for instance and you see those negroes there black people living in those shacks or you go to Peru and outside of Peru. For instance there's a big garbage limiters a big garbage heap that stretches maybe a mile or half mile an ear and as garbage a huge heap a mile round rather. And you know as high as this building garbage you know there are people who live there by that garbage to eat that garbage so that when the Liberals got in the so-called liberals got in they said well we can't have this we can't have this

garbage sitting out here. So they wanted to move it. So then the people starved to death they weren't offering any solution. They just said that that look bad. But do you know that garbage that leavings that those people have to eat that's what you're eating you eating the leavings of these white Americans and still think you're well off. The thing is this and I was talking about this last night. If a man builds a Ferrari for instance if a man say invents a fan our air conditioner should not air conditioner be for everybody the next day. If a man builds an airplane should everybody who wants an airplane have that airplane the next day. We're all here together. Nobody knows how they got here were they going to go. We're all here together you know on this earth. And yet somebody can invent something or have an idea which should benefit everyone who is interested in it. And yet it's kept like this for instance automation.

Now I want to mission is supposed to make life easier for a man that is you don't have to work. The only people finally in society who should work are people who want to work. Writers people make dresses. People like them along people who paint people who play tennis. That's the kind of work you should be doing work you want to do. Yet automation now is threatening the blow the society up strictly because it's not benefiting people as it should. It's just putting them out of work. But it's not giving them the compensation and benefits which it should do you see. So for instance an artist is the most benevolent man he has an idea he gives it immediately. Here take it. But say a man can build a thing where you don't have to work 20 hours a day just to keep yourself alive. And yet for this unnatural advantage wanting somehow to be better than you are higher than people they keep it to themselves. But if we had an actually quality then we could begin to find out who is of value of this in the society. If everybody had equal means then we could

find out who had brains because people would have to kill themselves staying alive. They could develop this and then we could find out just how smart who who and who is on an equal in an equal way. That is everybody being given the means of the society. Then they could elaborate in terms of their specific intelligence. But don't ever for one second think that America is not anything anybody says it is. Because if you go anywhere in the world you see them taking that money out of there always taking it out of there and they might try to excuse it by saying. Well we brought civilization to this place. But don't you know that civilization is anything that people agree upon as a way in which they're going to live. It doesn't mean you have to have an air conditioner and a rug to be it. That's not the civilization you know. So you impose your ideas on some person and then patch yourself on the back because you've imposed your ideas on them. But what they're doing is they go into Africa gold most of the gold and diamonds are in the Belgian Congo. The

Belgian Congo and the black men work down in those holes all day taking those diamonds out so they can go back to who Europeans Americans. But that money belongs to those people that's why Lumumba was killed you understand that because he wanted to nationalize which means we want the money it doesn't leave this country we want it. So they killed him. You know it's simple. I must take exception I promised myself and I some other people that I wouldn't take the floor again after having shot my mouth off yesterday. But I do feel that I must take exception to the Muslims that Mr. Jones has just said particularly because I don't feel that it is that simple. And if it is not that simple then we're not going to be helped in our understanding of what is going on around us in the United States now. And when I when I go on to say that I just do not think that it is so that America runs the world. I want to make it absolutely clear that I'm not standing here as a defender of the

establishment the ruling class or the people running the show because I've been doing my best to potshot at those very people for quite a long time now. In fact what seems perfectly clear to me is that what has been happening is that America can no longer run the world and that is why you have so many nuts swimming around loose in the United States today. They cannot face up to the reality of the fact that they can't not only can't they run Russia or China or the countries behind the Iron Curtain they can't even run South Vietnam. And whatever general a president or whatever whatever you call them happens to be there at the moment they can't run the negroes in the United States anymore. And that is what you have so much hysteria unless it's the first place. What are they doing. What does any white man doing in Asia today or after what are they doing there. I don't think that we need to get off into a discussion about American imperialism until all of you guys will stay talking about it is not quite as simple as you are saying you are going to say that America runs the world. America does not run France. American

ideology does not run France. The State Department which is that it could tell Mr. De Gaulle what to do. But it cannot and it's a gross oversimplification. Well if France has been taken over or Western Europe or whatever buy-American to be I couldn't agree with you more. When you speak of Latin America when you speak of South America when you speak of American imperial interest I'm 100 percent with you but I'm just simply saying that you are oversimplifying when you say that I was making it simple in this sense Harvey I was trying to say this is imperialism is simple very simple. For instance what is that man doing in South Vietnam. What are they doing in Africa. How did they get there what were the Dutch doing and why did they go there. Right. I agree absolutely I just want to make one point which will perhaps Polish thing into focus a little more that when we say in an oversupplied white America runs the world We then tend to think in the way that Europeans used to about Americans being grossly materialistic and they somehow being our superiors because they are more spiritual and so forth

and so on. And I've lived in Europe for a number of years I think it's a little bit far from the truth and hence the passion for automobiles for gadgets for utensils and so forth is not specifically American but is a product of modern technology. It is as much happening in Russia today and in Poland and Romania and Bulgaria as a reason for the unrest in the communist countries as it is here in the same kind of sickness as a result of it turns up there and the same kind of philistinism when Mr Khrushchev goes to an art gallery and looks at a painting on the wall and says who took that ship and flew it at the kid threw it at the canvas going to close down the Academy is no different from the kind of philistinism that you have in an imperialist country. Well I don't know if that can get you off the hook just by saying that. I don't know what that means we're not responsible for the Russians and for Russian Philistinism. What do you mean why not. You're not. Have you ever been to Brazil. Do you know what companies own Brazil. Do you have any

idea. Then what do you mean. Well you don't have to buy. But it's true Have you ever heard of the United Fruit Company. Have you ever heard of those people. Have you ever heard of American sugar company. Have you. Pardon. Start what first. Well let me let me explain. Now let me explain to you. Let me explain it to you. Now you're going to tell me now about the idea about up from your bootstraps and each man as an individual and rugged individual as them. Well look. The European was able to conquer the world because of technology. As Harvey said technology the development of a new kind of culture the development of a culture that depended on new things for its power. Now it's a period we associate with the Elizabethans When discoveries of the new world. Now these people were able to conquer because they had machines which could conquer this technology was a period to making that

kind of civilization. You see. So then it takes now another few hundred years. There's a book you want to read by Brooks Adams called the Law of civilization and decay. You ought to read that book. And don't ever think of people just because someone has their foot on their necks as being lacking any kind of energy to make things you know that only thing that all thing about bringing civilisation to countries is a lie. Those people were living one way and a new civilization came which was able to conquer them because it had weapons which these people didn't know about and machines which they didn't know about. It's a matter of a different kind of technology. And now these people all over the world are learning how to use that technology and want to use it because they want the same things that that technology has given to the west. It's a simple thing. What I meant before is when you when the technology developed it didn't develop in the sense the sense of say an artistic gift. But this war between east and west and finally black and white has been going on

a long time from the Persians and the Greeks to the Franks and the Mohammedan. It's been going on and on to the Romans on the moors and it's the same thing always the same thing. Two different kinds of cultures two different bodies of ideas in conflict with each other. So that a man say a European invented a machine but an Arab invented mathematics. I mean it's just a different kind of culture your values are different and reference value is determined by reference. So there's Brazilians so a man comes in with a machine and conquers them and you say well why don't they start. Why don't they start an oil company their culture they didn't use oil. This country needed oil because they had invented engines which demanded oil which had to be run by oil. And so then when these people discover that this engine that must be run by oil is Sapir ia to doing jobs that they did by hand then they want that engine you know but say if a man is in your country where you live taking wealth out of that country taking it out of that country every day then I think there's

reason for you to get angry about it. There's a reason for that. You see the fact what happens is this all the countries with the raw materials are in one sense oppressed because the countries that have the industrial know how to take them all materials out of the country. Paying those people who work little or nothing take the real materials out of the country and process them through their industries and then sell them making tremendous profits. For instance Tom McCann shews owns most are those huge ranches in Argentina where they have the big big bulls and the cows down there. Now Tom McCann owns that operation from the from the farms. All the way down to shoe stores they own the complete operation complete operation so they take those cows or whatever that high. Out of that country. They take it to their home they process and they sell the meat. They tanned the hides they make shoes. They get all that money. The people who did that who fed those cows who watched those

cows from this to that who made sure that that hog would be substantial so that it could be made into a good pair of shoes. Those people get nothing. You see they don't get anything. So even this industry this great responsible industry cannot run without those raw materials that they are transferring. And now these people in these various countries even our so-called friends are saying no no we want some of that money to leave it here. Let us get these factories that's why the Chinese are screaming there want to industrialize. They want to be able to turn their raw materials into consumer goods to sell. It's about markets is about selling things about money. People are making money. Other people want to make money. You know people don't like to suffer. Thanks. Mary McNamara. Now I'll tell you I was wondering what you thought of the

wealth of King Saud of Saudi Arabia. I remember his coming to America and I think he had something like 80 wives that he provided for. And I remember some of the aftermath of his being in America. If I remember rightly he because of some of the favors that were done for him gave to our man but was to be chief of protocol in America an Oldsmobile car which occasioned the loss of that man's job and he had the little boy that was crippled who got such good care at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington. He took back the technician and you know gave gifts to several of the people. I wonder if he could be prevailed upon to share some of his wealth with the Saudi Arabians and why it should just be the American only the same way Faruq was you know. What the prevail upon to do it the

same way you know you just have to have a gun in your stomach that thereby it should be just the Americans that bear the onus by taking all the wealth out of Saudi Arabia. This man seemed to take quite a bit about. Yeah well he's a he's like he's like the man who runs our country for forsake golf NSL he's that he's the house our. Hero and so I thank you thank you. I'm Cecilia Bartholomew from from Berkeley. I want to say first I think the United States should get out of the countries there. I think the United States should get out of the countries where they don't belong. I absolutely agree that they go in there and they take out the wealth. But in the sense I want to make the same point that

Mr. Sway doesn't mention if that isn't presumptuous and that is aren't we being a little too silly after wasn't there exploitation in Brazil before the Americans went in and after Americans go out won't there be nobody among the native people. And isn't this a little simple in this respect. Art shouldn't we get below the line. Justify terror to me after I finish. Should we get below the labels of American and European and Brazilian and go back to man and was he going to do that. I think well I hope we can do is we both white and black and that's all the negro screaming for Man man man that's what this thing is about man man man not black not white but man that's when they grow saying that's correct but you know that's so far it's been sayin it's been said by the negro speaker on the platform and I would like to say it by the White House and in the in the you know well that's what I thought of my old class we are we are all in this together and I think the lady here was

making this the same point. Also this is it's in the nature of man to want things this isn't only characteristic of the white man more of the American and I and the thing is that power corrupts and I don't and and when power goes into other hands I won't there be corruption and to well you know see that's always the thing. You know this is the world man is you know basically evil blah blah blah. Don't try to make it so that you have a disease so that anybody else comes along has to suffer with that same disease you know at all. For instance all the Chinese will be good men and that there wasn't any. Why did the Chinese revolt against Chiang Kai shek. Well these people because he was the runner up. He and he wasn't an American. He wasn't an American. Yeah he wasn't wands. Yeah let's not make it too well he was the Chinaman. I mean it's the same thing. That's right. Yeah. I may I may I really stick out my neck now and say when the highest Negro gets in. Are

you sure there won't. What pious Negro where when a man you want you want and you will and we will have it. What do you mean what you have what there will be power invested in some negro or you mean in this society. No absolutely not no. Are any society may I say. And when it when and if and I think it's when and not if power is invested in negro hands won't we then come back to this human saying that power corrupts. Well Hugh is that what you hope you know what I want to know what. I think we will come to a better understanding if we don't do it on the labels of American Andrus Well this is this this is not just addressed to me this is just Americans. So far you have cars into all of us and that's what I said. What you've been saying has been said by then the fine negro speakers on the platform and has not been said by the WHITE Well the I can and I want I can say this I can say this is not that simple don't try to make it

universal. The women are this book that I asked this lady to read here. The law of civilization and decay. A different temperament took over the world it was a religious temperament until medieval until the Renaissance and then the storekeepers the economic temperament took over. England was a great storekeeper for the world and then the Americans had them fight the Japs and the Germans to make sure that they would be the chief storekeeper. But don't try to make that everybody's Moldau dizzy I say I'd like to make another point when the America when they call on this to be a nice thing they supposedly came for freedom and a minute and when they got here they were big kids. It was freedom for them. You know nobody else ever thought in their fashion and I think this is the thing that we've got to recognize. Well do you know what there's word there is. What tribe is that eBook is an Ebola word for a white man in the news and also of an Indian word for white man American Indian and they mean almost the same thing.

He who lies I mean the same thing and does the law. What I'm saying is we are in a position to demand a cleaner vision of any world somebody constructs. Absolutely but not to say that we're going to be as corrupt as you are no that's not the voice I want to hear.