Debate: Baldwin vs. Buckley

- Transcript
i'm a matter of following program is run at the national educational television network debate james baldwin versus william buckley subject as the american dream been achieved at the expense of the american negro this debate was held recently at the cambridge union cambridge university in england and was recorded for use by ann beattie you know we are indeed mating pool all the cambridge union hundreds of undergraduates and myself waiting of a walk through one of the most exciting debate indigo hundred and fifty years all the human history and identity to see me unions are well attended that on a bag of everyone on the bench of them on the floor and in the gallery and they're a lot more outside a
clamoring to get him will the notion that as braun this huge crowd tonight is this that the american dream has been achieved at the expense of the american negro or the debate will open with two undergraduates because one from each side and that was one of the most distinguished guest is james baldwin the well known american novelist who's achieved worldwide fame with his novel another country in opposing the motion will be with william buckley also an american a well known as a conservative in the united states on this as a conservative in the americans and all the book hold up from liberalism and editor of the national review one of the other supporters of sen go with the setting of the debate in any moment now the president will be leading in his offices and distinguished guests you think he's now and the debate will begin the polls
but motion before the house tonight is the american dreams at the expense of the american negro or the britain's david haycock of pembroke college and opposite gender bet that emmanuel college to james baldwin was the fed to an f buckley jr was before the helicopters the end of the harvest the pope that is the custom of the house for the first speaker in a debate for example while many visitors to the house i don't as his iowa but isn't it ought to be able to walk into the house this evening mr william buckley i mr james baldwin is doing much as the reputation of
pulsating the most articulate conservative in the united states of america he was a graduate of the island but that reputation then sell ipods your book entitled all about audio write the piece since then he has devoted himself to the cycle and this is included norman mailer kenneth tynan ma'am a copy and fidel castro none of them have come out of their compensation funds that a president has been spotted question is it a right wing newspaper in the united states and part of the national review the nominees as an advocate of civil rights is international is that novel another country has been published as a paperback in england today more honest about the vote very welcome to the house fb
people voted to achievement and it just wasn't a society in which all ten of three in every sense of the word retarded when she was free to walk the nation's economy eyes of a lot of republican party and equal in the eyes of a society in fact in which intolerance and prejudice a meaningless to imagine that a condition of this utopia has been a persistent and quite deliberate exploitation of one nine of its inhabitants of one man in line has been denied those rights which the rest of the society take the wrong one nine and nine was not a chance for fulfillment or realize that some of his innate potentialities and that one nine and nine and a promise his job in a secure future and a limited option imagine as the president what is the bitter reality of the american dream a few weeks ago martin luther king
idaho the nonviolent demonstration in selma is joined to register be provoked by the end of the week in these demonstrations he was able to write quite active international fund raising letter from selma alabama give them more negroes in prison would win them all on the page and no one came right back at her three hundred and thirty two thousand seven hundred dollars one percent of the population of the courthouse two hundred and thirty seven he was king among them were arrested the point i thought infant the children who deserted their costumes to protest against things are us what are the juvenile delinquency write songs and i would just have content to pull the picketing the courthouse last eight circuit court was in session on a blind eye and in eleven people when arrested on the same jobs despite that kind of that they wanted to see the voting registrar four hundred students were arrested and taken to the armory when i often spent the night
on a cold cement will avoid it with demonstrations right to marion alabama and marion he does outnumber whites iran and a half thousand to six thousand people and yet only three hundred unregistered believers and marion orr and just to test the public accommodations section of the civil rights law and you don't trust all and then i was not with coca cola's fault and what's out of hand others had risen to fight all of these he ought to be arrested if the negroes were protesting against this treatment seven hundred negros boycotted that office next day march an orderly fashion the jail they're a sensible write songs until they were warned by a state trooper but they would be arrested if they sign one more song of course there's another song on a colossal seven hundred arrested machen says it does not fit to use is fell victim to use the broadly going into world wars it was not because of his music itself it's a lot of his jokes i guess was it inside is no benefit to give the
american leader paddy and for this reason was the president to propose the most in the american dream is at the expense of the american negro the point i mean i've called him in that emmanuel college the manual called james baldwin well known as one of the most vivid inarticulate writers about the negro problem in america mr baldwin had a difficult childhood and he has personally himself suffer discrimination no and i would like to say at this time that it is not the purpose of this side of the house to condone that anyway the
toll it is not our purpose to oppose civil rights it is all about those two offers this mission as americans the pope this side of the ocean liners that the american dream has in any way being helped by this undoubtedly all of the suffering of the negro we maintain that in fact it's a it has endured the american dream and that the inequality if i'd been true freedom of opportunity the american dream would be very much more advanced than it is now if the american dream has made any progress and i think as it has been made in spite of the suffering and inequality at the american negro and not the cause of it now it is also in flight from his mission that the american dream is encouraging and worsening the sovereign of the american negro this is emphatically
not the case the american dream the american economic prosperity and respect for civil liberties has been the main factor in bringing about the un thought of improvement in race relations in america in the last twenty years and professor paul rose who is the author of the negro in america's best the definitive work on the subject who is also a contributor to what was called the freedom site imagine that if he has any bias at all in favor of the negro he said the best improvement in race relations will be seen in years to come as a lot of the ideas put a dollar to three main course it increased industrialization technical abbas the increased social mobility and the american people and the economic prosperity and i would put into this and that industrialized nation and economic prosperity are two of the main ingredients of the american dream
and at the same time again i don't want to say that the americans believe in america's treated fairly but at the same time the average income of the great america is exactly the same as the average per capita income of people in great britain my phone absolutely amazing and i understand that some of you do as well i think the reference here from the united states and you won't vote or twenty second nineteen sixty three like to point out that one night in the lobby of reality and all money and not to the money only five well where the income is higher than that of the american negro and they do not think the likeliest nominee and france and
japan now the oil america thirty five million dollars by saying this was to emphasize that the leaders i many ways to find convey a more realistic and objective and i read a lot of the baseball they weren't the charges at such a gentleman and so throughout who was not talking about something that will be a big one in the same as some of the negroes they put on as they like the one i'm thinking of affection the big leagues they really ought to be president and the last minute i have that this debate is about whether civil rights and extended to american leaders don't know if it would be a lot of sort of an easy admission to vote for
the very wealthy americans because of the expense that is when the american negro has made the american dream with is suffering or the american dream as fervently growth and equality and the present i would say the negro inequality and the american dream i would say that the american dream has been very important in the confederate civil rights and verve and freedom for the american negro of the president's commission but to pay because now that a great pleasure and have a great sense of all know that i called mr james baldwin to speak that this mission now we have at the games or
when they thought of the evening within the sitting listening to him that they're getting a wonderful is that the union members enthusiasm bubbles like a lot of the people who have been listening to the arguments was creating it so the first version of a kind of jeremiah well i don't disagree with that the inequality summer by the american at the population of the united states has handed the american indians are why was another thing to say the other people element
of a certain all been as i feel as a duo with it had to do with one's point of view it with that way one service once and someone says to morality it would seem to me the proposition for the house voted that way is the american dream act expands the american league all american dream is an american is a question it is a noted and that one response that question one reaction that question hasn't been dammed affect and effect on where you find yourself in the world what's your sense of reality is what doses to reality is it depends on the assumptions which we hold so deeply as beast yes you're welcome a white south africa or mississippi sharecropper was the sheriff or french horn driven out of algeria all have an
assistant a reality which compels them to for example is the french exile from algeria event countries haven't ruled out of the city on the alabama sheriffs who really does believe that he's visiting girl boy girl this woman this man this child must be insane to attack the system which heals entire identity a call for such a person the publisher which would reply with us tonight at this la la la i got to speak as one other people who've been most attacked by what we must now here call the west in the european system unreality what white people in the world with a lot of white supremacy a savior comes from europe but how about america beneath then when i was
reaction to lose population is has been a question oh well there are lots of civilisations and the consulate as such equal all weather one's innovation as the right to overtake and subjugate and back to destroy another now what happens when that happens i'm leaving aside all the physical fact one can quote leaving aside rape or murder leaving aside the body count oppression which we are in one way too familiar with already what this does to the subjugated most private the most serious thing with dozens of uses drawing a sense of reality it destroys for example is of his follow the fiery golden is followed along with kellan anything because the path had disappeared as well as no cholera in the world this means the case
of american they grow on eleven or a public as a moment of all and you don't know any better every stick and stolen every face is why it's and you have not yet seen the mayor is opposed to argue it comes a great shock around the age of five or six or seven discover the flag which are pledged allegiance along with everybody else as the pledge allegiance to who becomes a bike shop his colleague erica with him and all the indians we were going for gary cooper well you know as a great shock to the skull of the country which is your birth rates and to which you all your life and your identity as not in its coldest them a reality about any place where you are disaffection demoralization
and the gap between one person and another only on the basis of the color this game begins that accelerates accelerates throughout a whole lifetime as we were about a third ivan at how the time that you do trust your countrymen but it was thirty you've been through a certain kind of male animals there's effectively and you've been through is again not the catalog has asked the policeman the taxi drivers the wave is the landlady a man lot of banks insurance companies and many other details of the koalas up every day which spell out to you but you are worthless human being it is not that is by that time you didn't see it happening
when you're going on your son or your niece or your nephew you're thirty nine hour nothing you have done as sumptuous to escape the trap ones were so that it had nothing you have done that as far as you can tell i'm nothing you can do we'll save your son or your daughter for me the same disaster and nine and possibly coming to the same and now we're speaking about it's a balance so there's several ways to address what they were doing let me put it this way and from a very little point of view apart was and the ports and the railroad of the country and
the economy as special way of the southern states could not conceivably be what it has become if they had not had not still haven't even for some also many generations cheap labor and i am stating very seriously was not an overstatement i know and as for nothing for nothing which hasn't of the day so much power water and therefore some power in the world was great about my labor and my sweat
and the violation by women and the root of much of this in the land of the free and the home of the brake and no one can challenge that stay in another way this training is that the expense of the american negro you watch this in the deep south and great really but not only that the cells in the deep south we're dealing with a shirt or man or a man they overthrow the western union debts and she doesn't know quite who he's dealing with by which i mean that is not part of the town and if you are the northern ago it shows and in the way is
so it is simply knows that it's an unknown quantity but she wanted nothing to do with it as you want or to wait for a while you could tell a grand ok we'll know this we've been through a bad time to get demand is very easy to deal with what is happening the poor woman the poor man's mind is this they haven't raised about the health facility amanda how terribly allies may be in their lives have been quite terrible and a half while they fall no matter what disaster overtakes and there were enormous knowledge and consolation is like a heavenly revelation at least suggested the terrible thing that can happen to a human being and it's one of the worst i suggest what's happened to white southerner
is in some ways after all much worse than what happened or what tipped needles because sheriff clarke in selma alabama cannot be considered you know no one is can be business as a total monster i'm joined of his wives children i'm sure that the likes to you know he's after all once that facility is visibly and then it because it all what drives him is the club that is with a gun and he used some of the homeless that happened or human being to be able to break out probably gives a woman's breasts for example well as a woman as gas does it it's in some ways much much worse this is being done after all not a hundred years ago
but in nineteen sixty five in a country which is best with what we call thirty seven with a certain kind of social clearance which called itself civilized nation which espouses the notion of the freedom of the world and as president obama pointed out that there were alive and they grow and eleven they grow watching this matter where it is that point of all of that as a savior so in spite of what the government says the government says we cant do anything about it but there's a white building there and the city were on the trail of the white children what happened on the streets doing something about it is it right now
ben edelman of the fifteenth amendment nearly a hundred years ago it is out again like an old testament prophet of a level of knowledge then i don't have any reasonable even the civil rights bill will be honored now after all once been there before it was that to prove one's title to the land using four hundred years enough what it is the least three was the american soil is full of the corpses of my ancestors why is my freedom my citizenship on my right to live there how to conceal their question now that suggests further in the same way the more like of alabama sheriffs and for alabama ladies white lady mr lives have been destroyed by play called color of the americans and the reality has been corrupted by it
there was the valet said well i always felt i myself a role a place in what americans of all these are my country i do care about him if i didn't there's something between us we have the same shorthand i know another girl or boy in tennessee where they came from in tennessee i want that you know that whole thing one watches tv we talk about integration as though it was great you know the pilot america's i had been integrated but we literally africa will say what i think my grandmother was not a rate that's
what we are not basing is the results of what we don't want one breaks the american people do or say it's early to accept our history i was there not only as a sled over the concubine one knows the power and role which can be used against another person that absolute power over that it's easy and i watched americans in europe but they did know that europeans did not about we try we found that the message of the french girl group of french weight and they didn't know that even if they don't have any sense at this particular woman this particular mandel they spoke another language in a different way with a human being and they walked all of them have the same kind of latin influence
charming and cheerful well is it always about it on the head and gordon shy and were upset when i was upset what is relevant about this is that well it's forty years ago i was born the question of having to deal with what is outspoken about a subjugated what is never said to the last i'm having to deal with this reality was a caramel there are possibilities know it when i was growing up i was taught in american history books that had no history and he died i was a savvy about and the less said the better who had been saved by europe and brought to america and of course i believed it and then much choice
those only books there were everyone else into agreeing you walk out of our ride out of holland downtown the world agrees what you see as much they go clean know why the richer safer than way you all they collect the garbage it was even a life insurance to children of happy say you're not a new a backhoe and it would seem that of course that it's an act of god that this is true but you know all wear white people with you it is always in the second world war has been a counter image in the world that image not come about through any legislation on the part of any american government but two the fact that africa was suddenly on the state of the world and that's going to be dealt with in a way they've never been
dealt with before this gave an american negro for the first time a sense of himself be on a salad or a plow it has created and will create a great lake the number one of the great things that the white road does not know but i think i do know isn't it but just like everybody else when issues in this neat rows of color to the janitors so that you're doing essentially with some exotic bizarre and practically glowing human laws and now the last that is not true we're also listener is dictated letters live a show what is crucial here is a less regulations that establish some kind of dialogue between those people who might be ten ad paid
for the american dream and those other people not achieved it will be in terrible trouble i was a bit less that's what concerns me most we're sitting in this room we all think we are going to symbolize and we didn't talk to each other reasons that level so that we could walk out of here assuming that the measure of our like minorities out like this has some effect on the world it may not identify example when its attorney general robert kennedy said that it was conceivable that in forty years in america we might have been a president that sounded like a very emancipated state law as opposed to white
people going on in harlem when the state was first heard that did not he and possibly will never hear the laughter and bitterness most colleges taking was greeted with one of your mat in the hall and barbershop bobby kennedy he is today and now is already on his way to the presidency really important is and now he tells us that maybe in forty years if you're good when they let you become president what is dangerous here is attorney a way from returning a way from anything anywhere american says the reason for the political hesitations spike to the johnson landslide is one of them the trayvon martin politicians for so long and i am i'm alone then about i can be
reasonably i simply hope i can be but i don't know and it is march with a k none of us know how to deal with those other people in the white world as a lot of knowledge without leaving the white world says and don't entirely believe at iowa martin say and one can't blame them you watch what has happened to the main lesson is that it seems to me that the city of new york for example is the last point presented knows it will be a long time because in new york with a bunch of deepening the last fifteen years reconstructed south jet down buildings and raised great new one downtown and formerly as done nothing whatever accept build housing projects in the ghetto when you grow
apples negotiated president probably doesn't need to rewrite the potential recount that they wanted to get out of this the lack of the tensions were based on more solid a modest assessment of life and of themselves it would not mean for negroes when someone rises ever knew that nato summit and its own mountainous regions what it does need now is not an act of god beginnings as it made and ruled by men the american negro and up and president led government's of his two american labor movement much more edifying and it is it is a terrible thing for an entire people was an end to the notion that one night i was population is beneath them and until that moment until the moment comes
when we the americans we the american people are able to accept the fact but i have to say for example a man's a simple white and black that on that common we're trying to forge a new identity which we need each other that i'm not a war of america i'm not an object a missionary charity i'm one of the people who built the country until this moment there's scarcely any hope for the american dream with those of people who are denied participation in it presidents like it was a very great moment for the west bank at cricket
than the moving moment mile of those of the union and in the north in a magnet to be able to ever read the full moon you've done in my life in the park and many grateful and babies be able the goal is the winner buckley jr his people whose mission the power who knew all his skill to establish
ascendancy of that ordinance which includes a few people like it was all personal experience the proceedings become a part of the government it seems to me that a ball the indictments ms baldwin has made america are here tonight and in his copious literature protests along that is the most striking involves an effect the refusal of the american community but to treat him all our man as a negro the american communities of his visit remember nearly always everywhere he goes the trees in with a
kind of function of a kind of satisfaction that posturing tearfully law is fragile nations was huge that indeed quite properly a commands the content to issue so far but it is impossible in my judgment of the deal with the indictment in the civil war and on this one has had to deal with him as a white man and as one of the very the save you and the fact that your skin is black is awfully relevant noting that humans are the facts that the use it here as is your garden and says i'm layin the entire way in the middle of the audio is irrelevant to the argument that we are here in the square is
leader of almond but not so much that our civilization has failed him and his people that audio of our insufficient but that we have the law it that audio is rather or some sort of a superficial coasting by which we come up with at any given moment in order to justify a lot of a commercial and an noxious experiment we are engaged of awesome mr baldwin can write his book the fire next time in which he threatens america but he didn't in writing that book speak with a british accent city used exclusively that night and witches threaten america with the necessity was born you cover us to jettison narrow entire civilization
the only thing that the white man has been a brochure wall he said is how one hand is faded from coast to coast are united states with a kind of loneliness is to the viewpoint of those beyond anything that we never expected from the most will survive until age of us a proposed a day and the all of this and i was saying to him i am going to speak to you without any reference what i woke up to those surrounding productions which you are used to in virtual the fact that you are a negro do we need to ask the question what in fact shall we do what so we are in america tried to do forests is to eliminate those psychic humiliation which i joined as the world war women leaving all of their worst aspects of this is huge well you found a duck a source of considerable mirth
laugh the way these statistics of my knowledge i don't think they are insignificant but i also do not insignificant in a world which attaches a considerable in court and sorting through congress by is in fact he has about seven tenths of a seven tens of the white income of the united states is it totally income that is made by the i'll buy the other things i don't think this is an unwelcome suggested maybe they take some capitalization of fifteen sixteen seventeen thousand dollars per job in the non citizens capitalization that was not created exclusively as a result of the rotor of a you know my great grandparents we're two presumably euros worth also i don't know that anything that has ever been creative without the expense of something all of you hoped for a diploma try to do that at the expense of a considerable amount of evidence and alan thank you know the fact that a considerable amount of effort that went into the production of a system which grants a greater degree of material well
being of the american negro or than that that has enjoyed by ninety five percent of the other peoples of human rights but even so but to the extent that your withering after a suggested here that you found is a contemptible observation i'm great i don't think it matters of their thirty five million as among the negro community that if they were thirty five there with twenty million a millionaire's among the negro community of the united states i would still reeling and we have a dastardly situation but i'm asking you not but not to make politics is the pro flaws to safely the days of the festival show rodman's about one in five is that we americans or to do what are your instructions that i'm taken back in the united states right now i wanna know what it is that we should do and especially i wanna know all whether it is time in fact to abandon the american dream as it has been defined by
one in fact is in new york and informants but to avoid to humiliations was mentioned by mr baldwin as had as being a part of his own experience during his lifetime of the age of twelve you find on reading his book but he trusts post outside the devil on land list was taken by the scruff of the night by a policeman on forty second street and madison avenue was at a unit or go back to where you will a fifteen twenty years later but he goes in and asked for a scotch whisky at the airport at chicago and this total by the white woman that is obviously on the arrangement of the circumstances i know i know from your face is that you share with me the feeling of compassion and the feeling of our isle range of this kind of thing should have happened and what in fact all we going to do this and what in fact we're going to
do a lot to do this bombing how always going to avoid the kind of humiliations that are perpetually visited on members of a minority it's obviously the first element is concerned we bought the care that it happens to be about to do what we can to change the warp and woof of more mr borden society in such fashionista tried to make it happen less and is that meat there's this point you wish i can do with the fire and that is a new law that in the united states there is a concern for the no go on niger that i'm insane why'd you get up to me and say what it is they're the kind of things that we students of cambridge which overflow wrong on itunes is i don't know
it may very well be that there had been some sort of a sunburst of marlin like mumford his head this community so as to make a predictable interview with the governors of the united states the situation would change overnight i would fear the practice as it on fourth quarter gemma the voting was all i'm saying do that the engines of them served in the united states all were in the presence of this ballroom here than it is in part a reflection of that you cannot you cannot go to university in the united states or you must immunize is presumably also governed by the lord's spirit shows you a lot in which mr baldwin is not the toasts of the town are you cannot go to university in the united states in which practically all other problems of public policy are preempted by the primary policy of concern
i challenge you to name another civilization anytime anywhere in the history of the world lay in which the problems of the mind are they which have been showing considerable material online political advancement is as much a subject of dramatic tension as a state law that made let me just say fine weight on it and then when this odd there is no instant queue off for the race problem in america and anybody who tells you that the reasons that sharpton and ultimately a boring man of war and as i say not because he is aaron speaking in the kind of abstractions that do not relate to the human spirit the trouble in a matter where the negro community is concerned is a very complicated one irish those of you who have the iaea who have on actual rather than purely ideology lived interest in the problem but to read the book beyond the melting pot by
professor lowe is also author of the lonely prod a prominent jewish intellectual who points of the fight oh that the situation but in a macro where the narrows our concern is extremely complex as a result of an unfortunate conjunction of two factors wong what is the dreadful efforts to perpetuate discrimination by many individual americans citizens it was out of their lack of that final an ultimate concern which some people actually find out if they've got is as a lot of the failure of the negro community itself to make certain age is an issue oh which were made by other minority groups during the american experiment is if you can stand a statistic not of my own making let me give you one which professes ways of things is as well liu says for instance in nineteen hundred there with thirty five hundred negro doctors in the man in nineteen hundred and sixty there was that in nine
hundred an increase in four hundred is is because there were no opportunities as has been suggested by mistake and also by mr bowen implicitly no surface of ways that other great many medical schools oh who are by no means practice discrimination was anxious to save the train and they grow doctors there are scholarships available put them through but in fact that good taking energy of which he remarks was so noticeable in the jewish community and uncertain and lesser extent in the italian mouse community for some reason is not that we should fall it's on the necessity to animate this particular energy but he comes to the conclusion which strikes me as plausible that the people who can best do it most effectively on the group and let me a concludes by reminding you that is not the one about where are the negro is concerned the dangers are far as i can see at this moment is that they won't seek to reach
out for some sort of radical solutions on the basis of which the true problem is that you have done a great deal of the focus on the fat of white discrimination against ngos they have great done a great deal to agitate you mara concerned with prayer in fact do they go now they seem to be slipping if you read carefully for instance the words of mr bayard rustin fought some sort of a pro prosecution formulation which ends up last version the advancement of them in the room and the russian allies fourteen times as many people in new york city one of monroe's are illiterate and whether as a white's this is a probably partially address the law by seeking out laws that encourage a legitimacy and white people on this unfortunately tends to be the rhetorical momentum that some of the arguments are taking one plane you might prove
i couldn't agree with you mourn for china to accept a less thought i'd get two ingratiating would've gotten mugged that night i think actually i think actually what is wrong in mississippi's is not that not enough nato is a voting with too many white people or all voters well booker t washington said the washington set of the important thing when it was a concern is is is not that the whole other goal that within the people and the whole world is not that they thought about their baby prepared to know what we were doing was having for liberalism has agreed to despise barnett one of sally then teach them to emulate their cousins in harlem and the door adam clayton powell it is much more complicated than simply the question of giving people arevalo miles of a constituent of the community in the city at this
moment what i would do is voting that the standards of the vote so as to disqualify sixty five percent why not all i say then that what we need is a considerable amount of fact it's thought that acknowledges that there are two sets of difficulties of the difficulties of the white person who acts as white people and brown people and black people or do all over the world but to protect their own vested interests so who have is all of the races in the entire world of awe and suffer from a kind of a racial narcissism always stood which tens always to convert every contingency in such a way to maximize their own that's about we must also raise that their best chances on immobile society
and the most immobile society in the world are they muffins is united states other loans mobile society united states in the world is not a safe america and it is precisely that mobility a witch movie of opportunism it was prince that must be unfortunately but they must know in the course of their or the be encouraged to adopt the kind of cynicism other kind of despair other kind of iconoclasm that has urged on them by mr baldwin in his recent works because of one thing i can tell you i believe was the absolute fire that where the united states is concerned if it ever becomes a confrontation between a continuation all of our our own sort of idealism of the private stock of which private like most people in the world we tend to lavish only every now and then on public enterprises resilience award from verona rotations but the fundamental
friend of the negro people oh in the united states is that nature is the generosity and his their good wishes his decency the fundamental reasons why the reserves of the spirit of the american people these was lucky laughter and under no circumstances must be laughed at and and under no circumstances must america be addressed and told that the only alternative to the status quo what is to overthrow of nationalization which we consider to be the faith of our fathers of the faith indeed of all of your phone this is what most animated what of all the reasons most come because if it does finally come to a confrontation a radical confrontation between giving up what we understand to be the best speeches on the american way of life which at that level is indistinguishable support i can see from your
life then we will fight the issue and we will fight the issue not only in the cambridge union about we will fight it as you were once recently pulled into on beaches and on heels of amount of miles and on lending around and we will be convinced that just as you all won the war are devastated take him a threat to civilization you would nevertheless waging a war in favor of them for the benefit all germans your own enemy is just as we are convinced that if it should have it wrong with that kind of a confrontation on the damnation to win the struggle will be a determination to wage a war not only for why is also from that it's by the pope
- Program
- Debate: Baldwin vs. Buckley
- Producing Organization
- British Broadcasting Corporation
- Contributing Organization
- Film and Media Archive, Washington University in St. Louis (St. Louis, Missouri)
- Library of Congress (Washington, District of Columbia)
- AAPB ID
- cpb-aacip/151-sn00z71m54
- NOLA Code
- DBBK
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- Description
- Program Description
- The one-hour special program features a debate between Negro author James Baldwin and leading American conservative William F. Buckley, Jr., at the Cambridge Union, Cambridge University, England. The two men argue the motion, "The American Dream: Is it at the expense of the American Negro?" Mr. Baldwin takes the affirmative position, while Mr. Buckley opposes the motion. Mr. Baldwin points out in his remarks that over the years the American Negro has been responsible for the cheap labor that has made the American dream possible, that the Negro must overcome the European or Western system of reality regarding race (white supremacy), that the 15th Amendment has been ignored for 100 years leaving no assurance that the civil rights bill will be enforced, that the white people of Mississippi have had their moral lives destroyed by color, and that the people who are now part of the American dream will be the ones who eventually wreck it. The Negro author's comments are received with a standing ovation. In opposing the motion, Mr. Buckley states his concern for the humiliation of the American Negro but he maintains that the stature of Mr. Baldwin as a successful writer is indicative of the Negro's ability to participate in the American dream. In addition, he points out that there is no instant cure for the civil rights problem since the situation remains complicated by the efforts of people to continue discrimination, and the failure of the Negro to make a greater effort on his own behalf. The danger in the whole racial question, the conservative leader says, is seeking a solution that might obscure the problem. The hope, he concludes, lies in a mobile society, not in the despair and cynicism espoused by people like Mr. Baldwin. Norman St. John Stevas, MP is the host for the program. Debate: Baldwin vs. Buckley is a production of the British Broadcasting Corporation. (Description adapted from documents in the NET Microfiche)
- Broadcast Date
- 1965-06-14
- Asset type
- Program
- Genres
- Event Coverage
- Special
- Debate
- Topics
- Social Issues
- Race and Ethnicity
- Media type
- Moving Image
- Duration
- 00:59:14
- Credits
-
-
Host: Stevas, Norman St. John
Producing Organization: British Broadcasting Corporation
Speaker: Baldwin, James
Speaker: Buckley, William F., Jr.
- AAPB Contributor Holdings
-
Film & Media Archive, Washington University in St. Louis
Identifier: 6661-1-1 (MAVIS Carrier Number)
-
Film & Media Archive, Washington University in St. Louis
Identifier: 6661-1 (MAVIS Component Number)
Format: VHS
Generation: Copy: Access
-
Library of Congress
Identifier: 2007960-1 (MAVIS Item ID)
Format: 2 inch videotape: Quad
Generation: Master
Color: B&W
Duration: 0:58:55
-
Library of Congress
Identifier: 2007960-3 (MAVIS Item ID)
Generation: Copy: Access
Color: Color
-
Library of Congress
Identifier: 2007960-2 (MAVIS Item ID)
Generation: Master
Color: Color
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- Citations
- Chicago: “Debate: Baldwin vs. Buckley,” 1965-06-14, Film and Media Archive, Washington University in St. Louis, Library of Congress, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 22, 2023, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-151-sn00z71m54.
- MLA: “Debate: Baldwin vs. Buckley.” 1965-06-14. Film and Media Archive, Washington University in St. Louis, Library of Congress, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 22, 2023. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-151-sn00z71m54>.
- APA: Debate: Baldwin vs. Buckley. Boston, MA: Film and Media Archive, Washington University in St. Louis, Library of Congress, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-151-sn00z71m54