James Baldwin

This demands a tremendous amount to demand of people who are technically free in a free country which is supposed to be the leader of the West. It seems to me a great Collison of our Republic to expect that it's going to be saved by a handful of children whom they refuse to be responsible and so it is so much more difficult than I so much more easy I should should say for a black Muslim speaker to to win followers than for Martin Luther King who was asked is always much easier. Obviously you know two. To How can I put this to you. Welcome home as we meet every Saturday night. Those people there listening to those speeches and all kinds of other speeches. Because when I got there there they are in despair and they don't believe it is the last this is the most dangerous thing that has happened. They don't believe they have been betrayed so often and by so many people all of them right. They don't believe the country really means what it says and there is nothing in the record to indicate the country means what it says.

Now when they are told that they are better than white people it is apparently never will development. You know after all these hundreds of years by people going round saying they're better than anybody else. Sooner or later they're going to have. They were bound to create a counterweight to this especially after the stage of the world now. Which is simply turning which is simply to take the whole legend of Western history Matile entire theology. Change you want to pronouns. You know and transferring from Jerusalem to Islam and this is just this small change internet all against the white world and I can't do anything about this can't call the Muslim leaders or anybody else on this until they're going to face their own history. How does all this then connect with a Negro Artist. Negro writer specifically you coming out and to a man who meant so much to you Richard right there as in one of the. Again we come back to write a chapter he escaped. He spoke of Paris as a refuge. But you looked upon it as a sort of way station for

yourself. Well the beginning I must mean a looking house a refuge to I never intended to go back to this country. I lived there so long though I got to know a great deal about paradise. And I suppose it's everything's happened to me one of them is watching American Negroes there who had dragons to be just so to speak across the ocean with them. And operating now in a vacuum. I myself now carried all my social habits to Paris with me where I where they were not needed. The Red didn't do me long time going to do without them. And. I could end this this complex frighten me very much. But more important that perhaps was my relationship with Africans and the Norwegians that I know which I mean that Algerians there. Who belong to France and didn't demand any spectacular spectacular be a perception to realize that I was treated insofar as I was. Notice it all differently from them because I had an American

passport. I mean out of like this fact but it was a fact. If I and I could see very well that if I were Algerian I would not have to live in the same city in which I imagine myself to be living as Jimmy Baldwin one of our own African would've been a very different city for me. And also began to see that the West the entire West was changing was breaking up that that its power over me of Africans was gone and will never come again. So then it seemed that exile was but another way of being in limbo but I suppose finally the most important thing was that I am a writer and in my town's grandiloquent but the truth is it. I don't think any I don't think that seriously speaking really anybody's right mind I want to be right. But you do discover that you are alone and then you know you have any choice who are you going to. You live that by people

who live any. And I'm an American writer this is a this country is my subject. And in working out the forthcoming novel. I begin to realize that New York I was trying to describe was New York which is where this time nearly 20 years old. And I had to come back to check my impressions and to. As it turned out be stung again to look at it again and again and to be reconciled to it again. Now I imagine my own case I will have to spend the rest of my life going on that will be. As a kind of transatlantic commuter because at some point I'm in this country I always get to a place where I realize that I. Don't see it very clearly anymore because it's very exhausting to spend at you and you do spend 24 hours a day resisting and resenting it you know and trying to keep a kind of equilibrium in it so that I suppose that I'll keep going when coming back home.

You feel your years in Europe afforded you more of a perspective. Yeah I have been to see this country for the first time about it on the way I would have been able to see it and that I'm able to see it. I've never been able to give it. You know I'm out of this country anymore. I'm very worried about it you know and I look great about the negroes in the country even so much then what about the country kind of there's no one who does know what is done to negroes. But the country has no notion what ever and this is disastrous. But what it's done to itself. You know they had met to assess a price they paid north and south keeping a nigga in his place. And from my point of view children every single level of our lives in the most public. Can you expand on this a bit Jim what the country has done to itself. One of the reasons for example I think that our use of badly educated and it is inconceivable that the educated. Is because education Amanda certain daring a certain independence of mind had to teach young people to think. And you teach young people in order to drive people to think you're to teach them to

think about it. We think there must be something that kind of think about there's only there's one thing they can think about and they surely can't think about anything. You know. There's always something in this country because one cannot think about what one can think about as Negro. You know. Now this may seem like a very subtle argument but I don't think so I think that I think that I think that really time of prove the connection between the let the level you know the lives we lead and this extraordinary endeavor to avoid black men and I think it shows in our public life I think that when I was living in Europe it occurred to me that when Americans in Europe did not know about Europeans is precisely that they didn't know about me and what Americans today don't know about the rest of the world like Cuba or Africa is but they don't know about me. And incoherent totally incoherent foreign policy of this country is a reflection of the incoherence of the private lives here.

So we don't even we don't even know our own names. No we don't. That's the whole point. And I said I suggest this I suggest this that in order to learn your name you can have to learn mine. You know in a way the key to this country. The American Negro is the key figure in this country and we don't face him. We will never face anything. Since you've mentioned it I don't know your name I am a white man will never know my name. I think you know as a country region of the country think of Africa mediately and you have again coming back returning to your work and by the MMN I suggest this work to two listeners. James Baldwin is nobody knows my name published by dial and even though I say it's a collection of essays It isn't that is a novel it is a novel because it is an autobiography you really get away it's on the ivy. The you have a journalistic reporting a very accurate stooge when princes and POWERS It's called You were covering a meeting of Negro writers of the world and Paris and African writers were speaking to

now as well as writers through an African conference of the African negroes are there as Africans or as well the black people of the world let's put it that way. What have what have the of the African writer then. You mentioned that took the role here and that is is there a problem here the uncovering of this rich heritage so long buried by kidnappers by colonial naval command at the same time we know that technology and technological advances are taking place changes slums of the 20 century and the 20th century. Isn't isn't there a loss as well as game here at the young. How is a question of. Do you think should i happening at the same time here's a really great question I don't know what. It's almost impossible to assess what was lost which makes it possible to assess but again. I'm going to put this out in a way the way I almost envy African writers because there's so much to excavate you know.

And because their relationship to the world at least from my vantage point about this I maybe don't seems much more direct than mine can ever be. But God knows you know the colonial experience destroyed so much placid so much and of course changed forever the African personality. So one does know what what really was there on the other side of the flood. You know it's going to take a it will take generations before that past can be re-established you know and and in fact used in the same time across all the African nations have all of the obligation in the city moving into the 20th century and really you know some fantastic rate of speed was the only way they can survive. And of course all Africans whether they know it or not haven't you had European experience of unstained and you know and changed by the European standards in a curious way. The unification of Africans of us can be said to exist is a white invention that is to say the only thing that really united sizing to all black

men everywhere is the fact that white men are on their on their necks. What I'm curious about is what will happen when this is no longer true. And and for the first time in the memory of anybody living black men have their destinies in their own hands what will come out then what the problems and tensions and terrors will be that is a very great very loaded question. I think that if we were not honest here we could do a great deal to aid in this transition. Because we have an advantage which recent consider to be disadvantage over all the other Western nations are to say we have created a getting you know quite apart from everything else the fact is we have created. Another nation has a black man who belongs who is part of the west now and in the section of Belgium or any other European down. We had our slaves on the mainland and therefore no matter how we deny it couldn't avoid human involvement with them.

We were most parish nine but which is nevertheless there. Now we could turn about and face this we would have a tremendous advantage in the world today. But as always we don't. There is much hope for the west we're going to put this in. It won't accept the fact that it's no longer important to be white begin to cease to be important to be black. If we could accept the fact that no nation with 20 million people I mean black people in it. For so long and with such a depth of involvement no nation in the in the least circumstance going to be called a White nation. This just would be a great achievement and it would change a great many things. This raises a very interesting point that's all conjecture of course assuming that sanity is maintained assuming that humanity itself the American all of us will triumph. A point as I write I just you say this. There will be no nation and no black nation but the nations of people. Now we come to a question of this long buried heritage at the beginning a Bessie Smith record was played here once upon a time not knowing who you were were

ashamed of it now realize there's a great pride here in artistry thinking now the young African again. If if a certain identity and this is an imposed identity from the outside it is lost. Will he reject that which was uniquely his forte and greyness perhaps even be more materially advanced. I have a tendency to doubt it but then of course there's no way of nine eyewitnesses judging only from my very limited experience in Paris but a few Africans after all. My identity is doubted I think that the real impulse is excavate that heritage no matter what cost and bring it into the present. But I think this is a very sound idea because I think it's needed. You know I think that. It's all the things that were destroyed by Europe which will never really be put in place again. So in that rubble I think there's something of very great value not only for Africans but for all of us. I really think that we're living in a moment just as important as that moment when Constantine became a Christian.

You know I think that all the standards by which the Western world has lived so long in the process of breakdown and the revision and and and I had kind of a kind of passion a kind of beauty and a kind of joy which is in the world before. It's been buried a lot has got to come back the passion and beauty and joy I once in the world that has been buried. Now we come to the matter of dehumanization. Yes exactly. The impersonality of time. Yes yes. And I obviously this cannot. Well I need to see it continue like that. I don't I don't ever intend to make my peace with such a world is so much more important than Cadillacs which it has and IBM machines. You know. And precisely one of the things around this country is this notion that IBM machines and Cadillacs proves something people always tell me how many negroes bought Cadillacs last year. You know and it terrifies me. You know I was wondering is this what you think the country is for do you think is really what I came here and suffered and died for you know a lousy Cadillac. Well that's for white or black I just but i country white or black.

Yes exactly. You know I think the country's got to find out what it means by freedom. It was a very dangerous thing. You know anything else is disastrous. But freedom is dangerous. You know you've got to make choices you have to make very dangerous choices you have to be taught that you know your life is in your hand a matter of freedom this leads to another chapter in your book dealing with your meeting with in my bag man whom you described as a free relatively free artist. Yeah yeah. Would you mind telling us a bit about that what you meant by that. A part of his freedom of course is just purely economical attendance based on the social structure the economic structure of Sweden and say I've got to worry about the money for his film which is a very healthy thing for him. But I rather like the way he impressed me as being because he had and this is a great paradox seems to me about freedom. He accepted his limitations limitations in himself and the limitations within the society. I mean that he necessarily accepted all these limitations. You know I mean they were passive in the face of them.

But he recognized that he was in my bed and he would do some things that I could not do some others. It was I'm going to live forever you know and recognize what people in this country have a great deal of trouble recognizing that life is very difficult very difficult for anybody anybody. Now I want to people can be free until he recognizes this I mean Bessie Smith was much freer. On as terrible as this may sound much freer than the people who murder let her die you know. And Big Bill Broonzy and the tree in hand and the success ridden people running around Madison Avenue today. If you don't accept the worst as someone said to me then you can see the best. But you think life is a great big glorious plum pudding. You know. You'll end up in a madhouse.

Just to to to to perhaps even extend the examples you just offered the little girl who walked into the Little Rock school house now or that shot up North Carolina and was spat on with much freer less than those who had a child who sat there with a misconceived notion. Well I think the proof that Negroes are much stronger in the south or they simply know. She was she was she knew she was and that after all the child been coming for a very long time she didn't come out of nothing and they got the Negro families able to produce such children. You know as well as the good white people of the South have yet to make an effort to make any appearance. Proves something awful about the moral state of the South. You know those people in Tallahassee were never in the streets when the mobs out there were you know why aren't they. It's a town too. What about someone like William Smith. So the Internet is a great and I think a very great neurotic and very lonely figure. Obviously you know she has very few friends and little hamlet in Georgia that she

carries on. So grounding you know she's paid a tremendous price for trying to do what she thinks is right and the price is terribly terribly hard and whether the price becomes less for more people to do it. Because here here someone here is someone of the South a minority of one and perhaps a few prototypes here and there. This leads to the I don't know what I did I'm looking for your book now and I look at you know having finished it before anything recently have any majority minority perhaps but the majority is not necessarily right on the charges Usually I hate to say this wrong. No I don't see confusion in this country in a way about that you know I don't sense any of the people. Yes yes and I think that I think that I really think seriously there's a vision of labor in the world and some people are here too. I was even hurt this way. You know there's so many things I'm not good at I can't I can't drive a truck you know I couldn't run a bank. Well right well if you have to do that well in a way they're responsible to me and I'm

responsible to them you know and my responsibility to them is to try to tell the truth as I see it not so much about my private life as about their private lives. You know so that there isn't any world standard you know for all of us to which we you know which will get you through your trouble but your troubles are always coming you know and you Cadillacs don't get you through it and you do psychiatry's incidentally you know only get you through it really some some faith in life. Which is not so easy to achieve. Now we talk about majorities and minorities you know I was of the feeling that this country's talking about kind of popularity contest you know in which everybody works together you know toward some absolutely hideous. It is immaterial and but in truth I think that you know politicians for example in the south where you know chose show most clearly I mean Arizona politicians have failed their responsibility to the white people of the South. Somebody in the South must know that. Obviously the situation because the status quo will not exist another hundred years. Their responsibilities appear the people who are now forming those

mobs prepare those people for that day. Not to minimize the damage to them. Even now the majority rule in the South as a majority would all. It's a mob rule and what these mobs feel is a moral vacuum which is created by the lack of a leader. You know it's engines musically the world is and I'm talking about dictatorships and I mean that statesman the statesman you know and people people who are sitting in government I suppose know more about government than you know than people who are driving trucks and digging potatoes and trying to raise a child and that's what you in the office for someone with a sense of history perhaps. Yes which is precisely what we don't havea sense of history because you don't know what happened behind you. You no idea what's happening around you. Not very long earlier Jim you mentioned that for a national policy to be straighten out the private policies this private lives individual lives must be. You spoke to of your job as a writer. You've got to write. And in this chapter with Bergman the northern Protestant is a beautiful coming here. All art is a kind of confession. MARTIN So bring

all artists are there to survive are forced at last to tell the whole story to vomit the anguish all of it the literal offensiveness because Benjamin but oh it's a kind of confession as you apparently do in all your writings I think it has to be a kind of confession I mean a true confession since that jury magazine but I mean. The effort seems to me is to if you can examine it face your life you can discover the terms in which you're connected to other lives and they can discover to the terms which they connect to other people. It's happened to every one of us I'm sure you know that one has read something which you thought only happened to you. And you discover that it happened a hundred years ago to Dostoyevsky and this is a very great liberation you know for the for the suffering struggling person who always thinks he's alone you know. This is why it's important it's an important you know for any I don't think that God would not be important if life were not more important you know and life is important and life has made me the most was no matter what we say. I walking in the dark whistling in the dark. Nobody knows what's going to happen to me one moment or the

next or how he will bear it. You know this is it would you support this with everybody. Now. It is true that the nature of society has to be you know to create among its citizens an illusion of safety. But it's also absolutely true that the safety is always necessarily an illusion and all of us are here to disturb the peace. I just say here to disturb the peace we have to disturb the peace. Otherwise chaos no. Life and life is risk. It is indeed. It is and you know it always is it always is and people have to know this somewhere that you know it in order to get through there are risks. So the safety itself is wholly illusory. She stands as a safety of such a thing as safety on this planet. You know no one knows that much. You know when I will now learn about the world about himself. That's why it's an you know it's cause it's unsafe and you know and some have no this is about a whole the whole sense of tragedy is really all about. And people think I think that

sense of tragedy is a kind of embroidery as something irrelevant which you can take or leave. But in fact it's a it's a it's a necessity. That's what the blues are all about what's spiritual about. It is the ability to look on things as they are and survive your losses you know or even not so by them to know that they're coming you know because now they're coming is only possible insurance you have some fake insurance that you will survive. You spoke of sense of tragedy again in your book you mention you speak of us Americans lacking. We have tremendous potentialities should be using it we lack that which a non-American may have a sense of tragedy. Yes I think we do and it's very and it's very and it's. An American you know it's incredible it's incredible to me that and I'm not trying to be over and I don't miss oversimplify anything. But it's incredible to me that in this country we are to a materially more for the most

part. One is better off than anywhere else in the world. That one should know so many people. Who are absolute who are to say the most absolute insecurity about themselves you know. So they literally can't get through a morning they're going to see a psychiatrist. And I find it very difficult to take this really seriously. Since other people have really terrifying and unimaginable troubles from the American point of view don't dream of going to my new psychiatrist and I would have the money to do it if they if they were mad enough to dream it. Was me point to a very great. One illness exactly but that fear. Frenchmen that I used to know no French women spend much less time in a dreadful internal welfare telling themselves and each other than Americans do and the why this is so as I know it's probably a question for someone else but. But it is so and I think it has some very serious about the real aims and the

real standards of our society. People don't live by the silences as I live by and the gap between the profession and the and the actuality is what creates a spare and this and this uncertainty. Which is very very dangerous in the last last chapter of the last part of your book nobody knows many of the black relics the white boy ends in your relation to Norman Mailer but the very last part as if he has understood them you are further than he is richer with you. He in this instance the white boy. Yeah right I know that he is richer and we are richer too. If he has not understood then we are are much poorer. Father it clearly needs to be brought into focus. He has a real vision of ourselves as we are and it cannot be too often repeated in this country now that where there is no vision the people perish. I mean that. And they are as a guy so not a grossly rapidly James

Bond and who has confessed in a very beautiful way. But the confession by the way here is but most brief we really scratched the surface in knowing and slightly Knowing James Baldwin. The book is nobody knows my name and its style. And he's written two novels. I hope they're still in print. Yes they're just running through and go tell him go out on the mountain and the forthcoming novel. Another country another country it's called. It's about this country about this country perhaps one last question. James Baldwin who are you. Now. We need. Well. I may be able to tell you quite why I think I'm discovering who I'm not. I want to be an honest man and I want to be a good writer. And I don't know whatever gets to be left out wants to be. You know I think you just

had to. Play it by ear. And pray for rain. Thank you very much James but when you heard Studs Terkel talking with the young American writer James Baldwin originally broadcast by station WFM t Chicago this special program was made available to the National Association of educational broadcasters through the courtesy of WFAA MTV and James Baldwin. This is the NOAA radio network.