You are here
James Baldwin, "White Racism or World Community," July 7, 1968, tape 1.
Primary tabs
Download
- James BaldwinWhat everyone overlooks the fact that Stokely Carmichael for example began
- James Baldwinhis life as a Christian and for many many years I've
- James Baldwinnoticed by the world's press was marching up and down
- James Baldwinwhite highways in my country in the Deep South. I spent
- James Baldwinmany many years being beaten over the head and thrown in jail singing We Shall Overcome
- James Baldwinand meaning it and believing it. Doing day by
- James Baldwinday and hour by hour. Precisely what the Christian church is
- James Baldwinsupposed to do, to walk from door to door, to feed the hungry,
- James Baldwinto speak to those who are oppressed. Try to open the gates of prison
- James Baldwinfor all those who are in prison.
- James BaldwinAnd a day came, inevitably, when this young
- James Baldwinman grew weary of petitioning a
- James Baldwinheedless population and said, in effect, what all
- James Baldwinrevolutionaries have always said, "I have petitioned you and petitioned you."
- James BaldwinAnd you can petition for a long long time but the moment comes.
- James BaldwinWhen the petitioner is no longer a petitioner, but has become a beggar, And,
- James Baldwinat that moment, One concludes you will not do it.
- James BaldwinYou cannot do it. It is not in you to do it. And therefore I must do it. When Stokely
- James Baldwintalks about black power, he is simply translating into
- James Baldwinthe black idiom what the English said hundreds of years ago and have always
- James Baldwinproclaimed as their guiding principle. Black Power translated means the
- James Baldwinself-determination of peoples. It means that and nothing more. It also means
- James Baldwinnothing less. But it is astounding and it says a great deal
- James Baldwinabout Christendom that whereas Black Power, the conjunction of the word "black"
- James Baldwinwith the word "power," frightens everybody, no
- James Baldwinone in Christendom appears seriously to be frightened by the operation and the nature of White Power. Stokely
- James Baldwinmay make terrifying speeches -- though they're not terrifying to me I must say -- and Stokely
- James Baldwinmay be -- though I don't believe it -- a racist in reverse.
- James BaldwinBut in fact he is not nearly so dangerous as the people who now rule
- James BaldwinSouth Africa.
- James BaldwinHe is not nearly as dangerous.
- James BaldwinHe's not nearly as dangerous as many of the people who govern in my poor country.
