The life of James Baldwin

Brut America

"Every white person in this country knows one thing. They know they would not like to be black here."  He was one of the greatest minds of 20th century America and a crucial voice in the fight for civil rights. This is the life of James Baldwin.

Transcript

00:00I was trying to suggest to the Western world that part of its challenge now is to reconsider

00:09some assumptions which they scarcely know they have, and one of those assumptions is

00:13the prevalence, the mystique of color, which until the date does dictate the conditions

00:21of most of the world's black population.

00:24It is not simply an American problem which we will or will not solve.

00:28It is something which matters to all of us.

00:50One of the things which most afflicts this country is that white people don't know who

00:53they are or where they come from, and that's why you think I'm a problem.

00:57I am not the problem.

00:58Your history is.

01:59It's important for me.

02:06It's a kind of conformism, it's a kind of rigidity, and I've also started to test

02:56that.

03:23For a black writer, especially in this country, to be born into the English language is to

03:31realize that the assumptions of the language, the assumptions of which the language operates,

03:39are his enemy.

04:01Baldwin would return to America and travel to that part of the country which was changing,

04:24and he would describe himself as being not an observer, but a witness.

04:53Every white person in this country, I do not care what he says or she says, knows one

05:18thing.

05:19They may not know, as they put it, what I want, but they know they would not like to

05:30be black here.

05:48I read The Fire Next Time, which was the first book I read of him, which just transformed

05:53me.

05:54For the first time, I was reading something that had immediately an impact on me, that

06:00was telling me who I am, where I come from, and what is my place in the world.

06:06My place was not just as a black man, that I did not have to accept any definition.

06:28Malcolm was one of the most beautiful, one of the most gentlemen I met in all my life.

06:58They needed us for labor and for sport, now they can't get rid of us.

07:27Now, you yourself are the son of a Baptist minister and you've never agreed with Malcolm

07:53X.

07:54Why are you so upset that he's been killed in this way, apart, of course, from the fact

07:57that he's been murdered?

07:58Partly because I knew him.

07:59Partly because I'm terrified of the repercussions in the streets.

08:00Partly because one wonders who is next.

08:31Partly because I'm terrified of the repercussions in the streets.

08:41Partly because I'm terrified of the repercussions in the streets.

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