WordUp - kalamu’s words

James Baldwin, like an Old Testament prophet whose insistent voice refuses to fall silent, has been one of this country’s most persistent witnesses. He is a witness in that he testifies to everything he thinks and feels as we move through the minefields of love/hate, Black/white, rich/poor relationships in twentieth century America.

His complex prose style has often been favorably compared to the King James Version of the Bible (primarily the fire and brimstone old testament). Although books such as The Fire Next Time have earned Baldwin a reputation for being a harsh critic, James Baldwin is actually most concerned with the problems and possibilities of finding and holding love.

While he has not found it easy to live and work in this country, Baldwin continues to prolifically produce novels and essays. Most often he writes from a small town in France, but on occasions he has sent work to us from Turkey. The important thing is that he is not running away but rather searching out a rock, a desk, a stone tablet from which he can find the needed moments of silence and rest out of which will come rushing full force another letter, or a new nerve- jangling essay, or perhaps a huge and rich novel (such as his latest Just Above My Head which some critics think is his best since his first novel Go Tell It On The Mountain).

Having crossed the half-century mark, he is no longer an angry young man: he is an elder. He is a seer who has seen much. There is much we can learn from the visions he has, visions which have been tempered by a long time coming.

James Baldwin, a witness, a writer, a Black survivor: listen, he speaks and it is life-song he is singing.

Now that you are back in this country, do you plan to stay?

BALDWIN: I’ll be here for a while. I’m sort of a commuter.

Why do you choose to commute?

BALDWIN: I’m not sure I chose it. I went to Paris a long time ago, didn’t stay away as long as people thought I had. I came back home in 1967 and was based here until 1969. Since then I have been more or less commuting because it’s very hard for me to write here.

What makes it difficult to write?

BALDWIN: Well, there are so many other demands which have to be met. There is no way to sit in an ivory tower.

During the sixties there were a number of people who attempted to say what the role of the writer was? I remember a quote of yours which said that the “role of the writer is to write.” Do you still think that quote encapsulates what should be the role of the writer?

BALDWIN: The role of the writer is to write, but this is a cryptic statement. What I’ meant is that a writer doesn’t dance. His function is very particular and so is his responsibility. After all, to write, if taken seriously, is to be subversive. To disturb the peace.

Why do you say that?

BALDWIN:  What it is must be examined.  Reality is very strange.  It’s not as simple as people think it is.  People are not as simple as they would like to think they are.  Societies are exceedingly complex and are changing all of the time, and so are we changing all of the time.  Since to write implies an investigation of all these things, the only way that I can assume it up is to say that the role of the writer is to write.

In essence then, the role of the writer is to point out how things got the way they are and how…

BALDWIN: … how they can continue and change. 

You're teaching at Bowling Green College now. Have you taught school before?

BALDWIN: No. "I'm doing a writer's seminar which is a catch-all term that means whatever you make of it.

For a very long time until Martin died. I was operating as a public speaker in the context of the civil rights Movement. And when Martin died, something happened to me and something happened to many people. It took a while for me and for many people to pull ourselves back together. Then I had to find another way to discharge what I considered to be my responsibility. I've been working on college campuses and in prisons, which is why I don't bring my typewriter across the ocean.

The responsibility the other side of the ocean is to be a writer in the sense of a craftsperson who puts words on the page. The responsibility on this side is what?

BALDWIN: On this side my responsibility is, well. It’s very difficult to answer that because It Involves being available, it involves being visible. It Involves being vulnerable, it involves my concept of my responsibility to people coming after me and to people who came before me …

To, in a sense, tell their story, so that others can understand from whence they came.

BALDWIN: Yes. I consider myself to be a witness.

On one side of the ocean, you can write about what you have witnessed, and on this side of the ocean, you bear witness to that which you would write about.

BALDWIN: That puts if about as well as it can be put.

Looking at our current situation, in your opinion, what are some of the key themes that need to be expressed?

BALDWIN: That is so vast.

I understand that it is vast, but, for example, alter fifty-four and going into the sixties, it was critical that people understand the necessity of the civil rights struggle. Do you think there is anything that has a similar Gutting edge for us today?

BALDWIN: I think that what you've called the civil rights movement, although it is an acceptable 'term, . Well, it might clarify matters if one thought of it as, in fact, a slave insurrection. When one thinks of it in that way, in the first place, one is prevented from descending into despair, On one level the civil rights movement was betrayed, but on a much  more important level, we all learned something tremendous out of that effort and out Of me betrayal something important about ourselves.

What are some of the things we learned about ourselves?

BALDWIN: That the people who call themselves "white," I must put it that way, well, as Malcolm X said, "white is a state of mind." The implications of that statement are enormous because It finally means that the people who call themselves white have really invented something, which is not true. The key to this is European power which is a very complex thing and which Involves the history of the church. White people invented Black people to protect themselves against something which frightened them.

Which was?

BALDWIN: I don't Know. Life.  I guess. All the legends about Black people are very revealing. They are all created by white people:  "Aunt Jemima," "Uncle Tom," "Topsy," the Black stud, the nigger whore.  Those descriptions, which are labeled legends, do not describe Black people at all.

They describe the creator.

BALDWIN: That's right. Whatever you  describe to another person is also a revelation of who you are and who you think you are. You can not describe anything without betraying your point of view, your aspirations, your fears, your hopes. Everything.

As you pointed out earlier, if white is a state of mind, then there are many of us who have a Black legacy but who also can be very much white.

BALDWIN: Yes, you could not tell a Black man by the color of his skin.

Let's talk about that betrayal of civil rights. In your opinion, who did the betraying and how was it done?

BALDWIN: It was inevitable from the moment it started. From the moment it started. we came up against tremendous political and economic machinery which was not going to dismantle itself. The attempt was made by some very well meaning people. I'm not putting down or condemning Black people, but finally, these estates could find no way to accommodate this discontent and no way to respond to it. All of the civil rights acts passed during that time, including the Supreme court decision outlawing segregation In school, were all gestures attempting to ameliorate something which could not be ameliorated without a profound change in the state and that profound change in the state Involves an absolutely unthinkable revision of the American identity.

Drawing them out then, there are some of us who believe that the present state of the entertainment, arts is in fact a true reflection of what those who think they are white would like to believe about those whose faces Black?

BALDWIN: Precisely. That is why there are only minstrel shows on Broadway now. And white people flock to them in droves to be reassured of their legends, to be reassured of their state, their Identities. That's the brutal truth and the bottom line.

So, how do you assess the seventies? The civil rights period and the sixties brought our struggle to a point of sharpness, so much so, that it was unthinkable to believe that we didn’t have to struggle.

BALDWIN: But of course. Out of that something was clarified for us and, even more importantly, for our children.

Which was what?

BALDWIN: That one was no longer at the mercy of white imagination - I was born fifty-five years ago. In a sense, I was born in the nightmare of the white man’s mind.  A lot my growing up and all my early youth was first that discovery and then the bloody struggle to get out of that mind, to destroy that frame of reference for myself and for those coming after me.  I'm the oldest of nine children; this is very important. I know that my great-nieces and great-nephews are living in a different world than the world In which I was born. They can not imagine the world which produced me, but I've seen the world for which they are going to be responsible.

So, although they can't imagine the world that produced you, you understand the world which produced them and understand still the state which remains to be dealt with?

BALDWIN: Precisely. And I trust them to do it. We have so far. There's no reason to despair now.

When you say we have so far, how does that correlate with your assessment that the civil rights struggle was betrayed?

BALDWIN: The civil rights struggle was betrayed and the people who betrayed it are responsible for that betrayal. We are not.

If I understand you correctly, you ·are suggesting that although there was a betrayal of the civil rights struggle, there was also a profound impact whose shock waves are still being felt. In fact, although the state may have not toppled at the first blow, it is still tottering and the winds are still blowing.

BALDWIN: Oh, yes. In fact, the winds are getting stronger because it is not only this particular state, it is the whole western world.

You are obviously hopeful about the eighties.

BALDWIN: Yes, but that doesn't mean it's going to be easy. But I'm far from being in despair. We cannot afford despair. We have too many children. Despair is a luxury only white men can afford.

You mentioned the church. In your new novel you suggest that the church has proven not to have been the redemptive force.

BALDWIN: This is something very complex. It depends.   When I said the church, I was thinking about the overall, two thousand year history of the Christian church, one of the results of which was the enslavement of Black people. On the other hand, what happened here in America to Black people who were given the church and nothing else, who were given the Bible and the cross under the shadow of the loaded gun, and who did something with it absolutely unprecedented which astounds Black people to this day. Finally, everything in Black history comes out of the church.

Given that the church, In the classical sense of church, was both an offer we could not refuse and also has not fulfilled Its role as a redemptive force for our people, but at the same time, at the juncture where our people took the church, it did serve as a bridge cross troubled water …

BALDWIN: Yes it did. The essential religion of Black people comes out of something which is not Europe.  When Black people talk about truereligion, they're "speaking in tongues" practically. It would not be understood in Rome.

If you believe that the church is the foundation for our people...

BALDWIN: It was how we forged our identity.

What do you see for the generations who are here and who are to come, who have no sense of church?

BALDWIN: This is an enormous question. In the first place, I'm not absolutely certain that they have no sense of church, although I hear you very well. I know what you mean when you say that. I don't know if one can divest one's self of one's inheritance so easily. I would go so far as to say it's not possible. Things are changing all of the time. The form changes but the substance remains.

What do you think about the current group of students?

BALDWIN: People are very critical and very despairing of the young. But I can only say that in my own experience, and admittedly it's limited, and even admitting I'm in somewhat of a special situation, I must say that my experience in all these years on campus has given me a great deal of hope. Kids ask real questions, I begin to suspect that, in fact, the elders who are so despairing of the young are actually despairing of themselves. Kids ask real questions. very hard questions. Those questions imply a judgment of the man of whom you're asking the Question. All you can do is be as open as possible and as truthful as possible and don't ever try to lie to the kids.

You know in the early sixties, if someone had come along and judged the then current crop of students in the Black colleges, they might have felt the same way some people feel about students today.

BALDWIN: Of course, and I must repeat myself, that's a luxury one can't afford. I've dealt with junkies, lost girls, ex-prisoners, people ruined by bitterness before they were eighteen years old, ok. But that’s not all there is to that.

What would you note about prison experiences?

BALDWIN: The candor of the prisoners, their knowledge, and I'm not being romantic about prisoners. People get lost. But, I've encountered very few prisoners, and of course this is not a Gallup poll, but I've encountered very few people who did not really understand their situation.

The college situation sets up the type of environment that leads to questioning and the prison situation sets up the type of environment that leads automatically to reflection, whether or not you want that.

BALDWIN: Yeah. you could put it that way.  The college situation is exceedingly difficult. The Black kid in college, no matter how we cut It, risks paranoia, risks schizophrenia because there is no way for this society to prepare them for the same future that the white boy is prepared for.

The real meaning of the word progress in the American vocabulary for the most, and there are exceptions to the rule, but for the most part when they say progress they're talking about how quickly a Black kid can become white. That's what they mean by progress. Well I don’t want my nephew to grow up to be like Ronald Reagan, or Richard Nixon, or Jimmy Carter.

Let’s discuss the relationship, the understanding, the reality of sex and sexual relations in our people’s lives.  On one level our relationships have been vulgarized …

BALDWIN: In the lives of Black people-everyone overlooks this and it's a very simple fact-love has been so terribly menaced. It's dangerous to be in love, I suppose, anytime. anywhere. But it's absolutely dangerous to be in love if you’re a slave because nothing belongs to you, not your woman, not your child, not your man. The fact that we have held on to each other in the teeth of such a monstrous obscenity, if we could do that, well I'm not worried about the future.

So you would think that the so-called sexual revolution that going on…

BALDWIN: What do you mean "sexual revolution?"

What I'm basically asking is for a commentary on the current situation.

BALDWIN: All I can tell you is that, as regards for example gay liberation. I'm very glad that it seems to be easier for a boy to admit that he's in love with a boy, or for a girl to admit that she's in love with a girl, instead of, as happened in my generation, you had kids going on the needle because, they were afraid that they might want to go to bed with someone of the same sex. That's part at the sexual paranoia of the United States and really of the western world.

Homophobia.

BALDWIN: A kind of homophobia, but it’s …

Actually it’s life-phobia.

BALDWIN: Yeah, that's what it is.  

Afraid of someone who is living.

BALDWIN: Everybody’s journey is individual. You don't know with whom you're going to fall in love. No one has a right to make your Choice for you, or to penalize you for being in love. In a sense, I think they've put themselves in prison.

That’s what you meant in your story about the sheriff who could not love his wife ("Going To Meet the Man")?

BALDWIN: That’s right. He was going to meet the man!

Yeah, he was going to meet the man, and every time they meet men or women they try to kill them.

BALDWIN: Exactly.

There is a technological revolution happening.  Do you think there is a future for writing within this revolution?

BALDWIN: The technological revolution, or rather the technological situation, I am not as worried about it as some other people are. First of all, it depends entirely on the continued validity and power of the western world. I don't think it is in our power to eliminate human beings. And although it may seem at this moment that the television has rendered everyone illiterate and blind, the world cannot afford it. When' you talk about writing today, you're talking about the European concept of writing, you're talking about the European concept of art. That concept, I assure you, has had Its day. There will be things written, in the future, coming out of a different past, and creating another reality. We are the future ....

Thank you very much James Baldwin the witness and James Baldwin the writer.  We encourage both of you to continue.

BALDWIN: Thank you very much and keep the faith.

First published in THE BLACK COLLEGIAN Dec./Jan. 1979