*
Robert Penn Warren: In what sense, Mr. James Baldwin, do you think the Negro revolution is a revolution?
James Baldwin: Well that’s a tough
one to answer because I’m not always sure that the word “revolution” is
the right word. I myself use it because I don’t know of any other. It’s
not as simple as a revolution of one class against another, for
example. It is not as clear-cut as the Algerian revolution against the
French. It is a very peculiar revolution because, in order to succeed at
all, it has to have as its aim the reestablishment of the Union. And a
great, radical shift in American mores, in the American way of life. Not
only does it apply to the Negro, obviously, but it applies to every
citizen in the country. This is a very tall order and desperately
dangerous, but inevitable in my view because of the nature of the
American Negro’s relationship to the rest of the country, of all these
generations, and the attitudes the country’s had toward him, which
always was, but now has become overtly and concretely, intolerable.
RPW: You say different from a revolution like the Algerian, which means a liquidation of a regime.
JB: That’s right. But it
doesn’t apply here at all. Because this is for Negroes to liberate
themselves and their children from the economic and social sanctions
imposed on them because they were slaves here. Now if Washington DC, had
the energy to break the power of people like Senator James Eastland and
Senator Richard Russell, so the Negroes began to vote in the South, we
would make a large step forward. It seems to me that the South is ruled
still by an oligarchy, which rules for its own benefit, and not only
oppresses Negroes and murders them but imprisons and victimizes the bulk
of the white population.
RPW: You said once in print that the Southern mob does not represent the will of the Southern majority.
JB: I still feel that.
It’s mobs that fill the street. Unless one’s prepared to say that the
South is populated entirely by monsters, which I’m not. Those mobs that
fill the street are a reflection of the terror that everybody feels, at
least on the lowest level. And those mobs that fill the street have been
used by the American economy for generations to keep the Negro in its
place. In fact, they have done the Americans’—North and South, by the
way—dirty work for him. And they’ve always been encouraged to do it. No
one has ever even given him any hint that it was wrong. And of course
they are now completely bewildered. And can only react in one way, which
is through violence. The same way that an Alabama sheriff, facing a
Negro student, knows he’s in danger. Doesn’t know what the danger is and all he can do is beat him over the head or cattleprod him. He doesn’t know what else to do. ... [mehr] https://lithub.com/james-baldwin-i-cant-accept-western-values-because-they-dont-accept-me/
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