Baldwin Connects Race Relations In U.S. to International Affairs

"If the situation in Cuba remains static or becomes more intense, there will be widespread protest among Negroes in this country," essayist-novelist James Baldwin told an overflow audience of 700 at M.I.T. last night. "I can't tell what form it will take, but you will feel it all around you."

Speaking very deliberately--pausing frequently to ask himself "how should I put this?" or to repeat an important point--Baldwin strove to impress his predominantly white audience that "the color problem remains the central problem of the twentieth century." It affects the nation in all areas of life, from foreign policy to personal relationships, he said, and at the same time serves to alienate 22,000,000 Negro citizens from their white countrymen and from a large portion of their government's decisions.

"In a way I am not the victim here," he said. "No matter what the country has done to me, it has done something much worse to itself. By continuing to avoid the reality of the black man, it has lost its grip on reality altogether."

Sinatra and Charles

To make his point more specific, he contrasted the performing styles of Negro and white entertainers, "Look at the difference between Billie Holiday and Doris Day," he suggested, "or if that's a loaded example, between Frank Sinatra and Ray Charles. The thing that Ray is singing out of--a tradition of violence, of anguish, of danger--is something Sinatra doesn't know much about."

Expanding this example to describe the situation in the country he continued: "These two tracks of experience in the same nation can spell disaster, for the Negro knows more about the white man than the white man knows about himself. It often happens that white people come to me just to talk about their problems. What they are really saying is: 'How can I become a person? In some way you've managed to stay outside the system. You're still walking. How did you do it?'"

Why No Violence

In response to a question asking why the Negro intellectual "doesn't do violence to the people that have done him such wrong," Baldwin amplified this point:

"In some very serious way the relationship the Negro has with the rest of this country prevents him from acting against the white. There are white men who are quite literally my cousins, my brothers. To hurt them would be to do psychic damage to myself.

"Besides, every Negro in this country knows that you can handle the white man the way you want, that you can tyrannize him, just so long as you make him think he's God. He needs to feel that he's superior. You can't despise a people so insecure, but only pity them."

It was on these terms that Baldwin criticized the United States relation to Cuba, and with African and Asian nations. "We must learn that it is no longer a matter of missionaries bringing a torch to the natives. We have to learn that this is a matter of life and death for the world as we know it.

Endlessly Betray

"We can endlessly betray these revolutions or we can make a reevaluation of what we think reality is--and realize that a Cuban peasant cannot understand the word democracy as we do, or a native of Nigeria learn European history, as we are taught it."

Then Baldwin discussed his own relationship to this country, and the reasons for his criticisms of it. "If you accept the fact that I refuse to get out of this country--that it is my country as much as anyone else's--then you must realize that I won't live in it as the ward of the white people. I will accept my full responsibility for its future."