Baldwin v. Buckley, a lasting debate
Fifty-one years ago, two towering figures met at Cambridge University to debate for the heart of the United States. The question was simple, but substantial: Is the American Dream at the expense of the American Negro? James Baldwin and William Buckley, both acclaimed authors and public intellectuals, argued with true opposition. For Baldwin, a Black man and prominent civil rights activist, this notion was the elephant in the room of his home country. His very existence, he would argue, was an elephant. For William Buckley, the preeminent voice of American conservatism, it was an assault on principles and values that he held dear. The American Dream, in his mind, was created and is sustained by diligence and drive, not exploitation.
Watching the recording of the debate is striking in its own right. It is hosted in a small room, and brimming with white faces. There are only two Black people: Baldwin himself, and actor Sidney Poitier, a friend. When he stands to speak, it is truly a sight to see; a Black man standing surrounded on all sides by those he is condemning in his argument. Baldwin and Buckley are quite physically distinct as well. The latter a larger man, and speaking with his idiosyncratic drawl; the former smaller in stature, with a higher pitched voice that is no less unique. The nature of the question makes Baldwin’s very presence and physical difference nearly symbolic. A clash not just between individuals, but whole cultures. This serves only to reinforce the odds that are so clearly against Baldwin. Yet during his speech, every blue eye is fixed on him. The entire room becomes arrested by his inimitable eloquence and ability to articulate the Black-American experience. The only thing more astounding is his crushing victory in the end, 540-160.
What is more remarkable than the material side of the debate, is the ideological. Baldwin won by such a landslide, I think, because the deeply personal, internal aspects of racism and white supremacy that he explains are fundamental to human beings, and therefore maintain their resonance. Baldwin argues that the physical expense, American economic advancement and infrastructure creation that slavery and its horrors catalyzed, is easily observed. The “bloody catalog of oppression,” the physically destructive, as hideous as it is, and as costly as it has been to the victims, is not the most harmful or costly thing that happens to the oppressed. The costliest thing is the destruction of one’s reality. The collapse of the inner world. In terms of the Black-American, it is growing up in America, subject to what he calls the American system of reality, like everyone else that lives there, and discovering that this system has no place for you. It is not, to quote, “the catalog of disaster. The policemen, the taxi drivers, the waiters, the landlady, the landlord, the banks, the insurance companies, the millions of details 24 hours of every day that spell out to you that you are a worthless human being.” It is contending with this irreverence throughout your lifetime until you cannot trust, in essence, your own country. And it is seeing your children subject to that same catalog, and developing that same distrust. One can only imagine what happens to human beings, whom over 400 years, every generation, has to tell their young children that because skin color, something as innate and uncontrollable as the color of their eyes or the size of their feet, is stacked against them at virtually all levels of society. That something much larger than them, large enough that they won’t understand at such an age, exists to see them fall, and it manifests in their everyday lives as white people. Fellow Americans. This is the true expense, and it is not as if they don’t have evidence for this claim, history is incontestable.
Baldwin continues by asserting that the American system of reality is corrupted by color. That racism has called the humanity of white people into question. After all, how can someone justify such atrocities being perpetrated against human beings? The humanity of the subject must be denied, and American slavery provided a perfect backdrop for such an act. Black people were property, beneath white people, beneath human. Therefore, cruelty against them was justified. If their humanity was recognized, then the white consciousness would have to reconcile their Christianity-influenced morality with the reality that they were inflicting unimaginable pain on human beings, the very children of God.
This is exceedingly relevant in modern times. How can Jim Crow be justified? The Tuskeegee experiment? Police brutality and other extrajudicial killings? A failing (or, depending on your perspective, perfectly functional) criminal justice system? The poisoning of water in Flint, Michigan? The perpetual hardships heaved upon Black people make it difficult to discount Baldwin’s words. Especially when faced with new research that shows white people feel less empathy towards black people, or believe they feel less pain.
Buckley’s argument has withstood the test of time as well, in another way. His conservative view lasts until today among the Republican party. He argues, as today’s conservatives do, that white people are more well off than Black people because Blacks lack the assiduity to succeed. Arguing that the disintegration of the Black family and, in fact, Black culture, is to blame. This is the exact same rhetoric we hear from Fox News. I couldn’t help but laugh. Buckley goes on to say that white people are good people, and have created ample opportunities for Blacks to access the American dream, they just have to take it! He cites a statistic indicating that over 60 years, from 1900-1960, an increase of only 400 Black doctors was recorded; there were medical schools who did not practice racial discrimination (which is blatantly untrue, if not a lie), why are Black people not achieving? He says it is pathological.
Buckley’s contemporaries, in a similar vein, ask Black people to deny our surfeit of existential and historical evidence of discrimination and contempt and take, on faith, that there is equal treatment and opportunity. This is dangerous, and risks our own lives and the lives of our loved ones. Not considering color is, in effect, the core of white privilege. There is an entire subset of the population that does not experience the solace in the fact that no matter what maladies are set upon you, it is never because of what color you are.
In 2016, Baldwin’s designation as a prophetic voice rings true as loud as ever. Across this country, human beings, white and Black, can become richer and more whole by holding an ear to Baldwin’s understanding of the Black experience, and what insight it holds about human nature. As he fades from schools, an indispensable voice goes more and more unheard. Social justice movements are in doomed without acknowledgement of the gears and guts of every human being, and Baldwin’s argument does just that.
