Bryan Stevenson: 'You cannot create peace, you cannot create justice, by only doing what is comfortable or convenient', Dayton Literary Peace Prize (nonfiction) - 2015

1 November 2015, Schuster Performing Arts Center, Dayton, Ohio, USA

Thank you. What a special night. Karima, thank for the incredibly beautiful introduction. I'm really overwhelmed to be here, to be in this space with so many extraordinary people, so many extraordinary writers.

My grandmother was the daughter of people who were enslaved. She was born in Bowling Green, Virginia, in the 1880s. Her father was born in slavery in Virginia in the 1840s, and when I was a little boy my grandmother was always in my ear about her experience of growing up enslaved. And my sister's here with me, and our grandmother had a profound impact on us. When I would see my grandmother, as a little boy, she'd come up to me and she'd give me these hugs, and she would squeeze me so tightly I could barely breathe. And then if I saw her an hour later she'd say to me, she'd say, 'Bryan, do you still feel me hugging you?', and if I said no, she'd assault me again, and I quickly learned to tell my grandmother, 'Mamma, I feel you hugging me all the time', and it was just this way that she had about her.

And when we got older, my mother would take my sister and I to Philadelphia, she fled Virginia at the turn of the century because of the lynching, and the trauma, the terror that was ravaging that part of the country, and she'd started her life in Philadelphia, raised my mom there and when I would go and visit her, when we would go and visit her as children, I would always be kind of struck by the city, 'cause we grew up in the country, and as I got older I got more courageous and I would explore different parts of the city and I'd venture farther and farther away from where she lived, and she would keep an eye on me, and every now and then she would warn me about things, and one day I'd been out with some boys I'd met on the street and we'd been kind of gone a long while and she was worried. When I got back, she told me, she said, 'Now you need to watch yourself, because people will judge you by the company you keep. I trust you, but I don't know those other boys, You just need to remember that people will judge you by the company you keep.'

And my greatest regret tonight is that my grandmother is not here, because if she was here, what I'd do is I would point to Gloria Steinem, I would point to Josh (Weil), and I would point to Jeff (Hobbs), and I would point to these amazing writers who have won this award and I would ask my grandmother, 'Mamma, do you still think it's true that people will judge me by the company I keep?'

Because if it is true, then that is prize enough in and of itself, I'm so thrilled, and to become part of this community, to become part of this family of authors and writers and thinkers and believers in the power of literature.

You know I wrote my book because I really think there are four things that we can all do, to create more peace, to create more justice.

I wrote my book because I'm persuaded that we all have to find ways to get proximate to the things that are creating tension, and conflict, and suffering, and inequality.

I believe there is power in proximity, I think when we choose to get closer to the spaces in our community where there's suffering and inequality, when we actually position ourselves in places where there's been abuse of power and we become witnesses, that's the only way we can actually create more peace.

You can't problem solve it from a distance. We get things wrong in politics because we're trying to make up solutions to far away, you hear things when you're up close, you see things when you're up close, there's power in proximity.

I'm the product of someone's choice to get proximate. My sister and I started our education in a 'coloured' school. In a community where black children were not allowed to go to the public schools. Lawyers came into our community and made them open up the public school in compliance with Brown vs. Board of Education. Because of that I got to go to high school, I got to go to college, I got to go to law school. And when I was in law school I got to meet people who were on death row, literally dying for legal assistance and that proximity not only told me that there was work that needed to be done, but it showed me that I had power. Not power rooted in intellect, not power rooted in talent or gift, but power rooted in witness. And when you get proximate, you can become a witness to the tactics, and the strategies and the power of peace. And I believe in proximity, and I think we can all get proximate, we don't have to live in another world, we don't have to be a writer, we can just be proximate in the spaces where there's trouble and discord and unhappiness and suffering.

The second thing that I'm persuaded that we have to do and it's the reason why I wrote this book, is that we have to change the narratives that sustain inequality. Mass incarceration in this country was created by bad policies. We decided to deal with drug dependency as a crime issue rather than a health issue, we let our politicians begin to promote the politics of fear and anger. They've been competing with each other over who can be the toughest on crime. We created mandatory sentences, we did a lot of just damaging things.

But the real threat is the narrative, that idea that we should stay angry, that we should stay afraid, and I will tell you whenever a country, whenever a community makes decisions rooted in fear and anger, you will abuse other people. Fear and anger are the enemies of peace, and we have to fight against fear, we have to fight against this judgement that is rooted in anger and bigotry, and that narrative has to change.

I also think we have to change the narrative in this country about race. We've all been infected by a disease, this disease rooted in a narrative of racial difference. For me, the great evil of so much of what we are dealing with is this narrative and we have to change that narrative, we have to talk about the things we haven't talked about. I love Margaret's book because I believe we have to talk about slavery in America. We never had the conversation we should have had a hundred years ago, fifty years ago, because of it we are still burdened by this legacy that slavery has created. The great evil of American slavery for me was not involuntary servitude, was not forced labour. The great evil of American slavery was the narrative of racial difference, we created. The ideology of white supremacy we created to legitimate slavery. And we never did anything about that.

If you read the 13th Amendment, there's nothing in there about the narrative of racial difference. There's nothing in there about the ideology of racial - of white supremacy. And because of it, I don't believe that slavery ended in 1865. I think it just evolved. It turned into decades of racial hierarchy, and terrorism, and it resulted in lynchings and terrorism. Older people of colour come up to me sometimes and said, 'Mr. Stevenson ...' I get angry. When I hear somebody on TV talking about how we're dealing with terrorism in the first time in our nation's history after 9/11.

We grew up with terror, we to worry about being bombed and lynched every day of our lives. The demographic of geography of this state, of this nation was shaped by terror. The African Americans in Dayton and Cincinnati, and Cleveland, and Chicago, and Detroit, in Boston and New York did not come to these communities as immigrants looking for opportunities, they came to these communities as refugees and exiles from terror, and we haven't told that story.

Even civil rights, I get worried, I hear people talking about the civil rights, and we're so celebratory. And I worry about that, because we haven't dealt with the fact that for decades in this country we humiliated people of colour, we burdened people, we battered people, we excluded people. My parents were humiliated every day of their lives. Every time they had to see that sign that said 'white' and 'colour' there was an injury. We told black people you're not good enough to vote, you're not good enough to go to the schools with us, and we haven't dealt with that.

I think we needed truth and reconciliation at the end of the civil rights movement and we didn't do it. And because of that we are now burdened with the presumption of guilt that follows too many people. it's why that young man was shot and killed in a Walmart. It's why there is such angst and insecurity and we have to change the narrative. We can't get to peace until we understand the narratives of bigotry and exclusion.

But, the third thing for me is hope. I wrote this book because I'm ultimately persuaded that we have to be more hopeful about what we can do. I believe things I haven't seen, I have to. I believe that we've got to find ways to resurrect our hope. I am persuaded that hopelessness is the enemy of peace. It is the enemy of justice. Injustice prevails where hopelessness persists, and if we don't find ways to stay hopeful – the society that is most dangerous is the society made up of people who don't think that things can get better, who don't believe that they have the power to make a difference. That is the recipe for abuse of power.

And I wrote this book because I am persuaded, if we can get people to choose to get proximate, change narratives, and do hopeful things, we can create more peace.

But the final thing, the fourth thing that I wrote this book about is because I believe that if we really want to create more peace, if we really want to create more justice, we can't just get proximate, we can't just change narratives, we can't just be hopeful, we've got to do uncomfortable things, that the fourth thing

You cannot create peace, you cannot create justice, by only doing what is comfortable or convenient. I've read, I've studied, I've looked all over the world to find instances where oppression ended, where inequality ended, and every time I've read and studied, it ended when someone chose to do something uncomfortable. Doing difficult things is hard. I know it. But, I believe it's necessary and what a great community like this can do, when it chooses to do it, is change the world. I think there's a different metric system for those of who really believe in peace, who believe in the power of literature to sustain peace, and it was taught to me by this older man, I'll end with this.

This older man, I was giving a talk in a church some years ago, and this older man came into the church and he was sitting in a wheelchair, staring at me the whole time I was talking, he had this very stern, angry look on his face. And I, and I was worried about him, because he looked at me so intensely, he had me a little unnerved. And I was trying to get through my talk, but he kept staring at me. And I got through the talk and people came up and they were very nice, they were very appropriate, but that man kept staring at me. And when everybody else left, he got a little boy to wheel him up to me in the middle of this church. And this older black man in this wheelchair came up the isle of that church with this stern, almost angry look on his face, and when he got in front of me he put his hand up and he said, 'Do you know what you're doin'?' And I just stood there. And he asked me again, he said, 'Do you know what you're doin'?' And I stepped back and I mumbled something. I don't even remember what I said, and he asked me one last time, he said, 'Do you know what you're doin?', and then he looked at me and he says, 'I'm gonna tell you what you're doin'.' And that older black man looked at me, he said, 'You're beating the drum for justice. You keep beating the drum for justice.' And I was so moved, I was also really relieved, 'cause I just didn't know.

Then he grabbed me by my jacket and he pulled me into his wheelchair, he said, 'C'me here, c'me here, c'me here, I wanna show you something.' And this older man turned his head, he said, 'You see the scar behind my right ear?', he said, 'I got that scar in Green County, Alabama in 1963 trying to register people to vote.' He turned his head, he said, 'You see this cut I have down the bottom of my neck? I got that cut in Philadelphia, Mississippi, 1964, trying to register people to vote.' He turned his head, he said, 'You see this dark spot, see that bruise? I got my bruise in Birmingham, Alabama, 1965, trying to register people to vote.' And then he looked at me, and says, 'I'm gonna tell you something, young man,', he said, 'People look at me, they think I'm some old man, sittin' in a wheelchair, covered in cuts and bruises, and scars', he says, 'but I'm gonna tell you something. These aren't my cuts, these aren't my bruises, these aren't my scars,' he said, 'These are my medals of honour'.

And I will tell you something, that I believe that when we do the things that are necessary, when we get proximate, when we change narratives, when we stay hopeful, when we do uncomfortable things, we'll get nicked a little bit, we'll get cut, but, that's how we create peace. I believe in really simple things. I believe that each person is more than the worst thing they've ever done. I think of someone who tells a lie, they're not just a liar. I think of someone who takes something, they're not just a thief. I think even if you kill somebody, you're not just a killer. And the other things you are, is what a just society must find.

I also am persuaded that the opposite of poverty is not wealth, we talk too much about money in America. I believe that in this country and in communities like this, the opposite of poverty is not wealth. I believe the opposite of poverty is justice.

And finally, I believe that when I come to Dayton, and when I come to Ohio, when I go anywhere in this country, we can't really measure how we're doing, our character, our commitment to justice, our commitment to peace, by looking at how we treat the rich, and the powerful and the privileged.

I think you have to judge a community, it's character, it's commitment to justice, by looking at how it treats the poor, the incarcerated, and the condemned. And tonight, by shining this wonderfully warm, restorative light that you have created here in Dayton with me, tonight by embracing me and the kind of work that I do, you've made me believe that the times I've been nicked, the times I've been cut, the times I've been scarred have not been times that have been wasted, but you've made me believe that through your light, and yes, maybe through your embrace and through your love, those nicks and cuts and scars can be turned into something that is truly honourable.

And for that, I cannot tell you how grateful I am, I cannot tell you how honoured I am, and I cannot tell you I appreciate this moment and this recognition. Thank you all very, very much.

Bryan Stevenson: "We don't want anybody talking about race", Carnegie Medal acceptance - 2015

27 June 2015, American Library Association conference, San Francisco, USA

Thank you. I'm pretty overwhelmed by this...I really want to thank all of you for creating a space where something like this could happen to somebody like me. I'm really, really grateful to the selection committee, to all of you.

I had a very close relationship with my grandmother. My grandmother was the daughter of people who were enslaved. Her parents were born into slavery in Virginia in the 1840s. She was born in the 1880s, and the only thing that my grandmother insisted that I know about her enslaved father is that he learned to read before emancipation, and that reading is a pathway to survival and success. So I learned to read. I put books and words in my head and in my heart, so that I could get to the places that she needed me to go.

I'm thinking about my grandmother tonight, because she had these qualities about her. She was like lots of African American matriarchs. She was the real force in our family. She was the end of every argument. She was also the beginning of a lot of arguments! She was tough, and she was strong but she was also kind and loving. When I was a little boy, she'd give me these hugs, she'd squeeze me so tightly I could barely breathe. And then she'd see me an hour later and she'd say, "Bryan, do you still feel me hugging you?" And if I said no, she would assault me again!

She left Virginia at the turn of the century, like millions of African Americans who were fleeing terrorism and lynching and racial violence, and she moved to Philadelphia. Because I still lived in the country and grew up in the country, she worried about me when I would come and spend time with her, because there were so many people she didn't know. I would go outside and make new friends, and every now and then she'd be really critical about some of the people I was hanging out with. She'd say, "Now Bryan, be careful about the people you hang out with. Be careful of who you spend time with because people will judge you by the company you keep."

Being here, among these amazing writers, extraordinary writers, being here with my childhood idol, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, being here in a room full of librarians who do such great work, I hope my grandmother is watching. I can say to her, "Mama, please, I hope they judge me by the company that I keep."

I think there's a phenomenon that's really changed this country, such that I couldn't help but be compelled to write about it. It's been my life's work. The United States is a very different country today than it was 40 years ago. In 1972, we had 300,000 people in jails and prisons. Today we have 2.3 million. The U.S. now has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. There are six million people on probation and parole. There are 70 million people with criminal arrest records, which means when they apply for a job or try to get a loan, they're going to be disfavored.

The percentage of women going to prison has increased 640% in the last 20 years. 70% of these women are single parents with minor children. When they go to jails and prisons, their kids are scattered. And you are much more likely to go to prison if you're a child of an incarcerated parent.

And we've done some horrific things in poor and minority communities through a misguided war on drugs and our criminal justice policies. Today, the Bureau of Justice reports that 1 in 3 black male babies born in this country is expected to go to jail or prison. That was not true when we were born in the 20th Century. It was not true in the 19th century. It became true in the 21st Century. Children have been condemned to die in prison. There are15 states with no minimum age for trying children as adults. We’ve created a world where there is despair, where people are living on the margins of our society.

I wrote this book because I was persuaded that if people saw what I see, they would insist on something different. And that's what's powerful about books. That's what great about the library. Getting people closer to worlds and situations that they can't otherwise know and understand. I think there's real power in that. And that's what books can do.

I'm a product of the Civil Rights Movement. I grew up in a community where black children couldn't go to the public school system. I started my education in a colored school. And then lawyers came into our community and made them open up the public schools and because of that, I got to go to high school and I got to go to college. There were no high schools for black kids in my county when my dad was a teenager. So proximity means something to me. I want to get people closer to this world, where there is a lot of suffering. Where there's a lot of despair.

The other thing that books do is that they change the narrative. And for me that's what's great about writing, that I have an opportunity to change some of these narratives. I want to change the narrative in this country about mass incarceration as excessive punishment. I'm persuaded that a just society, a healthy society, a good society, can't be judged by how it treats the rich and the powerful and the privileged. I think we have to judge ourselves by how we treat the poor, the incarcerated. And I think literature has the ability to accomplish that narrative shift.

Our system has been corrupted by the politics of fear and anger. We've had politicians competing with each other over who can be toughest on the crime for 40 years and the consequences of that have been absolutely devastating.

I go into communities and talk with 13 and 14 year old kids who tell me that they don't believe that they're going to be free or alive by the time they're 29. And that's not because of something they've seen on TV, but because of what they see that happening every day in their lives and their families and their communities. That despair has to be changed.

We need to change the narrative in this country about race, and poverty. We're a country that has a difficult time dealing with our shame, our mistakes. We don't do shame very well in America, and because of that we allow a lot of horrific things to go unaddressed.

I don't think we actually understand what the legacy of slavery did to this country. The great evil of American slavery for me was not involuntary servitude. It was not forced labor. The great evil of American slavery was the narrative of racial difference we created to justify that institution—the ideology of white supremacy.

We made up these things about people of color, and we use them to legitimate an institution. The Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment did not deal with that narrative. And that's why slavery didn't end in 1865. It just evolved. It turned into decades where we had terrorism, and lynching, and that lynching and terrorism has had a huge impact on this country.

The demographic geography of America was shaped by lynching and terror. You've got African Americans in the Bay Area of Oakland and Los Angeles, and Cleveland, and Chicago, Detroit, Boston, New York, and they did not come to these communities as immigrants looking for new opportunities. They came to these communities as refugees and exiles from terror. If you know anything about the needs of refugees, you know there are issues you have to address if you're going to create opportunity, and hopefulness. And we're not doing that . Because the narrative hasn't evolved.

Even when we talk about Civil Rights—I'll be honest—I'm critical of the way we're dealing with it. We're celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Movement. And we're too celebratory. I think we're too superficial. I hear people talking about the Civil Rights Movement, and it sounds like a three-day carnival. On Day one, Rosa Parks didn't give up her seat on the bus. On Day two, Dr. King led the march on Washington. And on Day three, we just changed all these laws.

If that were true, it would be a great story. But it's not true. The truth is, for decades we have humiliated people of color in this country. For decades we excluded people from voting. We denied people the opportunity to get an education. We belittled them. We burdened them. My parents were humiliated every single day of their lives. Every time they saw "colored" signs. And we have to talk about that. I don't think we'll get where we're trying to go until we change that narrative.

Truth, and reconciliation. If you go to South Africa, you can't go very far without hearing somebody talk about the process of truth and reconciliation. Go to Rwanda, and they will tell you that genocide will not be overcome without truth and reconciliation. Go to Germany, and in Berlin, you can't go 100 meters without seeing the stones that mark the places where Jewish families were abducted and taken to the concentration camps. They want you to reflect solely on the history of the Holocaust.

In this country, we want the opposite. We don't want anybody talking about race. We don't want anybody talking about inequality. We don't want anybody talking about poverty. And that legacy has created a world of mass incarceration and excessive punishment.

Another thing for me, is that the books I've written have made me be hopeful. They've made me believe things that I could not otherwise see. And that's the great gift that I think all of you give people by opening up libraries and spaces where children can dream. I'm absolutely persuaded that you have to believe in things that you can't see. I never met a lawyer until I got to law school. I never imagined I would be an author. But it's happened because there is something fundamentally compelling about believing in things that we know to be decent and true.

I believe in really simple things. I believe that each person is more than the worst thing that they've ever done. I think that for you. I think that for my clients. I think that for everybody. Even the people jailed and in prison. I think if you tell a lie, you're not just a liar. I think if you take something that doesn't belong to you, you're not just a thief. I think even if you kill somebody, you're not just a killer. And the other things you are have to be recognized, and addressed, and discussed.

I also don't believe that the opposite of poverty is wealth. I think we talk too much about money in America. I believe that the opposite of poverty is justice. And until we learn more about what justice requires, we won't actually do the things we need to do.

I'm excited and really gratified to accept this award. I'm humbled to be in this space. I'm actually encouraged that there's a metric system out there for people like me where somebody like me, who does what I do, can be encouraged and affirmed. It's been incredibly moving. I can't tell you what you've done for me tonight.

I'll end with this story. I actually have been thinking a lot about the metric systems we use to reward the things that we care most about. I was nurtured by a community of people who were activists, and who believed in things, even though they didn't have very much. And they taught me that if I stay true to that metric system, good things will happen. At times, I have doubted that. But tonight I feel it.

Someone who taught me this lesson more than anybody else was an older man at a church where I was giving this talk. He was in a wheelchair. And he came to the back of the church, and he was just staring at me while I spoke. I didn't know him. But he was staring at me with this very harsh look on his face. He just kept glaring at me. I couldn't figure out why he was looking at me so sternly.

I got through the talk and when I was finished, people were very nice, very polite. But that man kept staring at me. Finally, after everybody left, he got a little kid to wheel him up to me. And this older man, in his wheelchair, got right in my face and put his hand up and he said, "Do you know what you're doing?"

I didn't know how to respond. He asked me again. "Do you know what you're doing?" I stepped back and started mumbling something. One last time, he said: "Do you know what you're doing?" I just stood there. And then he said, "I'm going to tell you what you're doing. You're beating the drum for justice."

I was so moved. I was also really relieved!

And then he said: "You keep beating the drum for justice." And he grabbed me by the jacket and pulled me into his wheelchair. “I want to show you something," he said.

He turned his head. “You see this scar behind my right ear? I got that scar in Green County, Alabama, in 1963, trying to register people to vote."

He turned his head again. “You see this cut down here at the bottom of my neck? I got that in Philadelphia, Mississippi, 1964, trying to register people to vote."

He turned his head one more time. "You see this dark spot? That's my bruise. I got my bruise in Birmingham, Alabama, 1965, trying to register people to vote."

Then he looked at me and said, "Let me tell you something, young man. People look at me, they think I'm some old man sitting in a wheelchair covered with cuts and bruises and scars. I'm going to tell you something. These aren't my cuts. These aren't my bruises. These aren't my scars. These are my Medals of Honor."

I never, ever, ever imagined that going to Death Row, spending time with the condemned, representing children who had been crushed and broken by suffering and trauma, going into poor communities, day in, day out, that the cuts and scars and bruises that I was getting would turn into a medal of honor. But tonight you've made that real. And I'm very grateful. Thank you

Buy Bryan Stevenson's amazing book here.

Jack Patten: 'Do white Australians realise that there is actual slavery in this fair, progressive Commonwealth?', Opening address to Day of Mourning protest - 1938

26 January 1938, Australian Hall, Sydney, Australia

Jack Patten was the President of the Aborigines Progressive Association.  For this historic protest event, he wore a dark suit and cut the figure or a huge League footballer. But he was a brilliant speaker, one of the best of his era.

On this day the white people are rejoicing, but we, as Aborigines, have no reason to rejoice on Australia’s 150th birthday. Our purpose in meeting today is to bring home to the white people of Australia the frightful conditions in which the native Aborigines of this continent live. This land belonged to our forefathers 150 years ago, but today we are pushed further and further into the background. The Aborigines Progressive Association has been formed to put before the white people the fact that Aborigines throughout Australia are literally being starved to death.

We refuse to be pushed into the background. We have decided to make ourselves heard. White men pretend that the Australian Aboriginal is a low type, who cannot be bettered. Our reply to that is, ‘Give us the chance!’ We do not wish to be left behind in Australia’s march to progress. We ask for full citizen rights including old-age pensions, maternity bonus, relief work when unemployed, and the right to a full Australian education for our children. We do not wish to be herded like cattle and treated as a special class.

As regards the Aborigines Protection Board of NSW, white people in the cities do not realise the terrible conditions of slavery under which our people live in the outback districts. I have unanswerable evidence that women of our race are forced to work in return for rations, without other payment.

Is this not slavery?

Do white Australians realise that there is actual slavery in this fair, progressive Commonwealth?

Yet such is the case. We are looking in vain for white people to help us by charity.

We must do something ourselves to draw public attention to our plight. This is why this Conference is held, to discuss ways and means of arousing the conscience of White Australians, who have us in their power, but have hitherto refused to help us.

Our children on the Government stations are badly fed and poorly educated. The result is that when they go out into life, they feel inferior to white people.

This is not a matter of race, this is a matter of education and opportunity.

This is why we ask for a better education and better opportunity for our people.

We say that it is a disgrace to Australia’s name that our people should be handicapped by undernourishment and poor education, and then blamed for being backward.

We do not trust the present Aborigines Protection Board and that why we ask for its abolition. [applause]

Incompetent teachers are provided on the Government stations. This is the greatest handicap put on us. We have had 150 years of white men looking after us, and the result is, our people are being exterminated.

The reason why this Conference is called today is that the Aborigines themselves may discuss their problems and try to bring before the notice of the public and of parliament what our grievance is, and how it may be remedied.

We ask for ordinary citizen rights, and full equality with white Australians. [moved resolution]

James Baldwin: 'I picked the cotton and I carried it to market and I built the railroads under someone else’s whip', debate v William F Buckley - 1965

1965, Cambridge University, United Kingdom

This debate was between arch conservative William F Buckley, the editor of the National Review, and James Baldwin, an African American playright, essayist and poet. The topic was, 'That the American dream has come at the expnse of the American Negro'. Baldwin gave this famous speech.

Good evening,

I find myself, not for the first time, in the position of a kind of Jeremiah. For example, I don’t disagree with Mr. Burford that the inequality suffered by the American Negro population of the United States has hindered the American dream. Indeed, it has. I quarrell with some other things he has to say. The other, deeper, element of a certain awkwardness I feel has to do with one’s point of view. I have to put it that way – one’s sense, one’s system of reality. It would seem to me the proposition before the House, and I would put it that way, is the American Dream at the expense of the American Negro, or the American Dream *is* at the expense of the American Negro. Is the question hideously loaded, and then one’s response to that question – one’s reaction to that question – has to depend on effect and, in effect, where you find yourself in the world, what your sense of reality is, what your system of reality is. That is, it depends on assumptions which we hold so deeply so as to be scarcely aware of them.

Are white South African or Mississippi sharecropper, or Mississippi sheriff, or a Frenchman driven out of Algeria, all have, at bottom, a system of reality which compels them to, for example, in the case of the French exile from Algeria, to offend French reasons from having ruled Algeria. The Mississippi or Alabama sheriff, who really does believe, when he’s facing a Negro boy or girl, that this woman, this man, this child must be insane to attack the system to which he owes his entire identity. Of course, to such a person, the proposition which we are trying to discuss here tonight does not exist. And on the other hand, I, have to speak as one of the people who’ve been most attacked by what we now must here call the Western or European system of reality. What white people in the world, what we call white supremacy – I hate to say it here – comes from Europe. It’s how it got to America. Beneath then, whatever one’s reaction to this proposition is, has to be the question of whether or not civilizations can be considered, as such, equal, or whether one’s civilization has the right to overtake and subjugate, and, in fact, to destroy another. Now, what happens when that happens. Leaving aside all the physical facts that one can quote. Leaving aside, rape or murder. Leaving aside the bloody catalog of oppression, which we are in one way too familiar with already, what this does to the subjugated, the most private, the most serious thing this does to the subjugated, is to destroy his sense of reality. It destroys, for example, his father’s authority over him. His father can no longer tell him anything, because the past has disappeared, and his father has no power in the world. This means, in the case of an American Negro, born in that glittering republic, and the moment you are born, since you don’t know any better, every stick and stone and every face is white.

And since you have not yet seen a mirror, you suppose that you are, too. It comes as a great shock around the age of 5, or 6, or 7, to discover that the flag to which you have pledged allegiance, along with everybody else, has not pledged allegiance to you. It comes as a great shock to discover that Gary Cooper killing off the Indians, when you were rooting for Gary Cooper, that the Indians were you. It comes as a great shock to discover that the country which is your birthplace and to which you owe your life and your identity, has not, in its whole system of reality, evovled any place for you. The disaffection, the demoralization, and the gap between one person and another only on the basis of the color of their skin, begins there and accelerates – accelerates throughout a whole lifetime – to the present when you realize you’re thirty and are having a terrible time managing to trust your countrymen. By the time you are thirty, you have been through a certain kind of mill. And the most serious effect of the mill you’ve been through is, again, not the catalog of disaster, the policemen, the taxi drivers, the waiters, the landlady, the landlord, the banks, the insurance companies, the millions of details, twenty four hours of every day, which spell out to you that you are a worthless human being. It is not that. It’s by that time that you’ve begun to see it happening, in your daughter or your son, or your niece or your nephew.

You are thirty by now and nothing you have done has helped to escape the trap. But what is worse than that, is that nothing you have done, and as far as you can tell, nothing you can do, will save your son or your daughter from meeting the same disaster and not impossibly coming to the same end. Now, we’re speaking about expense. I suppose there are several ways to address oneself, to some attempt to find what that word means here. Let me put it this way, that from a very literal point of view, the harbors and the ports, and the railroads of the country–the economy, especially of the Southern states–could not conceivably be what it has become, if they had not had, and do not still have, indeed for so long, for many generations, cheap labor. I am stating very seriously, and this is not an overstatement: *I* picked the cotton, *I* carried it to the market, and *I* built the railroads under someone else’s whip for nothing. For nothing.

The Southern oligarchy, which has still today so very much power in Washington, and therefore some power in the world, was created by my labor and my sweat, and the violation of my women and the murder of my children. This, in the land of the free, and the home of the brave.And no one can challenge that statement. It is a matter of historical record.

In another way, this dream, and we’ll get to the dream in a moment, is at the expense of the American Negro. You watched this in the Deep South in great relief. But not only in the Deep South. In the Deep South, you are dealing with a sheriff or a landlord, or a landlady or a girl of the Western Union desk, and she doesn’t know quite who she’s dealing with, by which I mean, that if you’re not a part of the town, and if you are a Nothern Nigger, it shows in millions of ways. So she simply knows that it’s an unknown quantity, and she wants to have nothing to do with it because she won’t talk to you, you have to wait for a while to get your telegram. OK, we all know this. We’ve all been through it and, by the time you get to be a man, it’s very easy to deal with. But what is happening in the poor woman, the poor man’s mind is this: they’ve been raised to believe, and by now they helplessly believe, that no matter how terrible their lives may be, and their lives have been quite terrible, and no matter how far they fall, no matter what disaster overtakes them, they have one enormous knowledge in consolation, which is like a heavenly revelation: at least, they are not Black.

Now, I suggest that of all the terrible things that can happen to a human being, that is one of the worst. I suggest that what has happened to white Southerners is in some ways, after all, much worse than what has happened to Negroes there because Sheriff Clark in Selma, Alabama, cannot be considered – you know, no one can be dismissed as a total monster. I’m sure he loves his wife, his children. I’m sure, you know, he likes to get drunk. You know, after all, one’s got to assume he is visibly a man like me. But he doesn’t know what drives him to use the club, to menace with the gun and to use the cattle prod. Something awful must have happened to a human being to be able to put a cattle prod against a woman’s breasts, for example. What happens to the woman is ghastly. What happens to the man who does it is in some ways much, much worse. This is being done, after all, not a hundred years ago, but in 1965, in a country which is blessed with what we call prosperity, a word we won’t examine too closely; with a certain kind of social coherence, which calls itself a civilized nation, and which espouses the notion of the freedom of the world. And it is perfectly true from the point of view now simply of an American Negro. Any American Negro watching this, no matter where he is, from the vantage point of Harlem, which is another terrible place, has to say to himself, in spite of what the government says – the government says we can’t do anything about it – but if those were white people being murdered in Mississippi work farms, being carried off to jail, if those were white children running up and down the streets, the government would find some way of doing something about it. We have a civil rights bill now where an amendment, the fifteenth amendment, nearly a hundred years ago – I hate to sound again like an Old Testament prophet – but if the amendment was not honored then, I would have any reason to believe in the civil rights bill will be honored now. And after all one’s been there, since before, you know, a lot of other people got there. If one has got to prove one’s title to the land, isn’t four hundred years enough? Four hundred years? At least three wars? The American soil is full of the corpses of my ancestors. Why is my freedom or my citizenship, or my right to live there, how is it conceivably a question now? And I suggest further, and in the same way, the moral life of Alabama sheriffs and poor Alabama ladies – white ladies – their moral lives have been destroyed by the plague called color, that the American sense of reality has been corrupted by it.

At the risk of sounding excessive, what I always felt, when I finally left the country, and found myself abroad, in other places, and watched the Americans abroad – and these are my countrymen – and I do care about them, and even if I didn’t, there is something between us. We have the same shorthand, I know, if I look at a boy or a girl from Tennessee, where they came from in Tennessee and what that means. No Englishman knows that. No Frenchman, no one in the world knows that, except another Black man who comes from the same place. One watches these lonely people denying the only kin they have. We talk about integration in America as though it was some great new conundrum. The problem in America is that we’ve been integrated for a very long time. Put me next to any African and you will see what I mean. My grandmother was not a rapist. What we are not facing is the result of what we’ve done. What one brings the American people to do for all our sakes is simply to accept our history. I was there not only as a slave, but also as a concubine. One knows the power, after all, which can be used against another person if you’ve got absolute power over that person.

It seemed to me when I watched Americans in Europe what they didn’t know about Europeans was what they didn’t know about me. They weren’t trying, for example, to be nasty to the French girl, or rude to the French waiter. They didn’t know they hurt their feelings. They didn’t have any sense this particular woman, this particular man, though they spoke another language and had different manners and ways, was a human being. And they walked over them, the same kind of bland ignorance, condescension, charming and cheerful with which they’ve always pat me on the head and called me Shine and were upset when I was upset. What is relevant about this is that whereas forty years ago when I was born, the question of having to deal with what is unspoken by the subjugated, what is never said to the master, of ever having to deal with this reality was a very remote possibility. It was in no one’s mind. When I was growing up, I was taught in American history books, that Africa had no history, and neither did I. That I was a savage about whom the less said, the better, who had been saved by Europe and brought to America. And, of course, I believed it. I didn’t have much choice. Those were the only books there were. Everyone else seemed to agree.

If you walk out of Harlem, ride out of Harlem, downtown, the world agrees what you see is much bigger, cleaner, whiter, richer, safer than where you are. They collect the garbage. People obviously can pay their life insurance. Their children look happy, safe. You’re not. And you go back home, and it would seem that, of course, that it’s an act of God that this is true! That you belong where white people have put you.

It is only since the Second World War that there’s been a counter-image in the world. And that image did not come about through any legislation or part of any American government, but through the fact that Africa was suddenly on the stage of the world, and Africans had to be dealt with in a way they’d never been dealt with before. This gave an American Negro for the first time a sense of himself beyond the savage or a clown. It has created and will create a great many conundrums. One of the great things that the white world does not know, but I think I do know, is that Black people are just like everybody else. One has used the myth of Negro and the myth of color to pretend and to assume that you were dealing with, essentially, with something exotic, bizarre, and practically, according to human laws, unknown. Alas, it is not true. We’re also mercenaries, dictators, murderers, liars. We are human too.

What is crucial here is that unless we can manage to accept, establish some kind of dialog between those people whom I pretend have paid for the American dream and those other people who have not achieved it, we will be in terrible trouble. I want to say, at the end, the last, is that is that is what concerns me most. We are sitting in this room, and we are all, at least I’d like to think we are, relatively civilized, and we can talk to each other at least on certain levels so that we could walk out of here assuming that the measure of our enlightenment, or at least, our politeness, has some effect on the world. It may not.

I remember, for example, when the ex Attorney General, Mr. Robert Kennedy, said that it was conceivable that in forty years, in America, we might have a Negro president. That sounded like a very emancipated statement, I suppose, to white people. They were not in Harlem when this statement was first heard. And they’re not here, and possibly will never hear the laughter and the bitterness, and the scorn with which this statement was greeted. From the point of view of the man in the Harlem barber shop, Bobby Kennedy only got here yesterday, and he’s already on his way to the presidency. We’ve been here for four hundred years and now he tells us that maybe in forty years, if you’re good, we may let you become president.

What is dangerous here is the turning away from – the turning away  from – anything any white American says. The reason for the political hesitation, in spite of the Johnson landslide is that one has been betrayed by American politicians for so long. And I am a grown man and perhaps I can be reasoned with. I certainly hope I can be. But I don’t know, and neither does Martin Luther King, none of us know how to deal with those other people whom the white world has so long ignored, who don’t believe anything the white world says and don’t entirely believe anything I or Martin is saying. And one can’t blame them. You watch what has happened to them in less than twenty years.

It seems to me that the City of New York, for example – this is my last point – It’s had Negroes in it for a very long time. If the city of New York were able, as it has indeed been able, in the last fifteen years to reconstruct itself, tear down buildings and raise great new ones, downtown and for money, and has done nothing whatever except build housing projects in the ghetto for the Negroes. And of course, Negroes hate it. Presently the property does indeed deteriorate because the children cannot bear it. They want to get out of the ghetto. If the American pretensions were based on more solid, a more honest assessment of life and of themselves, it would not mean for Negroes when someone says “Urban Renewal” that Negroes can simply are going to be thrown out into the streets. This is just what it does mean now. This is not an act of God. We’re dealing with a society made and ruled by men. Had the American Negro had not been present in America, I am convinced the history of the American labor movement would be much more edifying than it is. It is a terrible thing for an entire people to surrender to the notion that one-ninth of its population is beneath them. And until that moment, until the moment comes when we, the Americans, we, the American people, are able to accept the fact, that I have to accept, for example, that my ancestors are both white and Black. That on that continent we are trying to forge a new identity for which we need each other and that I am not a ward of America. I am not an object of missionary charity. I am one of the people who built the country–until this moment there is scarcely any hope for the American dream, because the people who are denied participation in it, by their very presence, will wreck it. And if that happens it is a very grave moment for the West.

Thank you.

Here is the full debate.

There’s a snippet of James Baldwin’s speech to introduce the Stan Grant ‘racism and the Australian Dream’ episode of the podcast. Listen below.