Next tuesday, the guest will be william fulbright. The 40th anniversary of the fulbright scholarship program. Future speakers include James Buchanan on january 23 and John Harrington on fairbury 19th. I would like to remind february 19. I would like to remind those of you in the audience that if you have questions for our speaker, please write them down on the part on your table and send them to the front. I will ask as many questions as time permits. I would like to introduce our guest. Please stand when i call your name. Please withhold your applause until i am completed. Bernard shaw of cable news network, Lita Williams of the new york times, adrian farrell, riter for the first foreign affairs, a member who organized the lunch, a member of the french embassy, randy allen from pyramid video, dorothy of the washington post, finley lewis for the Minneapolis Tribune and ernest white of washington living magazine. [applause] host our guest today, James Baldwin, offers a lesson for those of us who are readers and writers. A message of clarity, wisdom, insight and determination. The message needs to be heard. 23 years ago 33 years ago, his first book was published. 23 years ago his essay Brought International claim. The road from their has been one of a continual climb into deeper respect from his peers and reaffirmation of the message and essays in more than a dozen books. There have been times when his message, while on target, has been controversial. He criticized the american establishment for failing to meet with ho chi minh and fidel castro. He argues the myth of White Supremacy is crumbling and teenagers have an absence of a feeling of community. He says while the u. S. Was willing to liberate grenada, it has not done the same for detroit or new york. And he has said that the problems of inner cities, such as drug and alcohol problems of the inner cities went unattended. Mr. Baldwin says there were two harlems. A division between the black people who lived on the hill, and himself. He was born in new york city, august 2, 1924, the first of nine children. The grandson of a slave. He grew up in harlem. After graduation he had many jobs to support himself and his writing. In publication first harpers and commentary. But i do 48, feeling frustrated with the church and the oppression of blacks he moved to , paris. It was a breath of fresh air. He wrote that he felt as though he came out of a dark tunnel and found himself underneath the open sky. He now divides his time between homes in new york city and southern france. Welcomingn me in James Baldwin to the National Press club. [applause] mr. Baldwin thank you very much. Good afternoon. I am very pleased to be here. Im a little surprised when i knew i was going to come here, the white house was not in trouble. [laughter] and now, i am terribly aware of , which is on the hill in trouble, which means that we are. Im curious. Im going to improvise what is on my mind and then you can ask questions. If the white house is in trouble, we are. Another question is how we got there now the question is how we got there. I have some suggestions. Subjective suggestions coming out of my life, but it seems callpart of it is what i sometimes, the view from here. That implies many things. I am speaking as an american citizen, as the grandson of a slave, as a product and member of a certain democracy, an issue of a certain complex history, someone who represents a very complex country which insists on being simpleminded. Simplicity, it has occurred to me more than once in my somewhat stormy life, is taken to be a Great American virtue, along with sincerity. The result of this is if you are simpleminded enough, you can become, i did not want to go that far. [laughter] as long as you are sincere in what you say, you dont have to know what you are talking about. [laughter] these are the american virtues. Two of them, anyway. Of this isresults that immaturity is taken to be a virtue, too. So that someone like the late john wayne, who spent most of his time on screen admonishing indians [applause] had no necessity to grow up. In a movie made during the witchhunt era of American Life when joe mccarthy, a very sincere man, was finding communists everywhere, someone made a movie called my son john. The story of a woman whose son turns out to be a communist defector. She has to cooperate with the fbi to save her sons soul. Very well. But she says at one point to her husband, an American Legion hero , the model of simplicity. And he understands that his son is really a communist. How does he understand this . Because he is such a virtuous american and he is willing to put his son to death for being a communist. I did not make that movie. It represented the climate of the time and something profound in the American Experience or american refusal to accept or endure experience. One thing that has always contributed to the adoration of innocence is adoration of immaturity, so what we get representing us, a postadolescent who was almost 80 years old. [laughter] and we think of this as a virtue. One of the things that has always afflicted the american reality and the American Vision is this aversion to history. History is not something you read about in a book. It is not even the past. It is the present. Because everybody operates, whether or not we know it, out of assumptions that are produced only by our history. The history of our country is not bloodier than other countries, but it is bloody. It is not more criminal than others, but it is criminal. It is not worse than the history of france, england, or any country we can name, but it is different. For several reasons. If you weeks ago, i was i had the tv set on. It aimlesslycking for a while and then did it deliberately. I was watching a series of images, all of them bloody. Guns, all kinds of weapons, corpses, cowboys and indians, good guys and bad guys, and for seemed to me that this compulsive set of images, i was watching a person who was very ill and trapped in these images, could not be released from them. These images come out of the history which we always deny. It is important to recognize that we did steal the land from the people who were here before us. We stole it. A treaty with those known as american indian. We are not talking about the past. We are talking about the present. We did enslave millions of people for no other reason except they were black and we did make a lot of money out of slave labor. This is not uncommon. It is a part of human history. But it is one thing to do something, and another thing to deny it. The doctrine of manifest destiny reassured all White Americans that as white people in regard to civilization, they have the right and the duty to exterminate whatever stood in the way of the superior civilization. And as for sambo, though it can slavery is a strange road to take in order to civilize someone, but that was the argument, so that we can see, examine the legends, the discovery in africa, the noble savage. , i amthe Middle Passage [indiscernible] singing and dancing, the noble savage will translate into the happy darkie. No one knows how this happened. We are living with these myths until the day and it corrupts the view from here. In the effort to deny whence we came, we have had to make up a series of myths about it. And myths cannot replace reality. The reason that native americans are called indians is because of a monumental error on the part byan adventurer sent out Queen Isabella of spain to find the passage to india. Chris got lost. [laughter] and when he woke up and saw these people surrounding him, since he had to tell Queen Isabella something, he said, these are indians. And he took one back to spain. In a similar way, once i became the happy darkie, because if i darkie, i wasppy a slave. So if i was not happy, something was wrong with slavery. So i had to be happy to keep the master happy. Out of this profound misapprehension has come a system of reality, a system of ideas, a system of thought, which makes reality very hard to reach. When the slave was discovered and put in chains, obviously he was debased, along with women and children, but he was not the only creature who was debased at that moment. The man, the people who put him in chains had also become less than human and debased themselves. With a further disadvantage. Whereas the slave must know the master, because the master, the slaves life is in the masters hand. The master cannot the slave, but the slave can fool the master because the master wants to be fooled. My father never dreamed of telling a white person the truth about anything. It never entered his mind to do so. He did not care what they thought or if they lived or died. He loathed them. My turn came. I can see what had happened. The reason it is important now is that out of this endeavor, what we call the White American has created what he wants to see. The reason that is important and terrifying is because when the same white man looks around the world, he sees only the nigger he wants to see. And that is mortally dangerous for the future of this country. For our present fortunes. The world is full of all kinds of people who live quite beyond the confines of the american imagination and who had nothing to do with the guilt ridden vision of the world which controls so much of our life and our thinking and paralyzes very nearly our moral sense. We are living in a world in which every body and everything is interdependent. It is not white, this world. It is not black, either. The future of the world depends on everyone in this room, and that future depends on to what extent and by what means we liberate ourselves from a vocabulary, which now cannot bear the weight of reality. Thank you. [applause] host mr. Baldwin, these questions come from the audience. I will ask as many as i can. There is a variety. There is a movement of brilliant young women writers like Toni Morrison and others. Can you please comment on the influences, including yourself, that have produced this movement. Mr. Baldwin that is by no means an easy question, is it . Those ladies are friends of mine. I am a little frightened because i may leave somebody out. I know them all. I am not sure i can answer your question. I think, first of all, that the arrival of toni and maya and alice walker was in a way inevitable. It had to come about because of the role that black women have played in this country and in the lives of black men. And it has always been a very troubled and even dangerous role. Because of the position of the black man in this republic which makes the situation of black women who have to respect your fathers and find a way to protect their sons and lovers without emasculating them, it is time she be able to tell something of that story. I welcome it as the ventilation of a family quarrel. What they have to say is somewhat terrifying, but true. And as with influences, i do not know where to begin. I would have to go back to web dubois. The influences of black people to clarify the role of black people because most white historians, like most white commentators, until today are so busy justifying, they can only lie about it. So toni and maya are excavating us all from a very dangerous myth. Host do you feel the problems of Southern Africa are probably framed properly framed by our media or should the issues be examined more closely in their own african content . African context . Mr. Baldwin i think the American Vision of africa is compulsively defensive. South africa implicates everyone in this room. It brings into question, or it reveals, the real meaning of the civil mission, because that is how africa was civilized. It is the process, no matter how one might want to pretty it up or what hollywood has told us, the african context cannot exist in the american imagination. In one of the reasons for that is that it brings into focus the uneasy american imagination, the real role of black people in this country in that american imagination. The truth being that white people have never accepted the real meaning of it and are not able to imagine, even though it that this as this has, never had been, or never will be a white country. We have been here together too long. The vocabulary which we are avoiding has to deal with that before dealing with anything as vivid, dangerous, or overwhelming as the south african situation. Host a related question. Do you think that this administration, the reagan administration, has a different attitude toward the black population in south africa and is concerned about the nationalists in nicaragua . And if so, is this racial . [laughter] mr. Baldwin well, lets be blunt. I dont think the administration is concerned with nicaragua. It is concerned with its interest. What strikes me is that both nicaragua and south africa are expected to remain the pawns of the socalled free world forever. Of course we are against the freedom of south africa, because that means communism, or so they say. Same with nicaragua. I do not have the slightest notion in either case. And it is racial. [laughter] host have you seen the movie, shes gotta have it . If not, i will tell you about it after the luncheon. They are not interested in my opinion. They want to know what you think about the movie. Mr. Baldwin i have not seen it. [laughter] host we will go to another question. A number of black male writers who have criticized the portrayal of black men as abusers, rapists, and addicts, a portrait often drawn by black women, do you feel the image of black men is being falsely portrayed . Mr. Baldwin i think it has always been false. You cannot blame it on black women. Controversial of these books and movies, well, i thought the movie was awful and i thought to give me that black man, then you have to tell me more about him. Black men can do all of those things. But then there has to be something wrong with them. You have to let me know something more than the catalog of this mans brutality. If he were white, then he would be, he would be portrayed as sick and you would hope he gets well. It is an image of black people that is not entirely alice walkers fault. It is the way the public sees black men since they have heard of black men. It has had a terrible effect on black women. And in that context, the motive is to be liberated from these images by exercising then amen. Freedom is very difficult to to achieve and in the process is awkward. Sometimes you have to hold it up to the light and see where it comes from and if you can live with it. And if you can live with it, you live with it. Host this is a followup. Could you please go into detail about the comportment of todays american black male . Mr. Baldwin what should be the role . I Say Something a little difficult. What should be the role of the comportment a difficulty about being a black man in this country has always been the difficulty of being a white man because it is assumed and no one has questioned it i think that the black man wants to be a white man. White men, as i have observed, im not sure they want to be white. It has got to be exhausting. [laughter] aimlessly flexing your muscles and conquering the world and smiling. [laughter] it wears white people out. In the presence of white people, you are watching an imitation and you realize you cannot imitate an imitation. Therefore, the black man in todayss America America has to be what the public feared it was, he is a man, and a man cannot be told what to do or defined by others. And theres nothing new about that. What the question really means is how should we alter the american model so both the black man and the white man can be free. That is what the question means. Host i apologize to the person who wrote this because i am having trouble reading it. I will get through it as well as i can. You talk about facing reality at least by White America. Dont you think its time for black america to realize that a great deal of its problems are trying to blame them on the past and White America . Isnt it time for blacks to face up to other realities . I think that is the general drift of the question. Mr. Baldwin i have heard that before. I do not think that black people in general can be accused of blaming their situation on the past or blaming it on anybody. The situation is much too vivid, much too terrible for that kind of selfindulgence, but history is not the past, the situation of black people in this country is abominable because the country is racist and every institution is racist and the last thing the public wants is an autonomous black community. Anywhere. Everybody knows for example that if you build a school in a ghetto, you build a disaster factory. The answer is not to go to another neighborhood, the answer to that is to rebuild the city so that human beings can live in the city, instead of building for money to make a few people rich. If you want to deal with it, you have to go there. In the meantime, limiting the black community for being upset about the community, community has always been part of the republic. When we tried before some time ago, the School Strike in harlem where blacks and Puerto Ricans came into the school declaring themselves responsible for the education of their children and a successful strike. I was there. It was broken by the city because they did not want the billions of dollars, which is the education system, they didnt want the money controlled by blacks and Puerto Ricans. That is what we were up against. There is no point in blaming black people for it. [applause] host why did you choose france as one of your residences . Do you consider yourself an exile or expatriate . How would you compare the french attitude toward blacks with that of america . Is there as much racism in france as here in the states . Mr. Baldwin i went to france in 1948 when i was quite young. I went there with 40, no french, a oneway ticket. Or in other words, i was getting out of here. I did not so much go to paris as leave new york. I left new york because one day, if i was called nigger one more time, someone was going to die. And i did not care which one of the which one of us it was. So i knew i had to split. I grew up in paris and i came back. I