Today we are joined by some esteemed panelist skisll bro abuse tremendous briefly. Jonathan holloway is a professor and teen of yale college the author of a number of volumes, most importantly, jim crow wisdom were also joined by Marcus HunterMarcus Hunter holds appointments in africanamerican studies at yale and professor in sociology joining the attend of ucla this fall right . He is the author of the phenomenal back, black city makers. How the philadelphia anything grow changed urban america. Walter moseley is here. The phenomenal novelist, whose book [applause] whose books are too numerous to mention. So well move along to the wonderful, brilliant delightful, ammann any perry, the author of two major books on racial inequality in the United States and prophets of the hood politics politics and poetics in hiphop and finally but not least, the author of most recently ross unbound and he is unbound in that text. A writer in his books and a staffer at the the new yorker. Our moderator is my generous and brilliant colleague, Kendall Thomas to my right. Den cal is the cofounder a nash professor of law at columbia. Please welcome Kendall Thomas. [applause] thank you rich, and thank you so much for your vision in organizing this year of the harlem book fair on the great James Baldwin. [applause] James Baldwin as you all know, was a son of harlem. And it is so fitting that James Baldwin provide the inspiration for our discussion this afternoon of James Baldwin and american morality. We have with us a stellar collection, i would call them a dream team. I could not have come up with a better staff of panelists to discuss the question of baldwin and american morality than the one you see before you and i hope that youre as excited as i am at the conversation were about to have. My job is a very easy one. I get to ask the questions. Theirs is a hard one because they have to offer, if not answers, responses to questions that are suggested by this extraordinarily powerful topic and by the life work and example of the great James Baldwin himself. So well start with an obvious question. And that is this. Is there an american morality, and if there is an american morality what is the nature of american morality . Perhaps i should start with you claudia. Well, i i certainly think theres an american desire for a morality, an american sense of itself as having a morality, which always seems to be, however, little bit ahead of news getting achieved. Its been tragic, the lack of achievement, considering what we were on paper over a very long period of time, but i wouldnt say theres not an american morality. I think baldwin thought there was, or could be an american morality. I think the title given to this very panel achieving our country, was very important to him. He thought that could be done. Unfortunately it wasnt done in his lifetime died in 1987, at 63 and he was very bitter hat having put in more than 60 year skis his promise unfulfilled. He never gave up, and i think our country as anyone knows from the fire next time for all its warnings and dire pretickses what could help when and if this nation didnt come to terms with its racial problem he did say if we come together to paraphrase it, the more conscious whites and the more conscious blacks and together we can help create consciousness in these others, and if we can do that and he actually uses the term money like loves with welcome do that like loversing are, well end the rate nightmare and you achieve our country and achieve something that never quite existed before. Something that takes more unfortunately more than a lifetime or two lifetimes, burt i think little by little, with a lot of pushback you see more rights being accorded. You see selfinterest challenged and beating back against morality but its present and its hard and its better and its a fight and a constant struggle, but if you dont believe that it can happen think baldwin thought you were lost. You had to believe it could happen if you just not in house lifetime, not to say there isnt rage about what hasnt happened and what did happen to him, but you have to keep pushing. You have to believe its possible or you fall into despair, and for him that was the worst thing. Walter moseley, is there an american morality . I hope not. Sounds awful. Just the question sounds awful. Because if you had one morality lots of people would be in trouble, because we dont all fit in the same cast. You have someone like baldwin. He was one of the few writers of his time who is like equivalent to a jazz musician, meaning to say he is head and shoulders before the rest of the culture of america and so his the way he thought, the way he saw the world his rather been being biracial, he is bicultural, being black and gay. He understood a world, a possibility, of freedom that we could have in which we might think and feel different kinds of things but the idea of having a solitary morality sounds kind of fast fast fascist, and you know like, youre morality depends on where youre coming from. If youre coming from a child who has been through a prisonlike School System and then ends up going to a prison, youre morality is like, i dont snitch and i hit back whoever hilts me because thats it. You might be raised in a middle Class Community in new jersey where that kind of notion is counterproductive. And sexuality alone a lot of times morality is applied to sexuality, and so then you have people like Langston Hughes and James Baldwin and many others who have that part of their life has to be i remember when i was seven, at Victory Baptist Day School in los angeles not the neighborhood youre living in. I remember they had a church, and we all had to go to the church. I didnt want to go. And on every seat there was a the fire next time, and bald win came to address us and it was so wonderful because there was a sense of transcendence. The words and the arguments were good and well but there was a sense of transcendens that we had to gestured and we were in different plays. Imani perry, there is an american morality . So, i think there is in the United States an ongoing and deep and pervasive practice of immorality and amorality, reacting from genocides to enslavement to jim crow to what we have now kind of absolute mass incarceration, all these forms of devastation, and i think that what it occasions the kind of encounter with depth of both immorality and amorality, occasions a kind of interior interrogation if one allows that to take place and that is part of baldwins genius in terms of being able to talk about this sort of large social dynamics and then bring it to the level of the individual interior examination and then see the prospect of transformation there. My second book comes from a talk that the title is from a talk that baldwin gave to teacheres and part of what he says its 1963, and he is saying to teachers, we have to stop with this mythology because by the time a black child is seven years old he has already had so many doors slammed in his face. We need to tell the truth about that social reality in order for that child to create something anew and i guess for me thats a particular i think thats a particular challenge of this moment, given that we are mired in all kinds of injustice around the globe, as a nation and also have a kind of ongoing deep practice of injustice, and i think of the book that resonates most for me in this moment is no name in the street. And in 1972 and baldwin is despairing and the book reads almost friend net include all this death of friends, and he is thinking not just about the United States, thinking about the global color line and that kind of despair is instructive because that is what it takes to even begin to imagine that we might have a more moral set of social arrangement or egg cal or justice. Marcus hunter, how do you come out on this question . Is there an american morality . I would add, due du boises name and i would argue i thought about nobody knows my name in part because i think baldwin would offer there is an american morality and part of how you find it is when you Start Talking about what black people are doing. And that is when you find out there are moral shortcomings apparently. The way that black people organize their lives, always outside of what american morality that exists, and in part i think what he is trying to get at is what i call either strategic or slippery morality. If its moral until youre a witch in salem. Now youre outside of it and eeven makes mention of that in nobody knows my name. People fall outside of morality and they become the new osed, and the people who used to be part of the outside of the morality crowd are now inside and theyre the ones giving out scarlet letters calling people things, how the irish became white they accepted a certain type of white morality and then bought into the idea that black people were less than they were. So part of what he is getting at there is in fact one and unlike previous countries with a longer history, like he estimates with france and england what you have in america is a place that is always changing and part of that is tremendous possibilities for what can happen, often people say america is the last chance at freedom. Right . So theres these great freedom possibilities but at the same time because it is always coming into itself and making adjustments and changing just when you thought black people were free, you have mass incarcerations. Just when you thought that people value black families, all of a sudden theres a welfare queen. So i think mart of what baldwin reminds us of is that much of what he says still rings true tied. Why . Because the cycle of segregation, poverty imprisonment, continue so when you read his words its as if he is talking about american morality right now. So, for me, its both a question and a problem. I see in that question you ask. So, finally, jonathan, is there an american morality . When its fascinating to go after four people answering this question. So thank you for that. When i think of morality i think of issues like original sin, and i think of issues like progress, as we began the conversation. When i think of this country and original sin, the logic of the country we now live in is built in the moment of racial is built in the logic of racial slavery and understanding of liberty and freedom, its something not that. If you Start Building a country with that as a founding logic, or morality, as it was built into the system, and you build institutions and structures that reaffirm that, sure, theres an american morality, but is it moral . That is what i think bald win kept coming back to. No matter which baldwin youre talking about. The baldwin who was trying to make piece with his childhood preacher and his break with his father or going through the baldwin of despair later on and i dont want to focus only on desspay despair but im rivetted by this quote, but its a very angry, disappointed ball win, towards the end of his life. He has been waiting for progress, and he knows all these things in the match nations of an american morality that said blacks arent quite human, dont deserve certain things, and he says to an interviewer, who suggests to baldwin, these things take time. And he spits back this is a paraphrase its taken my uncles time, my aunts time, my grandfathers time, my brother reside brothers fathers, and nieces time. How much time do you warrant this is the killer for your progress . How much too you want for your progress . Like baldwin is waiting for a White American logic that createes this system in the first place, in the colonial america, to catch up to its own promise. I like to say that and baldwins wake we have come to that place. We just know we havent. So a system of belief system a logic that suggests to Many Americans were an exceptional country and we are therefore quite moral but i think i know theres a structure built into this, undergirding it all that sis something quite different. So, we have gotten five fascinating and overlapping but very different responses to the single question. Claudia, you say there is american an american morality. A dream a dream of an american morality which has not yet been achieved. Absolutely. Walter, you can test the very idea that you contest the very idea that an american morality is something we ought even to want because as i hear you, youre committed to an idea of pluralism. Many different american moralities. Perhaps as many different american moralities as there are americans. Immani, you want to reminds of the ways in which in order to even talk about the possibility of an american morality, we have to be mindful of the ways in which that morality has as its close cousins, immorality and amorality, right . And that were talking bat moving about a moving target in one sense. If we look at the actual history and the current realities of life in america the idea of morality in that sense is internally contested. Right . So its not just something that there are many different forms of as walter says but its internally contested. And marcus you offer the very valuable insight that if you want to know whether theres an american morality and what it is you would do well to look at the experience of African Peoples in america in a very important book called pie the miners canary by two legal scholars who say if wow want to take the pulse of Racial Justice in america you would do well to look at the conditions under which black people in this country live. So if you want to know whether theres an american morality, and its state of health marcus is suggesting, you should look at the situation of africanamericans, and this border region that we occupy, even in this age when the white house has been turned black, of being inside and outside at the same time. And jonathan reminds us that the very idea of america is an idea that was baptized in the original sin of slavery. And a moral institution an an immoral economic instewing, institution, which i one of the founding pillars of American National identity, and the history of america as a nation. So the story i hear is a story informed by baldwins vision story of contradiction. Is there an american morality . The answer i think would have to be yes and no. Right . Now, looking at the situation of africanamericans, in 2014 i think its worth asking, if, like baldwin we are committed to progressive change, in the lives of people of african descent in america and thus in the lives of the nation as a whole, right is morality the practice of morality, talking about morality, engaging in collective action that is informed and aspires to achieve or live out a certain moral vision, the way to go . Is that the way to go . To the extent that we have not yet achieved our country whether were talking about political democracy economic democracy, social democracy or cultural democracy what are the uses and limits of morality of moral language in undertaking the project that baldwin describes as such. He once wrote, any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it. The loss of all that gave one an identity the end of safety. So is this project of breaking up the world as we know it in letting go of, and perhaps refashioning entities of leaving the refuge or the harbor of safety, is that in some fundamental way a project that is moral or that can only take place through the use of moral language moral ideas and moral practices . Ill let you jump in. I wont call on you this time. I will. Baldwin is a Success Story because of his realization of the world through language and even when he was like despairing, even when he is unhappy, even when he sees most people cant keep up with him doesnt matter because he is left a legacy, but whenever i hear that quote, i think of the what ive been thinking lately the thing i realized outside of the notion of the impact of capitalism, which has something to do with race but things to do with other things, too is the fact theres no such thing as white people, and for me thats the place that needs to be broken. You realize that white people were invent by colonization. Especially in the United States, where there was a red enemy that had to be destroyed in order to take his or her land and then there was a black slave that would work the land and in the middle were these europeans who had no race in europe. They had cultural identities National Identity us regional identities, but they didnt have language but they cant have a color identity like white people. Like black people, the what doocy and the pignies. There are all kinds of different people but in america they became white. And asking people about black people or of black people or for black people, otherwise to say to white people, once you realize you dont exist as white people, well be fine. Once that you can no longer use that as recourse to say, oh, this is what white people thing. No such thing as white people. To begin with no such thing as white people. You have white paper and held it up and saw a guy who looked like that, you would run. Zombies really exist. And the idea that theres that color is defined cultures or people ordain its crazy. Or dna its crazy. Black people know that and hispanic people know that and all kinds of people know that. White people just dont know it. They get interest off that. They have advancement they can have in the world. That things that they did, like people said we invented electricity. Man, you didnt invent electricity. Tesla invented electricity. Edison lied about it but tesla invented it, the use of it. Its like theres if we recognize and embrace the difference, then we can that would really break up the whole notion of what america is, and that would allow us to move forward in a way that makes more sense. So youre talking about this radical loss. As i hear you say it recognition of and rejection of the idea of white racial identity. Theres no such thing. Its a rejection of it. But its more than a rejection. Its like real that im going to get rid of it. Its not arrest it doesnt exist. No such thing as white people. It doesnt exist. Thats a madeup notion from colonization and people dont want to accept it. No im white. Im white. But your pink youre tan, your olive. You have this kind of nose or these eyes or that hair. You