tl:dr folks, scroll down to the large bold text below.
Baldwin’s Nigger is a 1969 documentary by Trinidadian-born British filmmaker Horace Ové, who was one of the leading Black British independent filmmakers to emerge in the UK post-war. In it, James Baldwin, the iconic Black writer, civil rights activist, and professional reader of white foolishness and hypocrisy, joined the equally iconic comedian, author, and civil rights activist Dick Gregory at the West Indian Students’ Centre in London, to discuss the American Civil Rights Movement, what it means to be Black in America, and how that compares to Black British experience. The audience consisted of mostly West Indian students.
FULL VIDEO
In it, Baldwin articulates the deliberate distance created between Blacks across the diaspora, and how the erasure of identity, culture, self-worth, hope, and solidarity, as the result of chattel slavery and Western imperialism, devastated the mindset, as well as the everyday life, of the Black American. He exposes the generational curses passed down upon our people, while calling out the Western powers who continue to stranglehold the will of an already oppressed people. He also points out that Black people are responsible and accountable of gaining control over their own destiny, despite of all this. He and Dick Gregory hold no bars when talking about the devastating global impact of Western powers, why he refers to himself as Negro and not Black, where he sees Black people in 50 years, whether Black Power or integration is better, the suspicion of white liberals, the role of Christianity, and how not all skinfolks are kinfolks.
This brutally honest exposition rings true, even 50 years later, which should scare all of us because that means not much has changed. The momentum died with our leaders. Our anger faded through complacency by the bones thrown our way, masked as victories.
Listen to his words. Listen to his intent. Listen to how he carefully uses his words to make sure his points are crystal clear, which is the true magic of James Baldwin. Though we have come far, we have a long way to go. The “free” Black American experience is still in its infancy. Never forget that. Never forget that we have to do for ourselves. Freedom is not given. It is taken. Let’s get uncomfortable.
I realize that we live in a culture where short attention spans go unchecked so I will save my $.02 on how wack that shit is when it comes to knowledge of self. Knowing that, and if you have even made it this far, I have provided a cheat sheet of quotes from the documentary that truly hit home for me. Enjoy!
Baldwin on the power and threat Black solidarity to the White Western World (1:50 mark)
“…my entry into America is a bill of sale. And that stops you from going any further. At some point in our history I became “Baldwin’s Nigger”. That’s how I got my name…Because when I became “Baldwin’s Nigger”, I was handcuffed to another man, from another tribe, whose language I did not speak. We did not know each other. And we could not speak to each other because if we could have spoken to each other, we could’ve figured out what was happening to us. We might have been able to prevent it. We could have had, in short, a kind of solidarity which is the kind of identity which might of made the history of slavery very different.”
Baldwin on the threat Black youths face when attacking the power structure of the White Western World (4:43 mark)
“I know how you watch as you grow older, literally this is not a figure of speech, the corpses of your brothers and sisters pile up around you, and not for anything they have done. They were too young to have done anything…and in any case too helpless. But what one does realize is that when you try to stand up and look the world in the face, like you have a right to be here…when you do that, without knowing that, this is the result of it. You have attacked the entire Western World.”
Baldwin on recognizing the truth of Black existence in the White Western World and White denial (5:34 mark)
“If I, one fine day, discover that I have been lied to all the years of my life, and my mother and father were being lied to…
If I discover that in fact, though I was bred and bought and sold like a mule but I never really was a mule…
If I discover I was never really happy picking cotton and digging in all those mines to make other people rich…
And if I discover those songs the darkies sang and sing were not just the innocent expressions of a primitive people, but extremely subtle and difficult, dangerous and tragic expressions of what it felt like to be in chains, then by one’s presence, simply by the attempt to walk from here to there, you’ve begun to frighten the White world…They’ve always known that you were not a mule. They have always known that no one wishes to be a slave. They have always known that the bales of cotton and the textile mills, and entire metropolises built on Black labor, that Black was not doing it out of love. He was doing it under the whip, the threat of the gun, and even more desperate, a subtle threat of the Bible.”
Baldwin on the White Western World’s hypocrisy (8:39 mark)
“We know, no matter what the professions of my happy country may be, that we are not bothering people out of existence in the name of freedom. If it were freedom we were concerned about, then long, long ago we would’ve done something about Johannesburg, South Africa. And if we were concerned with freedom, boys and girls would not, as I stand here, be perishing in the streets of Harlem. We are concerned with power. Nothing more than that. And the most unluckily for the Western World, it has consolidated its power on the backs of people who are now going to die rather than be used any longer.”
Baldwin on the “American Problem” (12:43 mark)
“It is not a racial problem. It is a problem of whether or not you’r willing to look at your life and be responsible for it. And then begin to change it. That great Western house is one house. And I am one of the children of that house. Simply, I am the most despised child of that house. And it is because American people are unable to face the fact that I am flesh of their flesh, bone of their bone, created by them. My blood, my father’s blood is in that soil. they can’t face that.”
Baldwin on Freedom (15:42 mark)
“Freedom is an overused word. And it may not be as real as slavery, which is a very concrete thing. But freedom is what one’s after and as it can not be given then it obviously must be taken. There are many ways to take it. But before we can discover this, we have to discover how to reunite ourselves and the terms on which we can speak to each other. The terms in which we can plot against the masters.”
Baldwin on standing our ground (18:01 mark)
“There’s only one person in the streets. That’s me! And they’re plotting to shoot me in the name of freedom, dignified by law. And I am supposed to agree. No. No. No sir. I won’t be to his ordering no more. Alas, the party’s over. The question is, what should we do?”
Baldwin responding to a questioning regarding why he refers to himself as Negro and not Black considering this is no country called “Negro” (19:11 mark)
“Your generation, not mine, will call itself Black. That’s good enough for me. That’s the whole point. My mother’s mother called herself a nigger. You must understand the nature of oppression. The most subtle effect of oppression is what it does to your mind, what it does to the way you think about yourself. The whole cornerstone rests there. If you can understand that, then you can see that even though my mother’s mother called herself a nigger, she managed to raise a family and instill somehow in her children some sense and some dignity, which did not depend on the word. One had to learn how to use those words to survive and even triumph.”
Baldwin responding to a question about where he sees the Black man in 50 years (21:05 mark)
“As one begins to come out of the mines and strike off the chains, by some miracle, what was nearly murdered in Africa is still there. Humanity cannot be destroyed. And that’s what’s coming back.”
Baldwin responding to a question asking which is better: Black Power or integration (27:20 mark)
“Black power is a very simple phrase and I don’t know why everyone gets upset about Black Power when watching the effects of White power all over the world, and no one even questions it…Black people have in their own hands the control of their destiny. That’s all it means…As for integration, that is not our goal. And that is precisely the problem.”
Baldwin responding to a question regarding the role of the White Liberal within the movement (29:00 mark)
“To my ear, as a Black man, a White Liberal is immediately suspect because it is indistinguishable and one has got to face this. You might say White missionary because that is the association.”
Baldwin responding to a question regarding the role of Christianity (33.52 mark)
“The bulk of the American Negro population is Christian, or at least it thinks it is. When one begins to examine it, you discover that there are some very crucial differences between White Christianity and Black Christianity…and this is partly because, to minimize it, to understate it, the church is operated in the life of the American Negro, who was once the Black African slave, as his only forum, his only place where he is relatively free. And it is also a place where he was able to act out, to sing out, to dance out his pride and his terrors and his desire for revenge. All of those sermons are bloodthirsty. And they aren’t talking about devils or Samson and Delilah. They’re talking about their master…And the American Black Christian is becoming more and more aware of the real content of his Christianity, which is not the content of the Church of England. It has been one of the incidents of our salvation. One of the techniques of our salvation. And now we know it. So whether one is a Christian at that point, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter since one knows how to use what one’s history is.”
Dick Gregory commenting fighting “The White Man’s War” (39:00 mark)
“…and you know, like Black folks have gone to wars in what I call “white man’s armies”, without Black folks being at the top echelon…and we have gone years without questioning where he was sending me or why I was going. And now we are saying “Okay white folks, now it’s your turn. I’m gonna be the general and you gonna be the private. This is the way you gonna march. And when you get through marching over there, you gonna come back here…might pay ya. I might not.”
Dick Gregory’s thoughts on White Liberals and Black Liberals (39:44 mark)
“We say we don’t want no White Liberals. That’s right. See, the word “White liberal” is an unconscious racist statement because nobody’s ever admitted that we got Black Liberals, whose far more worse that White Liberals will ever be. And we also say we don’t want them in the movement.”