James Baldwin - Pin Drop Speech

The speaker discusses the historical mistreatment of African Americans and the negative stereotypes perpetuated about them. He highlights the importance of establishing dialogue and understanding between those who have achieved the American dream and those who have been denied it. He criticizes the lack of progress and betrayal by American politicians and expresses concern for the future of the American dream if inclusion and acceptance are not achieved. The speaker concludes by emphasizing the need for unity and recognizing the contributions of African Americans to the country's development. What is relevant about this is that whereas 40 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, rather than having to deal with this reality was a very remote, 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. The children look happy, safe. You're not. And you go back home. And it would seem then, 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 on the 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 a 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 are dealing essentially with something exotic, bizarre, and practically according to human laws, unknown. Alas, it is not true. We are also mercenaries, dictators, murderers, liars. We are human too. What is crucial here is that unless we can manage to establish some kind of dialogue 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, at the last, is that that is what concerns me most. We are sitting in this room and we are all, at least we 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 40 years in America we might have a Negro president. And that sounded like a very emancipated statement, I suppose, to white people. They were not in Harlem when this statement was first heard. They did not hear, and possibly will never hear, the laughter and the bitterness and the scorn with which the statement was greeted. From the point of view of the man in the Harlem barbershop, Bobby Kennedy only got here yesterday. And now he's already on his way to the presidency. We've been here for 400 years, and now he tells us that maybe in 40 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 and 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 say. And one can't blame them. You watch what has happened to them in less than 20 years. It seems to me that the city of New York, for example, this is my last point, is that New York has been there for a very long time. If the city of New York were able, as it has indeed been able, in the last 15 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 the 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 simply are going to be thrown out into the streets, which is what it does mean now. This is not an act of God. We're dealing with a society made and ruled by men. If the American Negro had not been President of America, I am convinced that 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 were 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's a very grave moment for the West. Thank you. Thank you.