James Baldwin interviewed by Frank Delaney in 1984,
PRIDE & POWER: Voices of Liberation
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2m 41s
RUSH Transcript:
When you agree with the world's definitions, you are in the process of destroying yourself. I have rarely, for example, encountered a black person. Unless he was, he or she was very, very ill. I mean mentally ill. Who really hated white people? The reason for that? As far as I can tell, and I am as you put, as you point out, 60, as far as I can tell from the time I've been here. When white people in the generality white with a capital W look at a black person. They see something that they are inventing, they do not. Have never seen in my 60 years on Earth. They never seen my mother or my father or my brothers, or my sisters, or my nieces or my nephews. They never see. They see something they have invented. All right, one says to. One survives that, you know, that's what you. And I'm telling else. But if I walk into your nightmare. And react to what you see. I become what you say I am. And then you won. Or any case I've lost. You see what I mean? When you move out of the balance of obscurity of Harlem with its relative. Because Harlem is a very vivid place when you move out of the the relative safety of your community, and that all of you call the white world you.
You are in very, very danger because the essential attitude toward. Oh, when I was young. Black writer was not. Was essentially it was akin to Doctor Johnson's idea of a dancing dog. Was not. It was not that the dog danced so well that he could manage to do. At all.
None.
And that is that was very much the attitude toward, you know, considering a black person who wanted to become a writer. Or try to become a writer who became a writer and that connects. Since you not just stopped. With what I think is part of the crisis of this age, which is. I think that in this country in my country, certainly and in the Western world. Something very serious is happening which involves the. A crisis of identity. It may not be the most fortunate thing in the world to be again uses the word white with a capital W to be born with the unconscious assumption.
Uh.
That you are the center of the universe, the. The the raise on debt that every everything in one way or another reflects and relates to to you as a center and all other people are proof. Around you.
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