I’m Not A Nigger, I’m A Man
I really wanted to inject some original thought into Jimmy “Baldwinizing” on the vestiges of America’s most peculiar institution, Nasir powering through on Jay Elect’s creation, or Ali juking the hell out of America but … why bother? If this needs to be interpreted for you then there is a good chance you just might be in the wrong place friend.
Clark: Jim, what do you see deep in the recesses of your own mind as the future of our nation, and I ask that question in that way because I think that the future of the Negro and the future of the nation are linked.
Baldwin: They’re indissoluble.
Clark: What do you see? Are you essentially optimistic or pessimistic, and I really don’t want to put words in your mouth, because what I really want to find out is what you really believe.
Baldwin: I’m both glad and sorry you asked me that question, but I’ll do my best to answer it. I can’t be a pessimist because I’m alive. To be a pessimist means that you have agreed that human life is an academic matter, so I’m forced to be an optimist. I’m forced to believe that we can survive whatever we must survive. But the future of the Negro in this country is precisely as bright or as dark as the future of the country. It is entirely up to the American people and our representatives — it is entirely up to the American people whether or not they are going to face, and deal with, and embrace this stranger whom they maligned so long.
What white people have to do, is try and find out in their own hearts why it was necessary to have a nigger in the first place, because I’m not a nigger, I’m a man, but if you think I’m a nigger, it means you need it.
The question you have got to ask yourself — the white population of this country has got to ask itself — North and South, because it’s one country, and for a Negro, there’s no difference between the North and South. There’s just a difference in the way they castrate you. But the fact of the castration is the American fact. If I’m not a nigger here and you invented him, you, the white people, invented him, then you’ve got to find out why. And the future of the country depends on that. Whether or not it’s able to ask that question.
Clark: As a Negro and as an American, I can only hope that America has the strength and the capacity –
Baldwin: And the moral strength.
Clark: — to ask and answer that question –
Baldwin: Simply to face that question. Face that question.
Clark: — in an affirmative and constructive way. Thank you very much.
Baldwin: Thank you, Ken.
Correction: I meant Emmanuel Cleaver as one of the Congress members who had epithets shouted at him. Whoops.
“If I’m not a nigger here and you invented him, you, the white people, invented him, then you’ve got to find out why. And the future of the country depends on that. Whether or not it’s able to ask that question.”
Forty years on and that question is still more than relevant today. I don’t think anyone has ever seriously wrestled with this question and that’s why we have to deal with the downright hateful rhetoric from people like Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck and the Tea Party “movement”, as well as politicians who create and encourage the environment for that kind of rhetoric.
So many people still hold onto this idea that for them to be great, to be successful, it means having to keep their foot on someone else’s neck. And when they see that that is no longer an option, they just fight even harder to keep that dysfunctional system in place instead of stepping back and wondering why that system is in place at all.
I hope that makes sense. The reports of James Clyburn and John Lewis getting spat at and called “nigger” and Barney Frank being called a “faggot” this weekend still has me reeling. I know I shouldn’t be surprised but still.