Film Sessions: Baldwin Vs Buckley Pin Drop Speech

 

Editor's note: with Facebook continuing to threaten anarchist content, so I've been forced to move my weekly pinko film session posts here, to Media Madness.

This post originally appeared on my Facebook Page on November 29th, 2020.

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Well, I think at this point it's safe to say it's been a productive, if tiring ten days or so - in addition to two fully cited essays, this first week of blogging yielded another seven or so pieces of varying lengths. Obviously, I probably can't keep publishing something every day forever without burning out, but I'm feeling pretty good about the start we've got off to so far. As such, I'm going keep this post short, sweet and relaxing.

Of course, nobody ever said that relaxing couldn't be educational and that's where today's video comes in. In light of the fact that we just looked at a seventy minute video about Ben Shapiro (by Cody Johnson at Some More News) earlier this week – I thought it might be nice to briefly bask in the intellect and eloquence of one of American history's greatest minds and greatest orators; James Baldwin. Today's clip comes to us from the end portion of Baldwin's opening argument in his now famous 1965 Cambridge debate against the truly odious conservative faux intellectual William F. Buckley Jr. - for those of you interested, I'll include a link to the full debate below and an article that talks about why this debate was so important (and tragically remains so, to this very day.)

So roughly speaking – who were these men, and why should you be interested in this debate?

Well, James Baldwin was an African American writer, speaker, activist and intellectual whose work across a myriad of mediums (novels, plays, poetry, essays and public oration or, as we shall see below, debate) focused heavily on issues of marginalization in the Pig Empire; including distinctions of race, gender, sexuality and class as they function in Western social hierarchies. To say that Baldwin was a brilliant man is something of a massive understatement. Frankly I'm of the mind that the less said about Buckley the better but by way of brief explanation please allow me say that now deceased founder of the National Review spent most of his adult life serving as living proof that it's always been pretty easy to get away with nonsensical racist double-speak in America, if you happen to deliver it with a mid-Atlantic accent. 

Taken together, these two intellectuals publicly represented some of the most eloquent representatives of two separate positions on racial equality in America; at least on the surface, and until this very debate exposed Buckley and 1960’s American conservatism for the sham repackaging of cracker supremacy that it really is (and remains today.) For you see my friends, there is really no question about who “won” the debate; Baldwin destroyed Buckley with the whole world watching. 

The real question here, and the one I’d like you to keep in your mind as you watch this clip of James Baldwin speaking is why there was even a debate at all? As you listen to Baldwin calmly and emphatically explaining to a (primarily white) audience of British students that African Americans are indeed human just like them, and that racism is not only real, but a function of direct choices made by our entire society, never forget that the topic of this debate was seriously the question of “whether or not the American Dream has come at the expense of the American Negro” - a question that becomes repugnant in its own right once one remembers that the wealth and power of America was forged on the bloody, beaten backs of African Americans subjected to chattel slavery; even without considering the open white supremacy that fuels our society to this very day.

And that I suppose is both the real triumph, and the real tragedy of this clip; even after making one of the most brilliant men in American history stoop to defending his own humanity against an assclown like Buckley, for the entertainment of the viewing audience and perhaps the education of some college kids – we still, to this day, have learned almost nothing about what Baldwin said, as a society. 

We didn’t deserve James Baldwin in 1965, and we still don’t deserve him today; and yet there he remains, forgiving our ignorance and calmly exposing the fundamental lie of white supremacy, that a man can be superior to another man by right of birth and the color of his skin, decade after decade – I hope, some day soon, we will finally learn to listen.

James Baldwin - Pin Drop Speech

Additional Resources

James Baldwin Debates William F. Buckley (1965; Full Debate)

Baldwin vs. Buckley: A Debate We Shouldn’t Need, As Important As Ever

- nina illingworth

Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus. Please help me fight corporate censorship by sharing my articles with your friends online!

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

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