James Baldwin words on social and racial prejudice

James Baldwin was one of the 20th century's defining voices  — and his words on social and racial prejudice have never been more relevant.

Transcript

00:00I don't know if the real estate lobby is anything against black people, but I know the real estate lobbies keep me in the ghetto

00:20So why must we always concentrate on color? I'll tell you this when I left this country in

00:251948. I left this country for one reason only, one reason. I didn't care where I went. I might have gone to Hong Kong

00:31I might have gone to Timbuktu. I ended up in Paris, on the streets of Paris. With $40 in my pocket, I had the theory

00:37that nothing worse could happen to me there, but it already happened to me here. You talk about making it as a writer by yourself

00:44You had to be able then to turn up all the intent of which you live because once you turn your back on this society

00:49you may die

00:51You may die, and it's very hard to be a typewriter and concentrate on that if you're afraid of the world around you

01:06The years I lived in Paris did one thing for me

01:09They released me from that particular social terror, which was not the paranoia of my own mind

01:14But a real social danger visible in the face of every cop, every boss

01:19Everybody

01:25I don't know what most white people in this country feel, but I can only include what they feel from the state of their institutions

01:31I don't know if white Christians hate Negroes or not

01:34But I know that we have a Christian Church which is white and a Christian Church which is black

01:38I know as Malcolm X once put it, it's the most segregated hour in American life is high noon on Sunday

01:43That's a great deal for me about a Christian nation

01:45It means I can't afford to trust most white Christians and certainly cannot trust the Christian Church

01:50I don't know whether the labor unions and their bosses really hate me. That doesn't matter, but I know I'm not in their unions

01:56I don't know if the real estate lobby is anything against black people, but I know the real estate lobbies keep me in the ghetto

02:02I don't know if the Board of Education hates black people

02:05But I know the textbooks I give my children to read and the schools that we have to go to

02:10Now this is the evidence. You want me to make an act of faith

02:14Risking myself, my wife, my woman, my sister, my children on some

02:19Idealism which you assure me exists in America, which I have never seen