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