Excerpt of speech from my film James Baldwin Anthology

[reallyisay]

love this and thank him for always speaking ..the truth

[ylian34]

i dont understand all the words he employed, but i read his book (during the time he was alive, in france) and i always felt close to waht he think. (Ylian, fron France)

[TheKoolKitteh]

Dear Mr. Baldwin, You are my hero. Thank you. 

-Spencer

[KadooLovesYou]

My favorite orator of all time .

[AthenaNation]

Wow - you shot this? This is one of my favourite speeches. Thank you for sharing - definitely motivates me to continue in my film/broadcasting and writing career. Wow - thank you for capturing this.

[CR65]

One of my favortie writers ever. A man of a powerful and engrossing intellect and vivid imagination. I am currently reading "Just Above My Head" and have read many of his books and he is fantastic. I love his writing style and courage for living life as he saw and wanted it. Kudos to you Mr. Baldwin, God rest your soul.

[tigerbull77]

@CR65 i have read most of his books--had to because i feel in love with his writting, his honesty and passion. May it inspire you to read from this prophet.

[Caligula138]

English is a great language... the majority of everyone on Earth speaks it or is trying to learn it.

[hoodoojazz]

Happy Birthday Mr. Baldwin.

[vincentolivr]

A man of great insight and integrity.

His essays on the civil rights movement are excellent.

[MOTHMAN225]

agreed. And a great voice too.

[kweju3]

Language is a means of expressing the inner spirit and ego identification of a people. It conveys one's fears, hopes, love, etc. It is as one is. "In the beginning was the word." English is a language of deceit. Silent letters that have no purpose other than confusion. Renderings that change schizophrenically ( i before e accept after c); rules that conradict themselves (said..long a short i; should be pronounced "sayed". Many others. It is the language of an insane person.

[madhoneydew]

thanks for the sweet intro... because without that i wouldn't have known who put on these important words by mr. JAMES BALDWIN

crackers

from a chicano in la

[immaculateboy]

man I would have loved to have met him.

[AfroPlato]

same, here.

AP

[traccan]

I really want to see the whole film. I first stumbled upon the entire audio transcript of this speech in the UCBerkeley audio archive several years ago, and it was the most astounding, moving talk I'd ever heard..."the white people in this country know one thing... they may say they don't know what it is I want... but the one thing they know is that they don't want to be black in this country. And that is all they NEED to know". 'a voice and nothing more"...with a voice like his, that's enough.

[pushnevahda]

Baldwin read heavily in anglo saxon literature. Perhaps he didnt seek out black literature because of his own self hatred, thinking that black writers were not legitimate. Then, too, when white gurl Orilla Miller took him under her wings, he undoubtedly moved even farther towards the white literary establishment. But for him to say that there were no black role models in lit is misleading, and he knows it. This is mid-century Harlem, just slightly beyond the HR. Role models were all around him.

[jbberry3923]

I believe he was simply trying to make sense out of the matter about why do whites think the way they did. His reason would not form justifiable logic. Therefore he search and search and search for some explanation yet he hated to concluded what the truth was of how someone so opposite of God be made in his image. I believe thats why he study a.s.literature for answers and not to undermine black authors he perfectly understood.

[smuuvebrotha]

He was influenced by Lorraine Hansbury and Richard Wright, and the artist Daleney,all black folks!

He did NOT suggest that...what he stated is that they were NOT, black literary models were not presented to him and nor did he agree or accept white literary authorship as models.

He did love Richard Wright, that he spoke and wrote about in ALL of his work.

He was discusing how language has formed him in THIS country. How those language models or lack thereof, did NOT meet with his acceptance

[pushnevahda]

....and Countee Cullen was his high school teacher who took him under his wing and helped him to write his first critical essay. I believe it was Cullen who took him to a library for the first time and drop him him so he could do research for the essay.... Then there was the prolific Zora Neale Hurston, Langston, Wallace, DuBois was still writing, and he was impressed with Alexander Dumas. But Cullen, a respected black writer, personally affect Baldwin.....

[pushnevahda]

I love Baldwin, but he can be so melodramatic (which is, ironically - and to his benefit) the mark of a good writer), sometimes at the expense of truth. He says that he didnt have any black writer role models and whites cant be either. I agree with the latter, but disagree with the former. Baldwin grew up amidst the backdrop of the Harlem Renaissance....

[Rx4pabulum]

James Baldwin says one would have to hold in the mind forever two ideas which seemed in opposition, the first was acceptance, of life as it is and men as they are. In light of this idea, it goes withouth saying tthat injustice is commonplace, But this did not mean that one could be complacent , for the second idea was of equal power.One must never in one's life accept injustices as commonplace but must fight them with all one's strength.

[intelligentsun]

"richer than my tribe?" Beautifully posed.

[Steadno]

wow!

[hansonjay67]

fuck english , english is not our african native tonque , whats wrong with black people.

[BlaxisDuende]

I agree with you. The most sinister thing that was done to us as Africans in America, more than lynching, more than chattel slavery was the forced removal of our native languages and their subsequent replacement with the unmusical, patriarchal, linear, jacked up english language. We black folks should retrieve our languages and get as far away from European languages as possible. In teh words of Ossie Davis. Never turn your back on an English dictionary.

[wiferisa]

My 2nd time to watch it.. I still get chills hearing him talk about having to fight to change the language which is our enemy. Though I'm white and male, I fight daily as an English teacher in Japan to expose the inherent sexism (and, admittedly less often, racism) in the tool we all use to communicate our incommunicable souls.

[kindu2006]

Amazing. One of America's greatest intellect!

[cymonebreathe]

excuse me ...but he's one of the world's greatest intellects...not just black america

[kindu2006]

Yes, I was thinkikng the same thing when I read dperks63's comment. Baldwin mastered the English language!

[dperks63]

This guy is one of Black America's greatest intellect!!

[blondex21]

I wonder what James Baldwin would have thought of Michael Jackson ?

[66josiah]

These lucid souls appear during the darkest hour. We tend to forget fallen stars but who cab forget a super nova?

James in my humble opinion was such an one.

[82ghost]

There will never be any like him but there are many who will try, including myself. To remain optimistic about this world I hope a few will succeed even minutely, for if so I know there will be change for the better.

[teetea197]

my brotha. whew

[shoshanq]

THANK YOU SO MUCH!

[palmtree1234]

His being is amazing. Rest in peace

[PrestonPowell]

Love James Baldwin. I wish he was with us today. They'll never be another like him, that's for sure!