**James Baldwin: A Celebration (60 Years) | In Conversation with Akala & Lord Simon Woolley — Transcript & Summary | SozAI**
Source: https://sozai.app/transcript/james-baldwin-celebration-akala-lord-simon-woolley/

Celebrating 60 years since James Baldwin's iconic Cambridge Union debate, exploring race, identity, and social justice with Akala and Lord Simon Woolley.

## Key Takeaways

- James Baldwin's 1963 Cambridge Union debate remains a pivotal moment in discussions of race and social justice.
- Baldwin used his intellect and presence to challenge racist stereotypes and expose American racial injustice internationally.
- The debate took place during a politically volatile era, underscoring the precarious nature of civil rights progress.
- Baldwin's background and refusal to conform to racial expectations amplified the impact of his arguments.
- The legacy of Baldwin's work continues to influence contemporary discourse on race, identity, and equality.

## What the video covers

- The event marks the 60th anniversary of James Baldwin's influential debate at the Cambridge Union on racism and the American Dream.
- Distinguished guests include Lord Simon Woolley, a racial equality advocate, and Akala, a rapper and author focused on race and identity.
- The discussion contextualizes Baldwin's debate within the turbulent political and social climate of the early 1960s in the US and UK.
- Baldwin's presence challenged prevailing racist narratives by showcasing intellectual brilliance and refusing to perform racial deference.
- His debate helped internationalize the American civil rights struggle, framing it as a global human rights issue.
- The conversation highlights Baldwin's working-class Harlem background contrasted with the elite Cambridge setting.
- Speakers discuss the classism and racism Baldwin confronted in Britain and America, and the broader implications for racial justice.
- The event reflects on Baldwin's legacy in shaping contemporary conversations about race, identity, and social justice.
- The transcript includes reflections on related figures like Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali and their cultural impact.
- The discussion also touches on ongoing issues of race, class, and identity in both historical and modern contexts.

## Chapters

1. 00:00 Introduction and Context of Baldwin's Debate
2. 06:26 Baldwin's Strategy and International Human Rights Framing
3. 10:47 Reception and Challenges in Britain and America
4. 15:23 Race, Class, and Identity in Historical Context
5. 24:14 Legacy and Contemporary Relevance of Baldwin's Work

Answers

## Questions about this video

What was the significance of James Baldwin's debate at the Cambridge Union 60 years ago?

Baldwin's debate was significant because it challenged racist stereotypes and highlighted racial injustice in America on an international stage, helping to frame civil rights as a global human rights issue.

Who are the main speakers featured in this discussion?

The discussion features Lord Simon Woolley, a social justice advocate, Akala, a rapper and author focused on race and identity, and Aaliyah, a Cambridge Union speakers officer and Baldwin enthusiast.

How does the event connect Baldwin's debate to current conversations about race and social justice?

The event reflects on Baldwin's legacy and how his arguments and presence continue to influence modern discussions on racism, identity, and equality, emphasizing the ongoing relevance of his work.

## Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

00:03

Speaker A

[Music] Good. Yeah. Hello. Hello. Thank you all very much for coming tonight. Exactly 60 years ago today in this chamber, James Baldwin took part in an iconic debate that continues to shape our conversations about racism, identity, and social justice. Tonight, we mark this occasion with a special discussion to its relevancy today. Joining us tonight are three distinguished guests. Lord Simon Willie is a world-renowned social justice and racial equality advocate and is a principal of my college, HROton. His work has led to significant achievements, including the establishing of his operation Black Vote. And we have Akala joining us tonight, a renowned rapper, poet, and author who uses his platform to explore the intersections of race, class, and identity, most prominently in his book, Natives. Finally, we have our very own speakers officer, Aaliyah. She has written extensively on this debate and remains a big fan of James Baldwin and his political commentary. Please join me in welcoming our distinguished guests.

00:40

Speaker A

Thank you. Thank you. I guess you weren't cheering for me. That's all good. That's all good. Um, great, great to be here. Great to see this chamber busting at the seams. I want to begin by painting the political backdrop, both here and in the USA, in which James Baldwin entered this revered chamber 60 years ago to the day.

00:57

Speaker A

These were, after all, tumultuous times. Eighteen months before Martin Luther King marched on Washington DC to deliver his "I Have a Dream" speech. In the same year, President Kennedy was assassinated. Malcolm X was assassinated just three days after Baldwin, after the Baldwin debate 60 years ago. A year before, in 1964, Congress signed the Civil Rights Act, effectively ending the prohibition on racial discrimination and segregation laws. Significant yet precarious gains. Progress was far from guaranteed. Here in the UK, in 1963, Paul Stevenson and others announced a bus boycott, the Bristol bus boycott, because the company refused to employ Africans, Caribbeans, and Asians. This successful boycott precipitated the First Race Relations Act. In this sociopolitical context, the Cambridge Union invited one of the finest scholars of his generation, James Baldwin, to debate "Is the American Dream at the Expense of the American Negro?" Cambridge Union and its university was, as is now, seen as a globally significant intellectual center with figures such as Alan Turing, James Watson, Francis Crick, Raymond Williams, Ean Fer, John Maynard Keynes, Joan Robinson, and controversial figures such as Eno Pow. With this backdrop, what then did James Baldwin think he could achieve in this chamber?

01:16

Speaker A

Before you answer that question, I want us just to hear a clip of the conversation that was in this chamber 60 years ago.

01:45

Speaker A

Well, here we are in the debating hall of the Cambridge Union. Hundreds of undergraduates and myself waiting for what could prove one of the most exciting debates in the whole 150 years of the union history. It rarely—I don't think I've ever seen the union so well attended. There are undergraduates everywhere. They're on the benches and on the floor, then in the galleries, and there are a lot more outside clamoring to get in.

02:01

Speaker A

There we have it. 60 years ago to the day. Cara, what was James Baldwin thinking when he came into this chamber?

02:14

Speaker A

60 years ago to the day. I have no idea what Jimmy was thinking, to be honest.

02:37

Speaker A

Um, but what I would say is this, right? First of all, simply being James Baldwin, before we get to his advocation for justice and the risk he took with his personal freedom and safety and all of the brave and brilliant things that he did, he was a world-class novelist at a time when people were saying black people—and believing it, convincing themselves—that black people are genetically intellectually inferior, permanently culturally inferior, and so on, and simply being better than virtually almost everyone in his command of the English language. But a handful of people, that alone, and displaying that in a body, in a place such as this, I think merely doing that, even if the subject hadn't been that was controversial at the time, you know, kind of like Muhammad Ali, "I'm the greatest, I'm beautiful, I'm handsome," the effect that was having on people, his refusal to perform deference, right, which is his proper place in a racist society, he should perform deference to anybody racialized as white. So I think firstly there's just that, simply existing and daring to be the best of what you could be. And on top of that, Baldwin is not from money. He's working class. He comes from Harlem. So, this is on both layers, you're talking about someone who isn't part of what the sort of hereditary black elite that did exist in America and has existed since the Civil War. People who've had money, been accustomed to education, been accustomed to the finer things in life. He wasn't even part of that, which we could almost more understand had he reached that level of scholarship and brilliance in terms of coming here and debating that question in this kind of a place. I think it's a similar strategy-wise to what Malcolm and others were doing, making the issue of apartheid in America an international human rights issue, making what was happening to black Americans an international human rights issue because the Anglo-American West, both then and now, tries to present itself as the arbiter of human rights, the bastion of democracy, and so on. And I think showing that the rhetoric versus the reality of a very different before the world and showing it so eloquently, I think is a way of exposing American injustice to the world to win essentially cultural soft power. You think about winning hearts and minds.

02:59

Speaker A

You know, you see the American military and others talk about this in a sort of military term. But I think what Baldwin was doing, simply by being that brilliant, by making an argument in a place like this, was winning hearts and minds around the world of people saying actually what America is doing is wrong and it is against its val professed values and so on and so forth. But commanding this chamber in a very white space, very male space, and in a space in which, say, 80% of the undergraduates were from public schools.

03:22

Speaker A

And so, as you say, this is a young man from the Bronx, from the school of hard knocks, coming to a place like this and owning the space.

03:43

Speaker A

How did he do that? Well, I'm not sure if James would have even known at that time just what an extremely classist society Britain was. Even for other white people, right? No one from a family like my mother's would have dared to come to Cambridge at that time and challenge posh people on their own turf.

04:03

Speaker A

And they're white. Right. That's right. And so I don't even know if he would have known, given what kind of a society Britain is even internally in terms of its class dynamics, just coming and doing that, how controversial it was. That said, it's always been easier for societies to support somebody else's problem. Okay? Right? What do I mean by that? When I go to Australia, I've been to Australia a number of times. I'm treated wonderfully. The red carpet is rolled out. I have a fantastic time. Now, I could conclude from that Australia is a racial paradise. But luckily, I've got enough friends that are Aboriginal who are like, "Brother, the platform you're given, we ain't given 'cause we're their problem." Right? I happened to be friends with a French footballer who played in England and he was always conscious of the fact that him being French allowed him to perform in a way that a black British football player who was the best would have been sort of told, "Be small, don't be so arrogant, put yourself back in your box." So there was also this thing, and it wasn't exclusive to James Baldwin actually, if you look at the exodus of black American talent in that time. Quincy Jones was because racists more than anything.

04:15

Speaker A

Well, here we are in the debating hall of the Cambridge Union. Hundreds of undergraduates and myself waiting for what could prove one of the most exciting debates in the whole 150 years of the union history. It rarely I don't

04:30

Speaker A

think I've ever seen the union so well attended. There are undergraduates everywhere. They're on the benches and on the floor than in the galleries and there are a lot more outside clamoring to get in.

04:42

Speaker A

There we have it. 60 years ago to to the day. Cara, what was James Baldwin thinking when he came into this chamber?

04:50

Speaker A

60 years ago to the day. I have no idea what Jimmy was thinking to to be honest.

04:55

Speaker A

Um but what what I would say is this, right? First of all, simply being James Baldwin, before we get to his advocation for justice and the risk he took with his personal freedom and safety and all of the brave and brilliant things that

05:08

Speaker A

he did, he was a worldclass novelist at a time when people were saying black people and believing it, convincing themselves that black people are genetically intellectually inferior, permanently culturally inferior and so on and simply being better than virtually almost everyone in his command

05:26

Speaker A

of the English language. But a handful of people that alone and displaying that in in in a in a body in a place such as this I think merely doing that even if the subject hadn't been that was

05:37

Speaker A

controversial at the time you know kind of like Muhammad Ali I'm the greatest I'm beautiful I'm handsome the effect that was having on people his refusal to perform deference right which is his proper place in a racist society he

05:51

Speaker A

should perform deference to to anybody uh racialized as white so I think firstly there's just that simply existing and daring to be the best of what you could be. And on top of that, Baldwin is not from money. He's working

06:03

Speaker A

class. He comes from Harlem. So, this is this is on on both layers, you're talking about someone who isn't part of what the sort of hereditary black elite that did exist in America and has existed since the Civil War. People

06:13

Speaker A

who've had money, been accustomed to education, been accustomed to the finer things in life. He wasn't even part of that which we could almost more understand had he reached that level of of of scholarship and brilliance in terms of coming here and debating that

06:26

Speaker A

question in this kind of a place. I think it's similar strategy-wise to what Malcolm and others were doing making the issue of apartheid in America an international human rights issue. making what was happening to black Americans an international human rights issue because

06:42

Speaker A

the Anglo-American West both then and now tries to present itself as the uh the arbiter of human rights the the bastion of democracy and so on and I think showing that the rhetoric versus the reality of a very different before

06:57

Speaker A

the world and showing it so eloquently I think is a way of uh exposing American injustice to the world to win essentially cultural soft power. You think about winning hearts and minds.

07:08

Speaker A

You know, you see the American military and others talk about this in a in a sort of military term. But I think what Baldwin was doing simply by being that brilliant by making an argument a place like this was winning hearts and minds

07:18

Speaker A

around the world of people saying actually what America is doing is wrong and it is against its val professed values and so on and so forth. But commanding commanding this chamber in a in a very white space, very male space

07:30

Speaker A

and in a space in which say 80% of the undergraduates were from public schools.

07:36

Speaker A

And so as you say, this this is a young man from from the uh from the Bronx from the school of hard knocks coming to a place like this and owning the space.

07:48

Speaker A

How how did he do that? Well, I'm not sure if James would have even known at that time just what an extremely classist society Britain was. Even for other white people, right? No one from a family like my mother's would have dared

08:00

Speaker A

to come in Cambridge at that time and challenge posh people on their own turf.

08:04

Speaker A

And they're white. Right. That's right. And so I don't even know if he would have known given what kind of a society Britain is even internally in terms of its class dynamics just coming and doing that how controversial it was. That

08:15

Speaker A

said, it's always been easier for societies to support somebody else's problem. Okay? Right? What do I mean by that? When I go to Australia, I've been to Australia a number of times. I'm treated wonderfully. The red carpet is

08:26

Speaker A

rolled out. I have a fantastic time. Now, I could conclude from that Australia is a racial paradise. But luckily, I've got enough friends that are Aboriginal who are like, "Brother, the platform you're given, we ain't given cuz we're their problem." Right? I

08:39

Speaker A

happened to be friends with a French footballer who played in England and he was he's always been conscious of the fact that him being French allowed him to perform in a way that a black British football player who was the best would

08:54

Speaker A

have been sort of told be small don't be so arrogant put yourself back in your box. So there was also this thing and it wasn't exclusive to James Baldwin actually if you look at the exodus of of black American talent in that time

09:03

Speaker A

Quincy Jones was because racists more than anything are intellectual cowards. Quincy Jones was prevented for from composing for orchestras while living in America because remember you can only say black people are too inferior to compose for orchestras if you prevent

09:16

Speaker A

even a genius like Quincy Jones from composing for orchestra. So he had to go to France. First place he composed for an orchestra was in France and you had Mars Davis and Richard Wright and others who left America and were very very

09:26

Speaker A

successful in Europe. Yeah. Particularly Paris. Particularly Paris. But how was France treating its own black and north African population at that I mean that wasn't that's in the same period that there was the massacre of French Algerians during the uh Algerian war for

09:39

Speaker A

independence. And so it probably would have been easier at that point in Britain's history to host a James Baldwin than to host a Michael X or Darcus How or any of those people who were saying similar things here but

09:51

Speaker A

obviously weren't we're not getting on a plane back to America. And because at the same time of course we did have our own of course and others that were doing great stuff.

10:01

Speaker A

Exactly. But they were Britain's problem. Got it. So once you invite them into the the the hallowed halls of Britain, then then it there's sort of no turning the clock back if you like. Last example I'll give, I've been in America

10:12

Speaker A

and had interactions with American police where I literally see them breathe a sigh of relief when I open my mouth. I literally see them go, "Oh, he's not one of our blacks. Thank God." Right? So, so racial oppression is

10:25

Speaker A

not remember racists want to think they're good people. So the problem if you talk to Australians, they'll say, "We're not bad people. It's the Aborigines." If you talk to white Americans who are racist, they'll say, "It's not us. It's black Americans are

10:36

Speaker A

inferior. We know you. You black Brits. You're cultured and smart and clever." And then the British will say, "Oh, it's not it's not us. It's not us being racist. You know, you black Americans, James Baldwin, even Malcolm X was I

10:47

Speaker A

don't want to say welcomed here, but there was sort of a welcoming here for him and for Muhammad Ali. It was celebrated." And but had Muhammad Ali been British and made those same noises and said those same things, we'd have

10:56

Speaker A

been knocked out. We' have been said he was arrogant. He was too full of himself. But it's easy to worship somebody else's uh problem. That's part of the cognitive dissonance of racism. I think let's go to the central point with

11:07

Speaker A

within the question. The American dream at the expense of the African negro. In Baldwin's speech, he asserts that I picked the cotton. I carried it to the market and I built the rails, the railroads under someone else's whip for

11:22

Speaker A

nothing. This is an undiable, undeniable truth in American history. brutal, bloody enslavement, built industries, shaped infrastructure, and underwrote the wealth of a nation and denied them humanity. When boardroom refers to I picked this, built these rail words, help us better understand the systemic

11:41

Speaker A

discrimination at the heart of the American dream. Yeah. I think what's interesting to me, I mean, we'll get into Buckley's counter arguments in a bit, but if you remove the discomfort of race from this discussion, let's talk about Britain for a moment, right? If

11:54

Speaker A

you posed that question differently about the UK and you said was Britain's wealth built on the backs of the people who labored in Lancaster cotton mills and in coal mines in Wales and essentially on the backs of the English

12:05

Speaker A

working class everyone would go obviously. You see I mean it's like it's only once you introduce the discomfort of race and American racial discrimination or I presume everyone in Britain would go obviously anyway that there there becomes this sort of sense

12:17

Speaker A

of denial and squeamishness but it's it's ludicrous. I mean, you had almost half a millennia of unpaid labor. Um, and then of course, it wasn't just the unpaid labor. You see, people think segregation was just about preventing black people from doing going where they

12:32

Speaker A

wanted to go. It was about the extraction of labor and the extraction of capital. It's about making some people more killable and more exploitable. So, when slavery was reformed, because it wasn't actually abolished. If you read the amendment to

12:43

Speaker A

the American Constitution, it doesn't abolish slavery. It says but for people who have committed crime. It literally makes a provision for forced labor for people who've been convicted of of crime um crime and inverted commas. And so the

12:56

Speaker A

abolition of slavery, the southern oligarchy lost the civil war, but they won the peace goes the cliche. And that was very, very true. A new system of labor, indentured servitude, and so on replaced uh chain gangs, etc. replaced

13:08

Speaker A

the system of slavery in which the labor of African-Americans was still ripe for exploitation to build these things that we're talking about. Not exclusive to African-Americans, but most pronounced for African-Americans. So there was then essentially almost a century really of

13:23

Speaker A

extra if not free labor, semifree labor, convict labor and so on. But it's denial though, deep-seated denial or amnesia.

13:33

Speaker A

But it's understandable once you accept that. If you accept the premise, then compensation is the next logical step.

13:41

Speaker A

Right? Especially when we're talking about the century after slavery. Many of these people who were leased out as convicts, falsely convicted of crimes and then forced to labor. These are people that are still alive and could bring compensation claims today. So it's

13:53

Speaker A

not even like, you know, when people go, "Oh, well, slavery was hundreds of years ago. Why you complain?" Well, Haiti never stopped paying reparations till 1947. That's right. So it's not hundreds of years ago, is it? Right. And that's

14:03

Speaker A

to not even counting some of the stuff that's still going on today. So reparations were paid. They were simply paid in reverse. Haiti paid reparations to France. They didn't stop paying till 1947. We British taxpayers, including British taxpayers of Caribbean origin,

14:17

Speaker A

paid for the reparations bond that was paid to slave masters that didn't step stop getting paid off until 2015. That's right. As the Treasury tweeted and thought it was a really great boast. All right.

14:28

Speaker A

Um, and and and so if American wealth is built in no small part, and I'm not saying in in its entirety, America is also a very innovative society. It's a very creative society. Many of the world's major technologies have come from the United

14:44

Speaker A

States, including from African-Americans, by the way. This is one of the interesting things, right?

14:47

Speaker A

So, so, so Buckley points out in that debate and tries to make a a a virtue of America by saying, "But black Americans are better off than many people in many other countries," which was true then and true now. But notice when people say

15:00

Speaker A

this, it's never used to say, "Wow, if we compare black Americans as a group to another ethnic group in the world that have been through something similar, let's say emancipated surfs in Eastern Europe." So, surfom was abolished in

15:12

Speaker A

Eastern Europe around the same time slavery was abolished in America. If we compare these two groups, if black Americans are much more successful than that comparable group, surely that says something positive about black Americans, but it's always used to say,

15:23

Speaker A

but they're not as successful as other Americans, therefore their culture is bad, which is another one of the arguments that that Buckley makes. But it's not a like for-like comparison, obviously. And so, obviously, my view, and I think it's it's factually

15:34

Speaker A

indisputable, is that the American dream was partly built in that way. Even when you look at the New Deal land grant, so many things that were done not just for white Americans, but for white immigrants to America. So this is one of

15:46

Speaker A

the other things that's quite fascinating about American history where there was a policy of inviting people from Europe, giving them land, giving them access to capital, giving them tools to make that land productive explicitly to exclude African-Americans from getting their 40

16:00

Speaker A

acres in a mule. We contrast that with, it's the last example I'll make on it.

16:04

Speaker A

When we look at countries in Southeast Asia, particularly South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and now China, these are countries even in America, migrants from these countries do very well in America.

16:15

Speaker A

And one of the arguments Americans make, including right-wing black Americans, Thomas Soul, Araldo, etc. They say, "Look, the Asians have come here and done very well. It's their culture." Jamaicans, Jamaicans, but this is this is a different point. I say this is why

16:26

Speaker A

I say this is important. In Southeast Asia, the peasantry of Southeast Asia literally got their 40 acres in a mule.

16:33

Speaker A

What do I mean by that? One of the explicit policies of the governments of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and then China was major land reform and then they were given the tools and the capital to make that land productive and

16:44

Speaker A

then were able to extract from that land a middle class standard of living. If anyone who studies the economic history of South Korea in particular will know that those migrants who were given their 40 acres in a mule in Korea then come to

16:55

Speaker A

America become successful everyone says it's just their culture and and the reason black Americans are unsuccessful is just culture rather than looking at the fact that one group of people were given a basis capital tools and so on

17:06

Speaker A

and another group of people were not. We would only know what a person's or group's cultural values really were when they had access meaningful access to capital to institutions to education. We had a similarity with with the Ugandan

17:18

Speaker A

Asians and the Kenyan Asians when they came to the UK come from a merkantile background and then successfully improved. People said why can't you be like the Asians? Yeah. But but also here's one of the things I think is

17:30

Speaker A

quite fascinating. We even do it. I've been guilty of this idealizing the a the Asians based on a small select group of East African Gujaratis. If we exclude Gujarati Indians, the average South Asian is actually poorer than the

17:42

Speaker A

average black person in Britain. So even we do it when we you know in our community we'll sometimes go are the Indians because apparently all Asians are Indian right the Indians own all the corner shops right it's like no they own

17:54

Speaker A

do they really like do you know and so when you look at that data and you say well actually you've got a select group of people that have been successful be careful we're not being semi- bigoted by idealizing all of the Asian experience

18:06

Speaker A

to Hamlet is workingassworth is working class um that would be like taking Jamaicans from Cherry Gardens which is a very posh neighborhood in Jamaica, by the way, who've migrated to Florida who are overwhelmingly successful. They they've got a Jamaican police chief.

18:19

Speaker A

They're doing very well. And saying that's Jamaica. Well, you can find a successful group of people in any ethnic group and in any society. Let's have another clip. Let's have another clip from 60 years ago.

18:32

Speaker A

But what is happening in the poor woman, the poor man's mind is this. They've been raised to believe and by now they helplessly believe that no matter how terrible their lives may be and their lives had been quite terrible

18:50

Speaker A

and no matter how far they fall, no matter what disaster overtakes them, they have one enormous knowledge and consolation which is like a heavenly revelation. At least they are not black.

19:04

Speaker A

So another aspect of Baldwin's words which struck accord was that poor white people are encouraged to feel better about their circumstances because they are better off than black people. In your book natives you quoted philosopher Charles W. Mills, author of the racial

19:19

Speaker A

contract. Can you explain this racial contract in particular how its architects impose a racial hierarchy that is normalized and sadly broadly accepted by white and black communities?

19:30

Speaker A

Yeah. I think what's interesting both about that and about Baldwin's clip is notice still the empathy here. He's very clear. Paul whites have had an atrocious time, right? But if you say, "Well, listen, we know, you know, we we if we

19:43

Speaker A

take Britain, we know we let people that look like you die in Hillsborough and then demonize them afterwards. We know that uh a coal mine collapsed over a primary school in Wales, a place called Abafan, and the British government

19:53

Speaker A

didn't really care because it was a bunch of white peasants, right? We know all of these awful things have happened.

19:57

Speaker A

We know in fact the British government, and I'm only referring to Britain because it's a society that we don't often know all of this about. The British government was literally child trafficking poor white children till the middle of the 1970s. This isn't me being

20:08

Speaker A

making up stuff or being hyperbole. They were literally going to children's homes and going, "You're a single mother.

20:12

Speaker A

We're sending your kid to London." And really, the British government would kidnap the child and send them to Australia. Many of these kids labored, did illegal labor. Many of them were extremely sexually exploited and all sorts of awful things happened, right?

20:23

Speaker A

But if you then say, "But at least you're not them." Some if if a person's only consolation is they have someone else to look down on, how hard are they going to cling to that person's inferior status?

20:36

Speaker A

And how do they then become an enforcer for the racial status quo? On a personal note, sadly, you know, as as my mom used to tell me growing up and as I knew anyway from my limited interactions with

20:45

Speaker A

my own grandfather, he used to say, "Well, at least I'm not a nigger." And for him, he had a very awful life. Was essentially a child soldier, right?

20:52

Speaker A

because the British army wasn't too fussed about enrolling people of 14, 15 back then. Really, really tough, really awful life. But for him, he still felt that being an Englishman made him a little bit Charles Darwin, a little bit

21:05

Speaker A

Shakespeare, a little bit Isaac Newton, without having to be that genius. Now, if I take my emotions out of it, I kind of get it. Imagine being able to lay claim to some of history's greatest geniuses without having to do anything

21:18

Speaker A

yourself. I mean, why would you give that up, right? So I I understand the psychology behind it. The sad part is it often leads and we've seen this with the recent election in the states to people voting I don't want to say against their

21:32

Speaker A

interests that you know my more Marxist friends would say against their interests because they presume that economic interests come before emotional and psychological interests. I'm not sure I agree with that. people vote in favor of tribal ethnosentric uh interests that they are more keen to

21:49

Speaker A

preserve than their own economic emancipation and um it's been a extraordinarily effective strategy. None of this is exclusive to poor whites of course we live in the west so that is most pronounced in that form of bigotry there um but it's it's I don't know how

22:04

Speaker A

you overcome that if a person has had a really really awful life and the only solace they have is somebody to look down on. What happens when that person is no longer your inferior? What happens? Who follows? And I'm not a huge

22:18

Speaker A

fan of Obama, but that's a different conversation for a different day politically, right? In terms of I understand the representation. I understand why he was so emotionally important. I understand all of that in terms of his actual policies,

22:30

Speaker A

but who followed Obama as president? There we go. And is that a coincidence? The reaction, right? The reaction is Oh, right. and and a lot of the um and is and isn't well isn't that really the the mantra of make America great again? It

22:46

Speaker A

wasn't great cuz cuz a reaction to cuz he was in charge. Right. Right. You want to go back to the old days and what are the like when people say that stuff I go like no one ever is going to say public

22:57

Speaker A

this is the what I find really fascinating even even about Buckley and this is that sort of evasion of what the good old days were like my mom and dad when even when people say that about England my mom and dad never had an

23:10

Speaker A

indoor toilet till they were in their teenage years. So when people tell me the good old days in England, I'm like what do you mean? Like when we had kera like what exactly were these like go and talk to your grandparents and your

23:22

Speaker A

great-randparents about what these supposed good old days were cuz people didn't have electricity 100 years ago.

23:28

Speaker A

Wasn't it that they were higher than black people? Was that in their mind? I think it's that they imagine that if a one's supposed social inferiors returned to their proper place that their problems in life would be solved.

23:44

Speaker A

Correct. But let's say apartheid was returned to America which formal apartheid life for poor white Americans in alipata would still be atrocious.

23:52

Speaker A

That's right. Would the drug epidemic wouldn't suddenly evaporate. Right. And and in fact, what's even really interesting about America, one of the things I have a lot of racist Americans that troll me on Twitter, as you can imagine, I don't really use Twitter

24:02

Speaker A

anymore. And they always go on and on and on about, you know, violence among black Americans. And and what I find interesting, number one, 47 of the 50 most violent cities in the world are in the Americas, scattered across cultures

24:14

Speaker A

as diverse as Colombia, Nicaragua, El Salvador. So whatever it is going on in Baltimore and Chicago is also going on in Medí and Bogatar and Sa Paulo and Kingston. We can discuss why that is.

24:24

Speaker A

But what's fascinating to me is that white Americans as a group kill each other more frequently than almost any group of people in a rich country outside of America. So the logic we're applying with black Americans saying, "Well, they kill each other very often.

24:35

Speaker A

It must be their culture." Well, we could there's no high school shootings in Ghana. That's right. The murder rate in Ghana is the same as the murder rate in Belgium, right? But notice the people who No, I mean serious. It really is.

24:45

Speaker A

The murder rate in Ghana is the same as the murder rate in Belgium. Ghana's had, I think, six or seven postindependence coups. It's an ethnically diverse country. Half the country is Christian.

24:52

Speaker A

Half the country is Muslim. All of the ingredients that should cause ethnic persecution and all the other things and violence are present in Ghana. If we're going to argue from culture, let's be consistent. Let's argue the reason Ghana

25:04

Speaker A

is so peaceful is clearly because there are cultural values in Ghana that promote that. Now, if the argument is that we, the African diaspora, should reinculcate some of those traditional black African values, fine. But that isn't the argument that's being made

25:17

Speaker A

around culture. There's an argument generalized from an oppressed experience to say this is quote unquote black culture. Right. Right. And part of the racial contract though is not just the poisoning of white minds. It's also black minds get poisoned about their

25:31

Speaker A

standing in the world. Oh, especially I mean my my grandparents to to give a I mean they grew up in a colony. So this is unsurprising. But my own grandmother used to say anything too black and my grandmother is a black was rest in peace

25:43

Speaker A

was a black black woman. But in her mind there, how does that work? How did that happen? I mean, she lived in a country that a was a race-based slave colony for two and a bit centuries and then was a

25:57

Speaker A

formal apartheid economy. This is what people forget about the Caribbean in which ironically people that look like me were allowed to acquire land and acquire capital. So I hate using this word, but you'll understand why I'm using it because it's politically the

26:09

Speaker A

word that was used at the time. Mulattos in the Caribbean were a buffer class used to uphold the racial hierarchy in a similar way that poor whites are used in the west. They were allowed to own land.

26:18

Speaker A

They were given a little bit of a carrot. They were given some rights and some status as long as you keep the full-blooded blacks in their place. And so there was an idealization and a colorism even to this day in the

26:28

Speaker A

Caribbean where people of lightkinn are assumed irrespective of what background they come from to be better educated to to have a powerful white father somewhere who could lose your job and so on and so forth. this uh confluence of

26:41

Speaker A

or assumption of whiteness and prosperity. One of the things the British government was very very uh paranoid about in the post-war period when it came to migration from the former colonies was that exposure to poor white people would break the racial

26:56

Speaker A

contract. What do I mean by that? If you come from Africa or the Caribbean and you at that time had the delusion that every white person lived like white people in the colonies, you come to England, you you end up on a in moss

27:07

Speaker A

side or Tottenham and you go, "Oh, poor white people suffer like everyone else immediately." And it became immed my friend always tells me um his uncle went uh can't believe some white men I sweep street and that was it, right? As soon

27:22

Speaker A

as he saw a white person sweeping the street, he was like, "Oh my god." like it was like heaven came crashing down around and he realized all of the lies that he'd been exposed to and all of the

27:30

Speaker A

sort of internalized racism simply because he'd never seen a white person who was poor before. And I think part of the racial contract is about idealizing white people and they being judged by the most prosperous, the best educated,

27:45

Speaker A

the most middle class, right? And then demonizing other groups of people. The the reality is especially in a country like this where the the British ruling class exported aparttheid all around the world but didn't practice apartheid on home soil in many respects the white

27:58

Speaker A

underclass of this country have all of the same problems in some cases worse measurably worse than ethnic minority communities in this country but the difference is all of a sudden when it comes to white people we understand it's

28:09

Speaker A

social class not their ethnic makeup and not even really it's not even really called culture right it's all of a sudden we go the white working class Do black people not do jobs? Do Asian people not work? What is it that white

28:23

Speaker A

brick layers do that the black ones that black brick layers don't do? Because last time I checked when my dad was laying brick, he was laying brick next to other people who lay brick the same way, right? And so I would argue that

28:32

Speaker A

even ignoring social class as both a cleavage and a mode of understanding people that are not white is profoundly racist. Imagine, imagine suggesting that the child of the black or Asian doctor and the child of the black or Asian

28:46

Speaker A

minimum worker are having the same experience or should even have the same outcomes. Imagine ignoring that one set of people may need more help and assistance than the other. Imagine pretending that a black child that grows up in care or an Asian child that grows

28:56

Speaker A

up in care is the same as a black or Asian child who grows up with two loving parents in Hamstead. These are not the same people. And so we at least coming back to the sort of um having somebody

29:06

Speaker A

to look down upon point at least with poor white people for all of the suffering and all of the problems there is an understanding that there is a socioeconomic driver and a socioeconomic cause of those problems in that

29:17

Speaker A

community. All all of a sudden when it comes to our community this evaporates it's gone. Let's have another question.

29:22

Speaker A

So in this historical debate, we also need to discuss the opposition to James Baldwin, William Buckley, and the devices that he employed to put Baldwin down, including suggesting that Baldwin's success disproved the severity of racism. Do you think these tactics

29:37

Speaker A

reflect a broader pattern in which defenders of the status quo deflect from systematic issues by highlighting individual black success stories or framing of racial progress as a natural evolution?

29:50

Speaker A

Yeah I mean it's such an absurd rhetorical device for a number of reasons, right?

29:56

Speaker A

Almost without competition, the most prominent monarch in British history is Queen Elizabeth the first to the point that when you say Elizabeth and it is synonymous with the period in which Britain finally became an important country in the world. It's the period of

30:08

Speaker A

Shakespeare, of of Bacon, so on and so forth. Right? This is when Britain announced itself on the world stage.

30:13

Speaker A

Could you imagine how stupid it would be if I suggested there was no sexism in England 500 years ago because the queen was English and she was powerful and revered right or but we could apply that argument to any period of time. There

30:24

Speaker A

were successful black people in part South Africa when there was literal apartheid Benjamin Banaka helped co-design the layout of Washington in the 1770s. In fact, check the exact years but it was around the 1770s. The free black population in Philadelphia in

30:39

Speaker A

1862 75% of them were already literate. They had private schools. They had wealthy black entrepreneurs. Was there no racism in America in 1862? So, we could use this device. But what's more sinister here for me about that is the

30:51

Speaker A

suggestion that if you are successful, you should stop caring about injustice and just be grateful. You should essentially become rightwing and go, "Well, I made it." And if if the rest of those poor blacks didn't make it, it's just they didn't try hard

31:02

Speaker A

enough. Right? So this this weird idea that there isn't something admirable actually about being James Baldwin being one of the best and most revered novelists in the world and instead of going well hey if all the other blacks

31:15

Speaker A

could just be like me their life would be wonderful and go no actually it's not that simple um he would have been a much wealthier man had he performed that sort of right-wing politic as we see in the

31:27

Speaker A

UK today and I don't mean to be personal but if you're right-wing enough even as an anti-immigrant enough. Even as a black woman, you can become one step from prime minister, right? And and so I think it's an absurd

31:48

Speaker A

um it's just absurd. There's never been a time when all black people were doing badly. Even in the height of transatlantic slavery, there were really there were exceptions and there were successes and there were people who got their freedom. There were some people

31:59

Speaker A

who moved back to Africa. there were some people who became scholars and so on and so forth. Um, so I think it's a way it's almost threatening. You know, you should be grateful, you should, you know, I mean, and and I don't think it

32:11

Speaker A

rebutts any of the arguments factually. Okay. So, this question is about storytelling that Baldwin employed to win over a predominantly white male privileged student body. Notably, Baldwin weave stories of real life experiences that illustrated racism's deep emotional and psychological

32:31

Speaker A

consequences, including the destruction of self-worth. A Carla, you're a storyteller, writer, spoken word, and rap artist. What narratives do we need to hear to move both hearts and minds?

32:47

Speaker A

you know, coming to this the psychological internalization of racism. One of the things that strikes me and I always remember Richard Prior talks about when he first went to Africa and he said, "Pardon my French, but I have

32:59

Speaker A

to say it because I think it conveys the point." He went, "I went to Africa and I didn't see any there." He said, "I hadn't even thought it." He came back from uh Africa and he just stopped using

33:10

Speaker A

the word. He said, "Even though there's poverty problems, we're not romanticizing." The point is, and anyone who's from the West who didn't grow up in an African or Caribbean country will know this, there is a way in which black

33:20

Speaker A

people in Africa and the Caribbean walk that is just different. There's like a sense of ownership and belonging like are my things this, right? Just the if you're raised quote unquote back home, you just wouldn't even understand. It's

33:33

Speaker A

just very very normal and there's a sense of no one has ever questioned your right to belong here. You may be poor.

33:39

Speaker A

You may come from the ghetto. There may be genuine political repression much worse than than living in in in in a social democracy in the west, but no one's ever said, "You're not a Nigerian.

33:48

Speaker A

You grew up in Nigeria. You speak Euroba or Ebo or whatever." Do you know what I mean? So, it's a very very different psychological makeup. And we know this and we see this because African and Caribbean immigrants to the West as

33:59

Speaker A

opposed to black westerners, which I think is an important distinction. somebody like me whose grandparents came from the Caribbean, but because I I have a relationship with the Caribbean culturally, I think I've kept some of that culture, but I look at a lot of the

34:12

Speaker A

black English kids, sadly, they believe some of the things about the Caribbean that even bigots would believe. They think the Caribbean is basically bad dancel and you know the film shutters. Whereas kids growing up in Jamaica or Barbados or

34:25

Speaker A

Antigga, they're growing up in a country where the dentist is black, the doctor's black, lawyer's black, the the architects are black, the prime minister's black, the chief of police is black, it hasn't even occurred to them anymore. This is what obviously 50 60

34:37

Speaker A

years ago when everybody in those positions was light-kinned or white, it was very different. But today in the Caribbean, when everyone in those positions is not only black, but dark-kinned black, you can see it. you interact with middle-ass Caribbeans or

34:48

Speaker A

Africans and they have this I remember once saying I met met an architect in um he's actually Grenadian but he he works in Jamaica and and I did that stupid you know black western thing like oh my god

34:59

Speaker A

like you're you're a black architect and he just looked at me like my mom's a judge and my dad was a lawyer what did you think I was going to do he was just confused like why was I

35:08

Speaker A

surprised I'll give you one last example another actually a Jamaican that I know he went to Florida again upper middle class Jamaican and like a a white American, for one of a better word, redneck. I'm only going to use that word

35:20

Speaker A

because we understand that paints a certain picture. Called him a and he went he just looked at him confused.

35:26

Speaker A

He went, "I'm so obviously better than you." Like, I don't I don't even like I don't even understand. Like, am I supposed to be offended? Like, like I was rich back home. I went to the top school on the island. Like, I'm here at

35:39

Speaker A

university studying something you probably don't even understand. And you genuinely believe because of this, you're better than me? He was befuddled.

35:47

Speaker A

He wasn't offended. None of that. And I think that the differences for all of the problems, and I'm not saying there's no internalized colonialism and internalized racism in countries in Africa and the Caribbean. There is. And for all of the problems and the and the

35:59

Speaker A

the political repression and other issues, there is still a very very different sense of self because the story is very different. Last example I'll give, I've met West African friends who are like, "Yeah, I know my family genealogy for a thousand years." Like

36:13

Speaker A

people who've come from families that have that gene. They go like, "Yeah, my my great-grandfather's grandfather's grandfather's grandfather's grandfather's grandfather founded this town in Nigeria here and this one founded this town in." And they imagine knowing your family ancestry for a

36:26

Speaker A

millennia. You just you're just going to walk around like a different human. And I see it with a lot of the more recent and more middle class migrants to Britain from Africa in particular.

36:36

Speaker A

There's almost a sense of like, of course, of course we're going to win. like there's all and especially when you add to that parents who are like well I'll disown you if you don't go uni like it's not even it's non-negotiable

36:49

Speaker A

um I think the sad thing is about the storytelling yeah so but the sad thing is for for a lot of black westerners the story that is being told because we are not in control of our own cultural

37:00

Speaker A

production we're not in control of how we're represented in film we're not in control of saying yes or no to what gets commissioned to what h how in essentially our community is portrayed the story that is being told or at least

37:12

Speaker A

the stories that are being emphasized. There may be stories rooted in truth but what stories are emphasized? Who gets seen on TV the most? Who gets represented the most in a certain way?

37:20

Speaker A

Those stories that are being told are very different to the stories that are being told in other parts of the world and other places of the world. And we see that in very tangible outcomes particularly in the states actually more

37:31

Speaker A

than here. African and Caribbean immigrants to America do very very well. There's 2 million people of Caribbean origin. I use Caribbean because this is the group that in England there's a different story told about the average Caribbean American earns about 15% more

37:42

Speaker A

than the average American. They're more likely to go to university than the average American including the average white American. Right? So we think about the story about Caribbean culture in England, but these are our cousins.

37:52

Speaker A

We're talking about literal cousins like that moved to New York and Florida. And if you're from the Caribbean in the house, you'll know that your cousins who moved to New York and Florida are almost invariably more successful. It's a very

38:01

Speaker A

different story. But the part that's left out of it is that they moved into already existing black communities where black Americans were willing to share their institutions, their schools, the H.B.CU. So they were also able to benefit from the fights of a James

38:15

Speaker A

Baldwin, of a Malcolm X, of a all of that stuff that had gone on before them.

38:19

Speaker A

And I think it's important that that story is understood and acknowledged because there can also be if we're being honest a ignorance and almost a snobbery and I see it with my own cousins if I'm being honest of why can't the black

38:31

Speaker A

Americans do what we did. It's like bro you arrived yesterday like and you and you grew up in a black country with a black headmaster and a black school and a black police force. Like come on it's not a like for like you're smart enough

38:40

Speaker A

to know it's not a like forlike comparison. Have we got another clip? When I was growing up, I was taught in American history books that Africa had no history and neither did I. That I was a savage about whom the less said the

39:01

Speaker A

better who had been saved by Europe and brought to America. And of course, I believed it. I didn't have much choice. Those are the only books there were.

39:18

Speaker A

Everyone else seemed to agree. So, I have a two-part question here. We'll deal with the first part. Now, in your book, Natives, you wrote about the importance of Saturday schools, extracurricular education, which often emphasizes teaching black history. Can

39:34

Speaker A

you talk us through why this is important to you? Yeah, I I think that's that clip right there is a great example of why it's so important. This man is arguably one of the greatest writers of the 20th century and he was brainwashed

39:47

Speaker A

into believing that an entire continent had no civilizational history and it was effective because why would he know anything else? It was the only representation that he saw. Now what's interesting to me is when even to today you have some very strange black people

40:00

Speaker A

that make that similar argument. If Africa was so great in the past, why is it the way it is today? India has a virtually identical GDP per capita to Nigeria. No one would be moronic enough to suggest that means India has no

40:10

Speaker A

civilizational history. There are a number of countries in the world in fact Bangladesh, Pakistan, Burma, we could go on and on and on that have similar political and economic problems to any number of countries in Africa. 100 years

40:22

Speaker A

ago Turkey was arguably the second most powerful country in the world. Today it has a GDP per capita about the same as Jamaica, slightly higher. Right? And we could give a million examples where societies have risen and fallen.

40:32

Speaker A

Argentina was richer than Germany in the 19th century. Today it's as poor as many countries in Latin America.

40:38

Speaker A

Um the importance of Black Saturday school for me again coming back to the previous question was about the stories.

40:45

Speaker A

I genuinely had no idea that people thought that being black was about failing in school. And I grew up poor.

40:51

Speaker A

My dad grew up in the care system. My my mom was kicked out of the house at 15.

40:55

Speaker A

On paper had all of the problems that you're supposed to have that you're supposed to go to jail. And I'm not saying I never made no mistakes and did some silly things cuz that's being a young boy on the ends. But I always had

41:04

Speaker A

pride in being clever because I had gone to this Saturday school provision where number one, it's interesting because in my class, in my school, which was a mixed school, there was a lot of middle- class kids in my school. I was like top

41:15

Speaker A

or second top always at in class. But in my black Saturday school, I was like number three. And the two kids that were better than me were both darkkinned and both had dreadlocks. And so I was like, I never I just honestly never thought

41:27

Speaker A

people because it was so obvious to me in my community that people thought a lot of education. Even my bad man uncles were like, "You're going to stay in school. we're going to beat you up, right? Um, and so I was being fed a very

41:38

Speaker A

different story. I knew who Mansamusa was when I was seven. Now we can debate whether or not African monarchs should be romanticized anymore than monarchs anywhere else. But the point is I knew that there were kingdoms and histories

41:48

Speaker A

and metallurgy and literacy. People reach all the way to adulthood believing Africa had no writing before Europeans showed up and gave it to them. And that's really sad. I'll give you one example that I found out recently that

42:00

Speaker A

even I was shocked which comes to I think storytelling. and the importance of the way in which narratives around history are found. And I've spent much of my adult life reading African history, and I didn't find this out till

42:09

Speaker A

about two years ago. In 1686, an entire century before what is usually referred to as the abolitionist movement, an exiled Angolan prince went to the Vatican and fought a two-year court case for the abolition of slavery. How do we not know this, right?

42:24

Speaker A

How has this never been seen? He was his name was Lorenzo Mendoka for anyone who wants to look him up. He was he was Christianized, right? How have we never found this out? There are Ethiopian philosophy books written in GZ that have

42:35

Speaker A

now been translated into English that people can buy. The the Tariq Alfatash, which is one of the original documents from about 1599 written about West African history in West Africa, is available in English today. Like you could almost forgive people in the 60s

42:49

Speaker A

for being that ignorant because a lot of that scholarly work hadn't been done. A lot of that work was done by the post-independence uh African scholars and by lots of African-Americans who used their for one of a better word privilege in society,

43:02

Speaker A

their access to institutions to go, I'm going to I'm going to go and find out if this nonsense I've been told about Africa is true. And so you find that a lot of the great work on African history, Dr. John Henrik Clark or Gomez

43:11

Speaker A

or many other people, it's actually African-American historians who who've put a lot of that work back into place.

43:17

Speaker A

Now if slavery and colonialism are viewed, we look at somewhere like China, the c what they refer to as the century of shame. Nobody thinks that century for which China was dominated by the British and other outsiders proves that China

43:29

Speaker A

had no history before that. Now if you're a Chinese person growing up today, that century is seen as a blip in what was otherwise a fairly continuous civilizational history with all sorts of problems and issues, but nonetheless a

43:40

Speaker A

history of intellectual inquiry and all of the full facets of human behavior. If slavery and colonialism is presented as where African history began and black people's story on this earth begins in being enslaved and conquered by others, how could you possibly have a good image

43:56

Speaker A

of yourself if you believe that to be true? Not you personally, I just mean people, right? Um, another question. And so I think that's the importance of of of Black Saturday school for me. Yes. So if we circle back to Baldwin, so I read

44:08

Speaker A

Another Country and If Beiel Street Could Talk. And what stood out to me is that even though the pieces of fiction being written there, they served as amazing primary sources of African-American history and experiences of young black Americans in the 1960s

44:22

Speaker A

and 70s. Do you think there are any lessons we can learn from Baldwin about the importance of education and history as a means of addressing society's problems? Yeah. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, I mean colonial powers wouldn't lie so much about history if it wasn't

44:39

Speaker A

tremendously important right if there was just a sort of look we conquered you cuz we had you know repeat firing machine guns and quinine which is essentially without that the scramble for Africa would have been impossible right if we said look you had some

44:52

Speaker A

advanced civilizations and we just got the edge over you very temporarily actually you're now giving a potential rival ammunition to fight back so what do you do you say oh no no our conquest of yours isn't just another in the long

45:03

Speaker A

line of human conquest you are innately and permanently inferior. And if you take control of the education system of a group of people and get them to believe that, I'm not saying you can entirely prevent rebellion, but you can

45:16

Speaker A

certainly control it and you can control challenges and you can convince a group of people that they have no internal resources with which they could possibly develop. Everything they need to develop is is based on you. And I think that in

45:29

Speaker A

Baldorwin's work, coming back to really the the first point, simply being that brilliant in an era when this group of people are supposedly inferior, I think that alone is a really really important uh demonstration to say nothing of the

45:45

Speaker A

way in which he humanizes these characters, which obviously he would, but we say obviously he would when we have a long representation in Hollywood of very very bad writing of very very flat black characters, very very flat indigenous American characters, very

45:58

Speaker A

flat women characters even, right? Because to humanize, i.e. to give another person that is part of one's out group full human characteristics, it then wouldn't be possible to treat them as if they were subhuman, would it? And I think that one of the great things

46:12

Speaker A

that generation of fantastic African-American writers did, not just Baldwin, but Alice Walker and Tony Morrison especially, they gave they also allowed black people to be flawed. One of my real pet peeves about racism is the idea that X group of people has to

46:29

Speaker A

be perfect before they are available for proper treatment. I don't think we want to apply that to white people, right?

46:36

Speaker A

And and no one wants that to be applied to their own group because everyone knows their own inroup is just as full of as everyone else. But the point is racism is about saying everyone in your inroup who's bad is bad because of

46:48

Speaker A

their phenotype. not bad because they share human flaws with other groups of people that style and that brilliance of writing is allowy flawed, nuanced, beautiful, brilliant, complicated human beings.

47:03

Speaker A

Let's take some questions from the floor. If you can raise your hands, I'll take a cluster of three. Okay, we got one at the back there. You stand up. One, two, young man. Yes, you. Yes. Yes.

47:17

Speaker A

Yes. Sorry. Yes. No, you young woman. And yes, you at the back. Okay, go.

47:29

Speaker A

Please stand up. Please stand up. Um, on account of the roll back of quality, diversity, and inclusion policies, would you state that it's been an asset or liability to black people's progression? So maybe on the happy side it's like yay um now we earn our

47:44

Speaker A

positions in workplaces and stuff fair and share or the sad side which is like we have a systemically racist society can we please have our scholarships and our access to certain institutions cuz things are tricky for us. Is it good or

47:57

Speaker A

bad? Um, well, first of all, if the establishment is rolling something back, they must believe that something was gained, right? So, I'm not going to say DEI is the is the solution to all of the world's problems. First of all, the

48:12

Speaker A

interesting thing is if you have a room full of all upper class white males, apparently that's a meritocracy. I mean, that's a that's a fascinating assumption, right? Um, but if anyone else is in there, it's DEI. If you look

48:25

Speaker A

at the amount of people that are legacy students, right, that that went to the right school, there's a there's a British scholar I was referred to and I don't call him a scholar. I don't I don't mind embarrassing him, a man

48:35

Speaker A

called Toby Young who got into I can't remember I think it was Oxford, not Cambridge, but he got in because his daddy wrote him a letter and he's become a very prominent man in British society who thinks his opinions are really

48:44

Speaker A

really important even though he's extremely mediocre and he only got into the right uni because he's because his daddy wrote him a letter and there we all know there's bare loads of posh kids like that. So what do they even mean?

48:52

Speaker A

Right? But but this kind of thing that making a provision so that other people have access is inherently a bad and a huge injustice is is is being done. Um when many of the people who are in positions of power and influence today

49:09

Speaker A

got there because they were born into the right family. Sheer luck of circumstance. Mommy and daddy had money went to the right school. None of us deny that that happens.

49:16

Speaker A

Um, I don't think the roll back is necessarily good and I think the way it's being used in America is sort of almost like a synonym for n-word like there sort of this this really s you know again the other thing about racist

49:30

Speaker A

people is they have this sort of coded language. Even in the 60s remember the argument was separate but equal. Nobody said separate but unequal. They knew damn well it was unequal but they said no separate but equal. You know we don't

49:40

Speaker A

we're not going to send our kids to school in Baltimore but you know separate but equal. Um, and so I think that it's probably not a good thing that that's happening, even if that was an inadequate solution to many of the

49:52

Speaker A

problems. And even if DEI was mainly focused around corporate jobs and middle class careers and basically, if we're being honest, benefited the kinds of black people that would have probably succeeded at some level anyway. It did didn't do much to affect the situation

50:06

Speaker A

of the black underclass. And I'm not sure of the data, but from some of the stuff I've been reading, I need to do research on this, but I think a lot of the primary beneficiaries of DNI ended up being white women anyway, right?

50:17

Speaker A

So, and there's lots of crossover between the kinds of people who want to push back against ethnic diversity that also want to push push back against gender diversity. Um, it is what it is.

50:28

Speaker A

It wasn't the solution to all of the world's problems, but I don't think the roll back is is good. And I don't think any of that meant that people weren't earning their jobs on merit. often when you look at the data let's take this

50:39

Speaker A

country for example we know that if you've got a black sounding name you're going to get less call backs we know that in schools factually we there was a study done which I quote in natives where they looked at data from every

50:50

Speaker A

single secondary school in the country and they saw that for black children irrespective of social class there was a massive gap between their performance in standardized testing and their teachers assessing them in the classroom who knew their identity so there was an

51:03

Speaker A

assumption they were less intelligent they are if we remove race from and we talk about class in England, all of a sudden everyone would understand it. We all know that white Mike from council estate X goes into school, he

51:14

Speaker A

talks a certain way, teachers assume he's less clever than he is just because the way he sounds and the way he looks.

51:18

Speaker A

We all understand that and suddenly when it becomes to race, we get confused about that. Sorry, next question. Thank you so much for spending time talking to us today. My question is regarding the question of history and narrative. um as

51:30

Speaker A

uni students who are taught a curriculum which is mostly based on philosophers who write from a western practice which didn't necessarily still has those racist undertones in what they're writing. How can we be conscious or prevent internalizing these racist

51:44

Speaker A

beliefs in current day whilst we're learning under these institutions? Amazing question for me. I think there is no need to throw out the baby with the bath war. I am not part of the let's throw the entire history of western

51:58

Speaker A

philosophy and science in the dust bin because many of those thinkers were racist. It's a pity that some extraordinarily brilliant people were racist there. Fortunately, there is also a long history of philosophy of poetry of literature of attempts of what we

52:11

Speaker A

would now call the scientific method and so on in the Islamic world in Africa in Asia in Meso America. So I think once we supplement some of the brilliance undeniable brilliance of a Leonardo da Vinci or a Michelangelo or an Isaac

52:24

Speaker A

Newton or a Shakespeare with some knowledge about what the rest of the world was up to. I don't think those kinds of feelings of inferiority would even come into the picture. If you know Ahmed Baba, he was a West African

52:34

Speaker A

scholar in the 15th 16th century. His complaint in the 15th 16th century sorry was my friends make fun of me cuz I've only got 1500 books.

52:43

Speaker A

1500 books in the 16th century. There are 3/4 of a million handwritten manuscripts surviving from the libraries of Timbuktu alone. So if you're if you're coming into it, this is this is your entrance point. A thorough knowledge of world history. There's a

52:56

Speaker A

great Japanese novel called The Tale of Geng written a thousand years ago. People say Santis is the father of the modern novel. 600 years before Sylvanas.

53:04

Speaker A

The book's a thousand pages long. If you're coming at it with a with an awareness that this is what the Japanese were doing, this is what the Chinese were doing. we haven't even got into India, right? We're talking about 5,000

53:14

Speaker A

years of literature and institutions of higher learning and all the other things that we know are going going on in the Indian subcontinent. Then you can appreciate western philosophy and western achievements even in spite of the arrogance and the racism as a

53:26

Speaker A

continuation of a human endeavor to know about the world. And isn't it a pity that so many of these otherwise brilliant people chose to be bigots instead of seeing themsel in that human continuity? Fortunately, there were even in that period, lots of including white

53:41

Speaker A

men who did view themselves in that way. Those are often not the people we teach.

53:45

Speaker A

I'll give you one example. There's a great English scholar called Gerald Gerald Massie. He was a working-class Englishman who taught himself to read while working as a market trader in the 19th century. He wrote a whole six volume history. It's massive. about this

53:56

Speaker A

big that is a was intended to be a companion to Darwin's theory of evolution arguing quite explicitly that humanity evolved out of Africa not just genetically but culturally as well with he calls it with uh with a with ancient

54:09

Speaker A

Egypt as the mouthpiece and Africa as the birthplace this is a white guy right in the 19th century we don't teach him today even in white institutions because it doesn't fit the narrative because we're told everybody was racist back

54:21

Speaker A

then but if this guy reached completely different conclusions that means there were people even then who had enough intellectual integrity to go before I make pronouncements about Africa I'm going to do some research and so what often happens is even within the west

54:35

Speaker A

those for one of a better word white scholars that rebelled against the status quo were just simply not taught last example I'll give countstantine devi one of the first men to see the pyramids and the sphinx when they were

54:45

Speaker A

unveiled by the French and he immediately looked at the sphinx and went oh my god that's a black face look at look at the face that's an African face a stereotypically African face and he wrote that at the

54:56

Speaker A

he's not taught in the same way. Um, and so yeah, I I think that's what you do is a thorough knowledge of world history which is easily available in a public library in these days um will wouldn't even allow those feelings to to take

55:08

Speaker A

over you. Let's have some more questions. Yes, at the back. Yes, I'll try and answer them shorter. And then down here too to meet you all. My name's Romeo.

55:18

Speaker A

Thank you all for your talk today. I wanted to ask that um color you were speaking about James Buckley's kind of retorts to James Baldwin. I wanted to ask what do you think about the idea of the model minority? This idea of like

55:33

Speaker A

when we speak about about a minority they have to act in a certain way in order to be recognized and how do you think we can combat that and kind of cultivate you know good question.

55:44

Speaker A

Yeah absolutely great question. I think societies need, remember, racist people don't want to think they're bad people.

55:50

Speaker A

They want to think the problem is the group of people that they're racist against, right? And so you need a group of people you can say, well, look, they came here and did well. What's your problem? Now, don't get me wrong, that's

56:01

Speaker A

not to say that there are not things to be learned from communities that are doing better in education or doing better in in certain professions and so on. I think there are, but I find it interesting even in Britain how that's

56:11

Speaker A

used. Brit British West Africans for example on free school meals are about four times more likely to turn up at university or similarly poor white kids.

56:18

Speaker A

But that's not presented as black culture. Who is more in touch with black culture? First generation West Africans that speak Euroba and Ibo or black English people? Does that mean if we're going to do culture and model minority?

56:29

Speaker A

I think it's interesting where we pick and choose who is and isn't the model minority based on what if that's the situation in the country today. If the argument is that black English kids would benefit from hanging out withwami

56:40

Speaker A

and adding Olu more, I'm cool with that. I grew up with both types of West Africans and there were the people whose parents had gone to uni back home and there were the people whose parents hadn't. Clearly, there were differences.

56:50

Speaker A

I would call this class more than culture. If you came to the country as a doctor and you live temporarily on North Peek estate, yes, you're workingass, but it's not the same working class. Come on. It's not the same.

57:03

Speaker A

Um but I think the uh the need for that model minority so people don't feel bad about what they are doing and so they have a group of people they can say well they did well without examining some of the

57:16

Speaker A

histories of why they did well. Simon gave the example earlier of East African Gujarat who no doubt have been very very successful but came here with a history of human capital having been running business being a merchant class in East

57:27

Speaker A

Africa. It's true. Many of them came here in poor. Many of them had their possessions confiscated and suffered injustice. But that can't take what was already in here. But is that innate or is that something that was was acquired?

57:38

Speaker A

Was learned. Some more questions. Hello, I'm Dr. Alicia Lola Jones on faculty in music here and I just I'm so grateful to have your presence. Oh, thank you. Um, there's a concept that we often explore when we're thinking about African

57:54

Speaker A

derived aesthetics. um in the United States and in the diaspora and it is that of the person who's the praise singer, the commentator, the debater.

58:04

Speaker A

You know where I'm going with that go. In what ways do you see yourself as being a go carrying the culture with you through song, through poetry, and through conversation.

58:16

Speaker A

Thank you. That's a fantastic question. Very consciously actually, I wrote um an EP called Visions. Um and it's an EP and comic book. came out in 2017 and it literally traces the history of hip-hop to that lineage. I think again one of

58:30

Speaker A

the damaging things when you brainwasher people into believing that their ancestors were culturally empty-handed.

58:36

Speaker A

You can get even members of the black. My grand used to say an African way African. And I'm like, she used to say to me when I used to go to places in Africa, Africa dangerous. We're from Jamaican. Like, and I'm not saying

58:48

Speaker A

Jamaica's dangerous cuz if you're in a middle class area, it's lovely. But the truth is Jamaica has a much higher murder rate than almost any country in Africa. So where did that perception come from for my grandmother and this

58:58

Speaker A

desire to disconnect herself? A woman, you'd look at her and you go, she could easily be from Ghana, like visibly, right? What had convinced her that there was something shameful about that? And if the music of the African diaspora,

59:10

Speaker A

for example, well, did it pop out of a vacuum? Did we come with nothing? We wouldn't suggest that for any other group of people. No one would suggest that Italian-Americans or Spanish Americans or any other group of people,

59:21

Speaker A

Jewish Americans, etc. came without a cultural uh equipment. Ours simply was affected and brutalized and downplayed and but it wasn't destroyed by slavery.

59:32

Speaker A

And I would argue that the traditions of the African-American preacher, the traditions of hip-hop music, I mean, you can there's footage of people rapping in the 1920s. Even this idea when we say hip-hop was invented in the 70, yes, it

59:44

Speaker A

was codified that way, but the art of rhythmically rhyming over the drum has been going on for thousands of years.

59:48

Speaker A

And I so I was again fortunate enough to grow up knowing what agree was and very much saw myself as trying quite uh explicitly to be part of that tradition.

59:59

Speaker A

Thank Thank you. We've got two behind. One directly behind and and then Yep. Please stand up and then there's a woman behind. Stand up too so I don't forget you. That's it. Yep.

60:11

Speaker A

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you very Thank you very much, Akala. Uh as a middle-class Gujarati woman from East Africa, I'm very grateful to get a mention. And yes, my father did have a corner shop. So he did have what? Sorry. Had a corner shop. So

60:27

Speaker A

it happens. My question actually is is it's fascinating to hear about the importance of narratives and I would love to get your idea on how can we debias in a technological age of AI. How can we bring the narratives which are so

60:49

Speaker A

much hidden in the archives and in the corners of the world? How can we do that uh for the future? Fantastic question.

60:57

Speaker A

And I think one of both the promises and the challenges of the technological world we're in is that on the one hand you have a mass media that can spread around the world and instantly sort of change an image. One of the things I saw

61:08

Speaker A

and I'm not I'm not saying I know lots of people have made criticisms of the film but one of the things I thought was interesting was I saw this footage somewhere I think it might have been Korea but please don't quote me on that

61:17

Speaker A

of them showing Black Panther in Korea and looking at people's how it affected people's and almost immediately there was a change perception of what blackness meant because of course if you're in many of those countries if rap videos is the only image you've seen and

61:29

Speaker A

even then it's not the roots and tribe called Quest and and Lauren Hill and a broad array of rap music you'll necessarily see and it may be only the most negative portion of that music. You may not even mean to, but you may come

61:40

Speaker A

to certain conclusions about a group of people if you haven't had a holistic picture. So, we live in an age of mass media where we can change a narrative very, very quickly if something is popular enough and widely viewed enough

61:51

Speaker A

and seen enough. The other downside of it which I'm not so hopeful about is we also live in a world of silos where people can go on the internet and find whatever bias they want and go into whatever sinkhole they want and find as

62:04

Speaker A

much confirmation bias as they want to convince themsel that their worldview that they already wanted to have is correct. And what scares me I think we all like to believe that humans are smart and rational and are persuadable.

62:19

Speaker A

we may be overestimating the human species and there may be lots of people who who just enjoy being bigots like there there's not necess we look at Europe today right so the the traditional explanation is that the rise

62:32

Speaker A

of fascism sorry I know this is a slightly longer answer than you wanted but the rise of fascism in the 30s was economically explainable that's what we like to tell ourselves what do we say today Germanyy's a middle-ass country today

62:43

Speaker A

right Austria is a middle-ass country today the standard of living in those countries is fantastic Holland Fantastic. You lose your job in Holland, the government pays you for like two years, 70% of your salary. Right. So, it's not a meaningful economic crisis

62:57

Speaker A

that is causing some of Is it an emotional an emotional response to to the poisonous narrative that we're being fed on a daily basis? I mean, yeah, if it's not economical, it must be something else. Yes. But I think we

63:10

Speaker A

hoped that it was economical cuz then all you got to do is fix the economy and humans will be lovely and we'll all get along which is which was maybe a romantic picture of the human species.

63:20

Speaker A

Maybe there are some people that just genuinely enjoy going anything I don't like about myself it's your fault and that's a wonderful crutch to have to go anything I don't enjoy about myself there's somebody else to blame even if

63:32

Speaker A

my life materially is wonderful. Um, now I'm not qualified in terms of biology and neurochemistry and so on to know whether or not this is part of our wiring. There is evidence that there are lots of human beings for whatever reason

63:45

Speaker A

who are not wired that way and who try their best to cooperate and collaborate and so on. But it it does scare me that there are these silos on the internet people can convince themselves of last round of questions. Um, Yep. Please

63:58

Speaker A

stand up. One, two. Let's have one over here. I'm trying to balance it out. Yes, sir. Yes. Yes. Stand up. Yes. Yes. Yes.

64:08

Speaker A

Oh, yeah. Got got to take one at the back up in the gods. To be fair, we haven't had any questions from the top. There we go.

64:15

Speaker A

That's it. Okay. Thank you very much for going up there. Please. Uh, short question and I'll be I'll try and be short in my answers. I'm sorry. My question goes back to the beginning of the discussion where we kind of talked

64:26

Speaker A

about um inviting people who are like separate from um going through a similar issue but in a separate space. Um and so I wanted to know or if you had any thoughts on why they invite Baldwin um when he's like living in exile from

64:42

Speaker A

America for for like a lot of his life. Um so like publishes or starts to draft notes of a native son from Paris. um why is he also the voice that they choose to speak on an American issue that does

64:54

Speaker A

kind of reflect a British issue um when he's I wouldn't say distant but at least geog geographically distant from the issues that he's speaking on in America.

65:06

Speaker A

This is the point you were making. Yeah, I think it's easier to do. I think it's hard to say. I mean Baldwin was so unbelievably brilliant that it's hard to say they were just doing it because he was living in Paris. if he was living in

65:16

Speaker A

New York writing books of the same quality. Now, I'm not saying he would tell you himself. Emotionally, he wouldn't have been capable of doing that because he would have got caught up on what. But that's a separate question

65:26

Speaker A

from whether or not he would have ended up with the platform he ended up with.

65:29

Speaker A

Some people are just so much better than everyone else. Tony Morrison is another example. like she it's just so obvious that she's better than 99% of the people to ever write novels that even as a black woman born in that era in America,

65:39

Speaker A

America kind of went, "All right, then like like how are we going to deny this?" And and I think part of his platform was simply just his command of it's embarrassing. Sometimes you'll have a turn of phrase and I'll read it and

65:54

Speaker A

you know it just makes you laugh like it's so good it just makes you laugh.

65:57

Speaker A

It's almost like comedy. And so I don't know in his case whether it was just the comfortable distance the guy who's been living in Paris or it was this is the guy who write wrote that book and that

66:07

Speaker A

book and that book. Okay. Up in the top there. Hi. Um my name is Edin. I uh study sociology. Um my question is quite long so sorry in advance. Um but essentially Simon's going to get you.

66:24

Speaker A

Um so essentially my question is on the separation of racial struggles and um discussions about racialization and the question of gender. Um essentially a lot of these conversations um do not discuss women or gendered aspects of the struggle. Take France

66:47

Speaker A

Fenon um and his points often coming at the expense of women. um the question of prestige, what kind of knowledge, the way we deliver knowledge, the invisibilization of na labor. Um some scholars even say women are the first

67:02

Speaker A

enslaved people. Um and the gatekeeping of women's safety to romantic access to men and therefore the institutionalization of beauty and sexual politics, which needless to say is also racialized. Um, and now having discussed kind of the importance of

67:19

Speaker A

narratives and community building to the racialization and the institutionalization of race racial um, oppression. I and knowing that women are expert community builders on mass and um, writing narratives um, and other genders as well. I want and how they

67:40

Speaker A

carry and reproduce uh, the nation's cultures in many ways. Thank you. I wonder how um is there a question in there somewhere? Maybe there's not and it's fine. You think this in this uh lack of discourse around gender is on

67:55

Speaker A

purpose? Okay, there we go. Is there a l I mean thank you. Um well well first of all male writers myself included neglecting gender as a perspective and being quite rightly criticized for that is is probably not that surprising if one's personal

68:17

Speaker A

experience is is part of the way in. Um, two, I think we need to be careful that we don't attempt to use identity as a way of idealizing any group of people. Right.

68:32

Speaker A

Right. So, for example, in in British history, you know, when when slavery was abolished in this country, almost half the slave owners in this country were women. There's little evidence that they were more likely to set the pe humans

68:41

Speaker A

that they own free. Now, there were also massive amounts of women in the abolitionist movement, right? So, I think swapping one demonization for idealization, I'm not sure is necessarily uh a way to go because once you include class, I mean, we've got a female leader

68:58

Speaker A

of the Conservative Party. I'm not sure. You keep bringing her up, don't you? Come on, let's get No, no, no, but it off your chest. No, but no, but even if we look Even if we look, a lot of

69:07

Speaker A

historical facts would surprise people. I mean, some of West Africa's most successful slave traders were were also women, right? the the current president of Nigeria has named himself because I think he's not actually from the family after Lady Tonubu. You can all Google

69:19

Speaker A

who Lady Tonubu was. She was one of 19th century Nigeria's most prominent slave traders. Women should obviously not be oppressed on the grounds of them being women. Absolutely. And obviously, but I'm the confluence between gender and class and having a bigger discussion

69:34

Speaker A

about the nature of political power in the world and all that sort of stuff. I think it's it's a bit more murky than some of what was just said. They're kind of like black men, right? Black men being oppressed doesn't mean we're

69:45

Speaker A

morally superior to everybody else. As we saw in post-independence countries, many of the former revolutionaries turned around and did many of the same things they were fighting against.

69:55

Speaker A

Right? And so, human nature is is very very complicated. But all of that said, I think it's perfectly legitimate to criticize male writers in general, myself included, for having blind spots around the oppression of women or not talking about a given issue or so on and

70:07

Speaker A

challenge that. I think that's a perfectly uh valid point of critique. Thank you. Thank you. Please.

70:17

Speaker A

So, thank you so much for your time. Um, so this is coming back onto your book natives. I personally found it uh almost autobiographical from my own um experience. So um I was just wondering if you could give us a sneak peek or a

70:33

Speaker A

hint maybe as to the um the next stories that you're writing. If I could if I could if I could just add to that. I mean I think it's a great it's a great question. What what next?

70:45

Speaker A

But also too, I mean, we have very many bright special minds in this room tonight. And uh we we've heard a lot of uh dire stuff uh what's going on this side of the Atlantic and and the other

71:01

Speaker A

side. And yet I'm sure many of the people that have come here this evening to listen to you uh primarily um is wanting something to be hopeful Yeah.

71:12

Speaker A

about and to to think what they can do. Um, in spite of telling on the news and feeling triggered and feeling it's a little bit over overwhelming as a storyteller, as someone that inspires uh many uh how do you land something with this

71:31

Speaker A

generation in which they can run with? I mean, they're already doing it. There's been protests in central London every Saturday for the last year and a half.

71:38

Speaker A

Um, now this is despite the fact that people have been brainwashed to believe that Palestinians are subhuman and people are just saying no, absolutely not. We don't accept that and we're going to make it clear that the British

71:51

Speaker A

government is not acting with our approval, is not acting with our consensus. We may not be able to change it, but we're going to make it abundantly clear that we do not approve of this thing. And so when I say all of

72:00

Speaker A

these things about the flaws of perhaps human nature or at least the flaws of politics, we also have to understand there's always been resistance. There's always been people that have fought back. There's always been people that have tried to build community and it's

72:12

Speaker A

our own families are imperfect. So why would human society not be imperfect? But I think actually when I look at the younger generation and we can sometimes get depressed by the fact we have to fight the same battles over and over and

72:22

Speaker A

over again. But if you give up, what would the world look like? You don't do anything. What would the world look like? And so I actually think that the fact that people still care despite the tiresomeness of history, despite the

72:35

Speaker A

blatant abuses of power, despite the unbelievable injustices in the world, that's where I find inspiration, where I find solace and where I find strength.

72:42

Speaker A

And to answer your question in terms of what what stories am I telling next? I have had an album completed for about a year and a half actually. But um it's an album graphic novel collaboration again, but a much bigger one. So the graphic

72:53

Speaker A

novel took ages to finish, but we're getting ready to put that out at the moment. and I've been doing a lot of writing for television. Um, so there should be hopefully we get some stuff made in the future. And lastly, I'm

73:02

Speaker A

actually in the middle of filming and adaptation of Natives for documentary. So actually that's partly we're filming that here today.

73:13

Speaker A

Um, so yeah, just continuing continuing trying to trying to, you know, and art is another place that I find lots of inspiration. There's still so much great and beautiful art being made in the world. So there's a place to thank Thank you. Thank you. I'm

73:27

Speaker A

going to hand over now to to Keith McGee for a final comments. Um, the reason why I wanted to hand over to Keith McGee is that he came to my office about four months ago and he just barked into my

73:40

Speaker A

office and said, "Uh, Simon, uh, did you know that uh, in 2025 on the uh, 18th of of February, it is the anniversary uh, of the James Baldwin speech. And he said to me, "What are you going to do about

73:55

Speaker A

it?" Well done, Keith. And I said, "We'll do something." And this is why we're all here together today because of because of [Applause] this. And he and he said to me, he said to me, "Let's do two things uh on this

74:20

Speaker A

evening. Uh let's celebrate uh this great activist scholar, James Borwin." But he said, "Let's bring somebody that will inspire a generation to follow in his footsteps and do great things, great things in the world." That's why we ask

74:37

Speaker A

you. You're going to make me blush, man. Thank you. Good evening. Um, we have gathered to reflect on a moment in history that continues to shape our presence. 60 years ago in this very space, as you know, James Baldwin

75:07

Speaker A

stood before the world confronting contradictions of the American dream. That dream was not is not only an American dream, but one for all of those who share this particular hue, regardless of the continent. Baldwin's words filled with both pain and profound

75:33

Speaker A

truth unmasked the reality that for many black Americans, the dream was an illusion, a promise never fulfilled.

75:43

Speaker A

Baldwin's debate with Buckley was not just about the politics of race in America. It was a global moral reckoning, a call to global consciousness.

75:56

Speaker A

And yet here we are six decades later still grappling globally with the very forces of systemic racism economic deprivity, and political division that he so powerfully exposed that night 60 years ago.

76:14

Speaker A

In our conversation tonight, we have a moral literary activist genius and scholar who reminded us that history is not the past. It is the present. We carry our history with us. We are history.

76:34

Speaker A

And so if we are to honor Baldwin's legacy, we must recognize that our collective struggle is not simply to remember history, but to actively shape its future. We must remember that history belongs to everyone. Whether you're the casting

76:52

Speaker A

director or the lead actor, the supporting actress or the script writer, the cinematographer or the c making a cameo appearance. History belongs to all of us. And the future depends on all of us reclaiming and building democracy. Not as an institution of

77:14

Speaker A

power, but as a force of the people. In a world where voices are being silenced, where truth is under attack, where inequities persist, the responsibility falls to all of us.

77:32

Speaker A

students, academics activists citizens, no matter your color, your race, your ethnic identity, we must build together to return power to the people. This is not about America. This is about all of us.

77:53

Speaker A

Democracy dies where injustice prevails. But democracy lives when ordinary people stand up, speak out, and demand change. Let's not just be inspired by Baldwin's courage, Kala's courage, but let's embody what they're saying to us.

78:16

Speaker A

Thank you, Aaliyah, and to the Cambridge Union. Thank you, Lord Willie. And thank you, Akala.

78:26

Speaker A

And so as we close this evening, let us remember Baldwin's charge to us. Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until everything is faced. Thank you.

78:46

Speaker A

[Music]

Topics: James Baldwin Cambridge Union racial equality social justice civil rights Akala Lord Simon Woolley American Dream racism identity

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