The Cross of Redemption (16 page)

Well, then, for the sake of one’s sanity, one simply ceases trying to make them hear. If they think that things are more important than people—and they do—well, let them think so. Let them be destroyed by their things. If they think that I was happy being a slave and am now redeemed by having become—and on their terms, as they think—the equal of my overseers, well, let them think so. If they think that I am flattered by their generosity in allowing me to become a sharecropper in a system which I know to be criminal—and which is placed squarely on the backs of nonwhite people all over the world—well, let them think so. Let the dead bury their dead. And it is not only the black artist who arrives at this exasperated and merciless turning point. For that matter, it is not even an attitude recently arrived at. If one’s ancestors were slaves here, it is an attitude which can be called historical.

The ground on which black and white artists may be able to work together, to learn from each other, is simply not provided by the system
under which artists in this country work. The system is the profit system, and the artists and their work are “properties.” No single word more aptly sums up the nature of this particular beast. In such a system, it makes perfect sense that Hollywood would turn out so “liberal” an abomination as
If He Hollers, Let Him Go!
while leaving absolutely unnoticed and untouched such a really fine and truthful study of the black-white madness as, for example, Ernest J. Gaines’s
Of Love and Dust
. For that matter, it makes perfect sense that Hollywood lifted the title
If He Hollers, Let Him Go!
from a fine novel by Chester Himes, published about twenty years ago, and has yet to announce any plans to film it, which, all things considered, is probably just as well. What it comes to is that the system under which black and white artists in this country work is geared to the needs of a people who, so far from being able to abandon the doctrine of white supremacy, seem prepared to blow up the globe to maintain it.

And
if
white people are prepared to blow up the globe in order to maintain that faith of their fathers which placed Sambo in chains, then they are certainly willing to allow him his turn on television, stage, and screen. It is a small price for white people to pay for the continuance of their domination. But the price of appearing may prove to be too high for black people to pay. The price a black actor pays for playing, in effect, a white role—for being “integrated,” say, in some soupy soap opera—is, at best, to minimize and, at worst, to lie about everything that produced him, about everything he knows. White people don’t want to hear what he knows, and the system can’t afford it. What
is
being attempted is a way of involving, or incorporating, the black face into the national fantasy in such a way that the fantasy will be left unchanged and the social structure left untouched. I doubt that even American “know-how” can achieve anything so absurd and so disastrous; but anyway, I think that we may one day owe a great debt to those who have refused to play this particular ball game. What they are rejecting is not a people, but a doctrine, and their seeming separation may prove to be one of the few hopes of genuine union that we have ever had in this so dangerously divided house.

(1969)

·      ·     ·

MR
.
BALDWIN
. I would like to make a suggestion before I begin. I brought with me Mrs. Betty Shabazz, who is Malcolm X’s widow.

MR. SCHEUER
. Would you like to invite her to testify with you?

MR. BALDWIN
. Yes.

I am much in favor of the proposed legislation. I have to be honest with you and say that it occurs to me that the principal problem one faces in teaching Negroes their culture is that we will find that impossible to do without teaching American history, in a sense, then, for the first time. The
burden under which the Negro child operates in this country, as your previous witnesses have indicated, is that he has no sense of identity.

It occurs to me that this involves a great national waste on the part of the morale of the child who is black. It appears to me that it is a great national waste not only for a Negro child but for any child growing up in this country. Anyone who is black is taught, as my generation was taught, that Negroes are not a civilization or culture, and that we came out of the jungle and were saved by the missionary.

Not only is this something awful to me, which eventually puts me on the street corner, but it’s awful to everyone. You cannot educate a child if you first destroy his morale. That is why they leave school. You cannot educate him if he sees what is happening to his fathers, if he sees Ph.D.’s toting garbage.

If he sees in fact on the one hand no past and really no present and certainly no future, then you have created what the American public likes to think of, in the younger generation, as the nigger we invent and the nigger they invent. What has happened is that you destroy the child from the cradle.

MR. SCHEUER
. It is the institutionalization of the prophecy.

MR. BALDWIN
. If the cat cannot join a union no matter how many pennies he saves, he will still be at the bottom of the barrel. There is really nothing you can do with him. By and by, he will not listen to you and he will not listen to me. I am not a witness nor a hope. I am proof of what the country does to you if you are black. That is true even if I am Jackie Robinson.

MR. SCHEUER
. Do you think that this legislation in a minor way—none of us suggest that it is a great panacea—might bring together the talent that would produce a program to open up the doors of our education system, of our textbooks, of our media, to portray the role of the Negro in American life, and in world affairs, so that the Negro would have an enhanced self-image and so that the white child would have a true sense of Negro contributions?

MR. BALDWIN
. That is the hope of the proposed bill. But we would be deluding ourselves if we did not understand that the particular history of my forefathers in this country can change the climate in this country. That climate is not one of flattery.

MR. SCHEUER
. I think the Anti-Riot Commission Report says that as it is, as you have been doing for many years.

MR. BALDWIN
. You have to face the fact that in the textbook industry—the key word there is “industry”—McGraw-Hill is not yet about to destroy all its
present textbooks and create new ones, because they will not be bought by the colleges and by the schools, at least not yet in St. Louis, or in Maryland, or New Orleans, or for that matter in New York. It is, after all, a profit-motive industry.

One cannot expect a business to put itself out of business under altruistic motives. One has got to find some way, then, it would seem to me, to indicate to the textbook industry, which is a great stumbling block here, that would indicate to them that it is in their self-interest.

For example, the terrifying thing in the minds of the public was Malcolm X. One of the reasons you got Malcolm X was because when he was quite young and wanted to become a lawyer, his teacher advised him to do something that a colored person could do, like become a carpenter.

Only the child, or the brother or sister or the mother of that child, knows what happens to that child’s morale at that time. This is ingrained in the American mythology. It will not be tomorrow that it is uprooted. We have to begin.

We are beginning late, I must say, but any beginning is better than none. But I don’t think we should pretend that it is going to be easy.

MR. SCHEUER
. Can you give us any recommendations of yours as to how this proposal of ours can be improved and how it can be refined and how it can be given a clearer direction? Can you give us any insights as to how we can do the job better?

MR. BALDWIN
. If I were you and sitting where you are sitting, there are some people I would get in touch with. I would get in touch with Sterling Brown out of the University of Washington; I would talk to John [Hope] Franklin. I am not in agreement with Mr. [Roy] Innis entirely about this being an all-black commission. I would also talk to William Styron, but I would talk to people like Sterling Brown.

MR. SCHEUER
. Did you say you were not in agreement that it should be all Negro?

MR. BALDWIN
. I think it would be self-defeating. As I read it, it would be an attempt to teach American history. I am a little bit hard-bitten about white liberals.

MR. SCHEUER
. Is that a pejorative phrase when you use it?

MR. BALDWIN
. It can be. I don’t trust people who think of themselves as liberals. I do trust some white people, like Bill [Styron], he is not a Negro. He is a Deep Southern cat who has paid his dues and he has been through
the fire and he knows what it is about. I trust him more than Max Lesher. What I am saying is that I don’t trust missionaries.

I don’t want anybody working with me because they are doing something for me. What I want them to do is to work in their own communities. I want you to tell your brothers and your sisters and your wife and your children what it is all about. Don’t tell me, because I know already. You see what I mean?

You have the power. But to answer you and go back to your question, I think one of the stumbling blocks is that the nature of the black experience in this country does indicate something about the total American history which frightens Americans. It brings up all those things you have talked about and want to talk about.

It brings up the real history of the country—the history of our relationships with Mexicans and slaves. All these points contradict the myth of American history. It attacks the American identity in a sense.

Shirley Temple would be a different person if she were black.

MR. SCHEUER
. She probably would be a member of Congress.

MR. BALDWIN
. We can’t prove that by the members of Congress. You see what I mean. Someone like Sterling Brown is an old poet and an old blues singer. He knows more than, say, a man my age. He can tell you things which I cannot, about you and me. It is a level of experience about which Ray Charles sings and of which all Americans are still terrified.

If we are going to build a multiracial society, which is our only hope, then one has got to accept that I have learned a lot from you, and a lot of it is bitter, but you have a lot to learn from me, and a lot of that will be bitter. That bitterness is our only hope. That is the only way we get past it. Am I making sense to you?

MR. SCHEUER
. Absolutely.

Congressman Gus Hawkins of California.

MR. HAWKINS
. I must apologize for being called out of the room, Mr. Baldwin.

I certainly think that you have offered some very wonderful suggestions and some good comments. I particularly enjoyed what I considered to be the point that you made that the objective of such a commission would be to teach American history, making it plain and clear that the history of the black man in America is that part of American history. There is not reason to separate it.

You feel that competent persons, both black and white, should be engaged in doing this?

MR. BALDWIN
. It is our common history. My history is also yours.

MR. HAWKINS
. I certainly agree with you, Mr. Baldwin. I certainly appreciate this opportunity that you have afforded us.

MR. SCHEUER
. Congressman [William] Hathaway of Maine.

MR. HATHAWAY
. Mr. Baldwin, I would take it that you would agree that perhaps we should expand the scope of the bill to cover not only the history of the culture but also the contemporary heroes.

MR. BALDWIN
. Yes, but you must understand that, speaking as black Americans, my heroes have always been [seen] from the point of view of white Americans as bad niggers. Cassius Clay is one of my heroes but not one of yours.

I on the other hand am not suggesting that this commission should establish a hall of fame for great Negroes at all. What I am trying to suggest is that you recognize the role that my heroes—as distinguished from yours—have played in American life and the reasons why all my heroes came to such bloody ends.

From my point of view, Muhammad Ali Clay, without discussing his affiliations or what I may think of him, has been hanged by the public as a bad nigger. He is going to be an example to every other Negro man. Those are my heroes. Those are not the heroes of the American public. You will find yourself up against that fact before many days have passed.

Do you see what I mean? As long as my heroes are not yours, then the bitterness in the ghetto increases hour by hour and grows more and more dangerous and does not only blow up the ghetto but blows up the cities.

When I came back from New York a few weeks ago, I came back during the garbage strike, when all New York looked just like Harlem.

MR. SCHEUER
. It looked just like South Bronx, the district I represent, and I was happy to see the rest of the city have what the residents of Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant put up with 365 days of the year. It was a salutary experience.

MR. BALDWIN
. When you unleash a plague, it covers the entire city and nation. What has been happening to me all of these years is now beginning to happen to all of you, and this was inevitable. What we are involved with here is an attempt to have ourselves, and we need each other for that.

My history, though, contains the truth about America. It is going to be hard to teach it.