In 1983 Baldwin was appointed Five College Professor in the W. E. B. DuBois Department of Afro-American Studies of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. In that position he would teach and lecture at all the schools in the Amherst area—Amherst College, Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and the UMass Amherst. A number of African-American writers were teaching at Amherst at the time, including John Edgar Wideman (Homewood Trilogy), Julius Lester (Black Folktales)—incidentally, a black man who converted to Judaism—and Michael Thelwell (The Harder They Come), who also had been active with SNCC during the 1960s and was one of the founders of the Afro-American Studies program at that school.
Baldwin spoke on the campus of UMass Amherst on February 28, 1984, an election year: former Vice President Walter Mondale was running for the Democratic presidential nomination, as was political activist the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who had founded PUSH (People United to Save Humanity) in the 1970s and the National Rainbow Coalition in the 1980s. In January of that year, he had used the term “Hymietown” while discussing New York City. “Hymie” is a derogatory term used for Jews. Jackson later apologized for the remark, but it tarnished his campaign. Jackson would back out of the race after winning five primaries.
Though the first twenty seconds of the transcript was lost, the record of this event contains a great deal of interaction with the students after the body of his talk.
· · ·
BALDWIN: … He comes to collect the rent, so you know him in that role. He runs the grocery store and he gives you credit, so you know him in that role. He runs the drugstore and he bandages your wounds, and you know him in that role. You don’t really know him from anybody else, but your father says, and your aunt says, and the neighbors say, and the cops say, and the cops—you already know this—are for the most part not Jews, whatever at that moment in your life a Jew is. Well, time goes on, you deal with it one way or another.
When I was growing up it was a time, after all, of the Second World War. My best friends in high school were Jewish. It was a very, very important moment in my life because it was a time when I realized in a way not at all biblical, as I wrote somewhere, my friends, who really were my friends, were not so far from the fiery furnace after all. They were being burned to cinders across the ocean in a very criminally Christian nation, Germany.
This makes one begin to wonder about the whole life, the whole moral life of the West, which is too vast a subject to go into right now. Now I want to go into one thing, which is the relationship of the blacks to Jews in this society: the alleged relationship and the real relationship. A great deal is invested in keeping these two people at a division, and a great deal really can divide us.
In my own time, in my own career, according to the limits of my own perception and my experience, the most difficult thing, the most treacherous thing, I would hazard, about being an American white man who is of Jewish inheritance, the most difficult thing, I would think, would be to accept that inheritance, which is a mighty one, as distinguished from and as opposed to the American inheritance. Because the most awful thing about the black American relationship to Jews, to the American Jew, is that the black American singles out the American Jew because so much of the black inheritance comes from the Old and New Testament—so much of our imagery: “Let my people go,” all of those legends black people have lived with and made real up until this hour—and that means that unconsciously a black person tends to expect more from a Jewish person than he expects from anybody else. And because the American Jew in this country is essentially a white man, this expectation is always defeated with a resulting accumulation of bitterness, because the American Jew is acting on the minor inheritance and rejecting the major one.
You will observe that in the American inheritance—and you will presently turn the tables on me, correct me if you think I’m wrong—but in the American inheritance insofar as I have been able to read it, and insofar as I’ve had to make it my own, there is no suggestion of morality. The American inheritance is essentially an inheritance which is called opportunity; and in execution of this opportunity, it doesn’t matter what principle or what human being is in the way.
When I was younger, when I was young, then, many of my friends—I began my career, as the Moral Majority seems to have discovered, on what we call the left, even the far left—that is to say, I was an anticommunist when America and Russia were allies. And many of my friends, black—but there were not many black kids or black survivors in the time that I was beginning to grow up—those who had preceded me were silent or dead, and my generation was already being decimated, I had already run into familiar faces, so there I was without a [inaudible]. But my point is not there. My point is that in the intervening time, people’s names you would recognize had moved from where we were, my youthful comrades, when, for better or for worse and as very young people, we were trying to do something to alter the state of the world, trying to be faithful to some kind of vision, some kind of idea of what America could become, what a man and a woman could become. These people who are now my age, of course, give or take a year, have with almost no exceptions become what they call the neoconservatives: a polite word for a peculiarly vindictive form of American neofascism. It is quite incredible to me, as I watch it with my own eyes, but it also illustrates something of what I mean when I say that a black man does not expect from an American white man what he expects from an American Jew, and when that expectation is defeated, a certain bitterness ensues. I might feel very differently about my ex–running buddies if in fact they were all Calvinists, if they were people like William Buckley, from whom obviously I expect nothing. [Laughter from audience.]
But these are people from whom I did expect something at one time in my life. And I thought they were better than that. I thought that they knew more than that. I thought that they could be clearer than that. What is behind it, in another way, has to do with something else—something else which no one ever wishes to discuss. And that is the actual role in the Middle East of the state of Israel. Whenever Israel is mentioned one is required, it appears sometimes to me, to maintain a kind of pious silence. Well, why? It is a state like other states. It has come into existence in a peculiar way. But it does not, does not, become a state because people who wrote the Balfour Declaration, or Winston Churchill, or for that matter anyone in Europe, or in the Western world, really cared what happened to the Jews. I wish I could say differently, but I would be lying if I did—it came into existence as a means of protecting Western interests at the gate of the Middle East. The British promised land back and forth, depending on which horse would be in the lead, to the Arabs and to the Jews. The English, as you will have heard, have an expert, have a policy which they are experts at, and the policy is called “divide and rule.” Sometimes I think the British may be the authors of twentieth-century racism. They certainly codified it. In any case, in order to be a Zionist, it is not necessary to love the Jews. I know some Zionists who are definitely anti-Semitic. And to be a Jew is not necessarily to be a Zionist. I’m putting it to you this way in the attempt to clarify something which is happening all around us. All of this is triggered by the incipient attack on Jesse Jackson, who allegedly made, or has confessed to having made, an anti-Semitic remark in a private conversation, while a reporter was listening. There is something about the whole anecdote which rubs me the wrong way, something that—I smell a rat somewhere, it doesn’t seem entirely—can we use the word?—kosher. [Laughter from audience.] Be that as it may, the press, the media, to which we owe so much, which is so enlightening for us all, is now saddling Jesse Jackson with the label or the suggestion of being anti-Semite, of being an anti-Semite. I think I know Jesse well enough to say that that seems to me exceedingly unlikely. But what does impress me is the uses to which this anecdote is being put.
Yes, sir?
STUDENT: Didn’t the Jewish Anti-Defamation League publish a paper or article on why Jews should not vote for Jesse Jackson?
BALDWIN: I don’t know, did they?
STUDENT: Yes, they did. They alleged that he was anti-Semitic and that they had [inaudible].
BALDWIN: I would like to read it, but on what basis do they say he is anti-Semitic?
STUDENT: I only heard about it last night. Someone in my class was telling me about it. I’ll bring it for you.
BALDWIN: I would like to read it. Yes, sir?
STUDENT: Can you explain “anti-Semitic” and “anti-Semite”? Someone told me that even Arabs are Semites.
BALDWIN: What?
STUDENT: Can you explain “Semite,” how it came to be recognized today as anti-Jewish? And I’m not clear about it here. Arabs are also “Semites” in language. The Arabic language is [inaudible] is Semite? Can you explain that?
BALDWIN: Can I explain how does it happen that when someone is called anti-Semitic he is only considered to be anti-Jewish, because Arabs are also Semites, and what you are saying is that you cannot call a pro-Arab an anti-Semite? Well, I cannot answer your question really, because your logic, you know, is true. For example, obviously I am not an anti-Semite, not only because I am pro-Arab but because I am not anti-Jewish, either. I have my quarrel with the idea of Zion, but it has nothing to do with the entity called Jewish and still less with the entity called Arab. What has happened in the Western world is, I think, probably because so much of the Western world is incipiently or actually anti-Semitic and very dishonest about it; therefore, because they are so dishonest about it, if one takes a position vis-à-vis the state of Israel which is not the popular one, or points out that the black boys and the Puerto Rican boys pushing trucks in the Garment Center are pushing those trucks for American industry and their bosses are Jews, but the fact that their bosses are Jews is absolutely unimportant, what is important is that they are pushing those trucks, what is crucial, what is terrible about it, is that when you turn, you know, pushing the trucks, and accuse your boss of doing what you know he’s doing, and he says “I can’t be doing that because I’m a Jew,” then you begin to hate him and that’s when you’re called an anti-Semite. And no one is called an anti-Semite because he dislikes Arabs. Most Americans dislike Arabs too, insofar as they know they exist. But you see what I mean; we are talking about the Western piety, we are talking about a form of hypocrisy. Come on, don’t stop now! [Laughter from audience.]
I think the whole Jesse Jackson thing that I’ve watched in the paper is dangerous in that it confirms or tends to confirm deep suspicions within the breasts of both groups, the Jew and the black American. And there are reasons for this suspicion. And it is true that for the most part the American Jew is simply, in the black person’s life, nothing but another white American, who goes to church on Saturday instead of Sunday. I hate to put it that way, but it would be true if I didn’t say so; and it is something I think one has to try to deal with, to look at. It is an attempt, the attack on Jesse—as I read it, and bear in mind I haven’t read the paper yet—an attempt to set us at another division, obviously an attempt to discredit Jesse, but to prevent the possibility of a certain kind of coalition. Not only between blacks and Jews but between … The importance of Jesse’s campaign, I thought, was perhaps to create a possibility of a coalition between people who stopped voting quite some time ago. People overlook how few, how small a percentage of the American public vote at all. What I myself may think of Mr. Jackson, Reverend Jackson, in the privacy of my own house has nothing to do with this possibility, and he’s the only candidate which offers us this possibility. And it would seem to be a pity if it can be destroyed by this ancient red herring of anti-Semitism which I’ve seen drag through so many discussions with such disastrous results over so many years. But if that should happen, and I think it very well may happen, then all of us have to figure out something else, because it is not the end of the road.
And I’ve brought up the discussion at liberty this morning in a way to clear the air, because once this question is in the public print, once it is on television, it’s going to be in everybody’s mind in one way or another, and nobody wants to talk about it because it’s unpleasant, and it’s dangerous too, and you lose friends too, yet what’s in the record book is in the record book. And the American Jew faces the same moral choice, is in the same moral dilemma, as any other white American, perhaps compounded by the Jewish inheritance, but it’s the same moral dilemma as any other white American, which is: whether he wants your safety or your honor. That may seem a grandiose way to put it, but that is what the choices are. White people have opted for safety in the generality, which means they have no honor in the generality, and consider that they have given me, Sambo, more than I deserve and as much as they are ever going to give me. There is a fatal lack of logic to this line of reasoning, but it is the American line of reasoning. It is what Americans really feel about black people and about themselves. And they really think that they have something to give, which is even more astounding.
But let us turn the tables, I think I talked enough, perhaps even too much. Tell me what is on your minds. Yes, sir?
STUDENT: Don’t you think a little bit of the whole Jackson thing is a little bit, is “time manipulation” of the press? I mean things like James Watt, where it is the same sort of thing that comes out of a little article from two weeks past, and all of a sudden right before you make big decisions this whole hour-and-a-half television [program] on it at night and then the Jackson thing comes out three or four days before the primary, the thing is printed two weeks ago, the twenty-third line of a little article, and all of a sudden they bring that out. We don’t even know, because we are unaware of what the press doesn’t want to show us. Maybe Mondale … I’m not saying he did, but maybe he said something four or five weeks ago, a little off-color remark that got printed in Topeka, Kansas, news that if the press decided that they wanted to put that in the front line, that could destroy his whole campaign. They decide what little things are going to … who is going to get the votes and who isn’t based on what they decide to print as the big news.
BALDWIN: I quite agree with you except that it is not the press alone that makes this decision, you know. The press is part of the society and it has the same options, as I said, safety or honor, which may be a grandiose way to put it, but the press is a part of the system. And if Jesse is now being attacked as anti-Semitic, now at this moment, it is not an act of God, it is a decision on the part of the people who are the press and on the part of the people who own the press, who run the press. It is deliberate. It is not spontaneous. In the, in the … Sometimes it is true, I suppose, that something happens which nobody can suppress or interpret quickly enough, but this is not one of those occasions.
STUDENT: I have been working on Mr. Jackson’s campaign and I have every intention of voting for him. Part of what bothers me about the whole thing is that he has now said that he let his guard down and made the comment, and I’m not sure what he means by “I let my guard down.”
BALDWIN: I know it is a very unfortunate phrase and I’m very worried about it too because what it means, what it can mean, obviously, is that he really is anti-Semitic but never lets it be shown. I have no reason to believe that, but I’ve never had any reason to think about it until these last few days, these last few hours. It’s a very unfortunate way to put it. That’s the best that can be said for him, and it’s going to cost him and us a great deal. I’m only trying to get us to be clear about it. I don’t know if he’s anti-Semitic. I doubt it, but he may be. The trouble is that all the candidates suffer from one kind of affliction, racially speaking or socially speaking, or another, because all of them are Americans. Jesse is singled out for particular reasons, and it will have a particular effect. It will have a disastrous effect on the campaign, because it questions his moral veracity—therefore, your intelligence. Do you see what I’m saying?
STUDENT 1: Would you say that the allegations of Jesse Jackson being antichoice as far as abortion is concerned is another example of that, of people who have a vested interest in preventing a rainbow coalition from forming, as another example of that?
BALDWIN: I wasn’t aware, I have not followed his campaign very closely. What is his stand on abortion? Antichoice?
STUDENT 2: No, he’s not. [Multiple responses.] He’s prochoice and on a personal level antiabortion. He’s also against the Hite amendment and for poor people’s and everybody’s choice. [Several students] Stand up!
STUDENT 1: I said that he wasn’t antichoice, and he’s antiabortion on a personal level.
BALDWIN: Are you still talking?
STUDENT 1: What he says is right, but I think he’s been accused and allegations have been made that he is antichoice, and I was wondering if you think that is an example of the same sort of thing.
BALDWIN: Well, if that’s true, yes, it would be. But as she [the other student?] interprets his position it sounds coherent to me to be prochoice and not to want your wife or your sister to have an abortion. That’s a coherent position, I’m saying. But no matter what position Jesse takes, it could be used against us.
STUDENT: Excuse me, speaking as president of the Students for Jesse Jackson on the UMass campus [laughter from audience], I’d like to say that I hear a lot of misinterpretation from the press and the media, and I don’t think that is the fault of any of us, it is the fault of the media. I would like to say that for those people who are interested in finding out exactly what Mr. Jackson’s stands [are] on such rights as abortion, as nuclear proliferation, as student [inaudible] financial aid, we now have a table set up in the Campus Center concourse right this very moment, and we are giving information on exact quotes from Mr. Jackson himself, so that you might better be aware of his stands on the issues. In terms of the media fest on Mr. Jackson, I would just like to say that in terms of last week’s caucus you will notice that Mr. Jackson only had what the media presented him to only have 3 percent of the vote, while John Glenn had 5 percent of the vote. May I interject with this piece of information: Jesse Jackson was not even on the ballot and he got 3 percent of the vote. The media did not present that fact. Okay, if you notice in today’s New Hampshire primary, okay, they are playing up Gary Hart, they are playing up John Glenn, but they are not mentioning Jesse Jackson’s stand in terms of New Hampshire votes. I will give you this piece of information. A group of us students went to New Hampshire two weekends ago, where we met face to face with people from Keene State College, people from UMass and people from Manchester, most of those people were very pro-Jackson. I will say this to you, if you are interested in finding out more about Jackson’s issues, finding out about his side of the argument, as opposed to the New York Times or Boston Globe or [inaudible] or in the various news commentators, I suggest you come down to the table, find out information, come to one of our meetings, find out the information. And then make your own decision. And I ask you to vote.
BALDWIN [laughs]: Thank you, sir. [Audience applause.]
STUDENT: I just wanted to clarify something for myself, talking about the role of Jews as the kind of businessmen of the Garment District and stuff like that. I just wanted to know how, politically, has the role of Jews in that sense, the liberal kind of role, do you see that as a kind of contradiction to the businessman role, or do you see that as something separate?
BALDWIN: Well, it depends on … How do we repeat your question? Your question essentially being—you are talking about the black relationship to Jews, actually? You are talking about the black relationship to Jews?
STUDENT: Yeah.
BALDWIN: And is there a contradiction between the Garment Center boss and the Jewish liberal? In action, no. In terms of the effect it has on the daily life of a black person, no. In some ways, to put it very brutally, the liberal image can be used in the sense to nullify the reality of the Garment Center. In any case, it’s not enough to be a liberal—Christian or Jew. That is something that people have a great deal of difficulty with. But it is not enough to be a liberal, to have the right attitudes and even to give money to the right causes. You have to know more than that. You have to be prepared to risk more than that. I am telling you this because I have watched what happened to many of my liberal friends when the civil rights movement was in Alabama, let us say, in the Deep South, and they were [inaudible] very indignant. And then I watched what happened imperceptibly but fatally when that same movement moved north to Brooklyn, to Pittsburgh, Detroit, and New York. And their attitudes changed. I really hate to put it to you that way, but that is what happened. Their attitudes changed because they began to feel more and more threatened, and a liberal facade or even a liberal attitude was not enough to deal with the speed with which the movement was moving and the complications of American life as revealed in the fact by the interracial tensions in every major city, and being liberal was no defense against that and no interpretation of that. Do you see what I mean?
STUDENT: Can you see a similar problem happening—
BALDWIN: Beg your pardon?
STUDENT: Can you see a similar problem happening when blacks start making their way up into the business world? Themselves? [Laughter from audience.]
BALDWIN: When the blacks start making their way up into the business world, where would the similar problem be? You’re talking about the moral choices again.
STUDENT: Their relation to the workers whether they be blacks themselves.
BALDWIN: Their relation to whom?
STUDENT: Workers. Whether they be blacks themselves?
BALDWIN: Oh! I see what you are saying. Well, for the moment, the question is more or less academic. Blacks are not making their way in great numbers up the corporate ladder. And I will repeat what I have said often: you cannot tell a black man by the color of his skin, either. But the particular danger that we are speaking of when we are talking about American or Jewish liberals is not yet a danger for black Americans; we are not yet anywhere near that situation.
Yes?
STUDENT: In talking about Israel before, you said that Israel wasn’t set up because anyone else [cared] about the Jews, but you implied it was set up to protect oil interests in that area. And I would argue that point and say that I think after centuries of despoil that there was a bit of that, [but] that this was an area that the Jews did deserve as their homeland, and I just find it hard to accept that it was set up to protect oil interests.
BALDWIN: I said to protect the vital interests of the Western world, and I don’t mean to be sardonic or cynical, but I would be lying to you and lying by my own experience if I said to you that the Europeans—the English, the Dutch, the Germans, the French—impressed me as having any very vivid concern for Jews. The French are still anti-Semitic, so are the British, so are the Dutch, so are the Poles, so are the French. They’ll probably be anti-Semitic until the nation disappears.
STUDENT: That’s not my … I won’t argue with that. I’m saying that, well, if they’re anti-Semitic, why do they think that the Jews are going to protect Western interests and Israel doesn’t even have the oil?
BALDWIN: Oh! Yeah, I know that. I didn’t say oil, I said the vital interests of the Western world. Part of the hazard of being a Jew, historically and actually, and part of precisely the danger I was talking about when I began about the way a Jew intrudes himself on a black person’s attention because he is the only white man you see. But then part of the hazard, actually, morally, historically, of the Jewish … of being a Jew, is finding yourself doing the Christian’s dirty work. You see what I’m saying? It’s not a condemnation; it’s simply a fact. So it is in that sense to say that Israel is useful to the Western interests.
STUDENT: [inaudible]
BALDWIN: The Christian’s dirty work?
STUDENT: Yes.
BALDWIN: The people who own Harlem, for example, never arrive to collect the rent. The people who really are responsible for the misery all up and down those streets do not run the pawnshop. The people responsible for the horror are not in the liquor store, the people responsible for all the horror, if you really want to find out … When I was running up and down Manhattan trying to find a place to live, it was not the landlord I had to deal with; it was the man who owned the building. And he was in Croton-on-Hudson. Or it was Columbia University. The people who own anything, who really own it in the ghetto, are not to be found in the ghetto. The middleman is in the ghetto doing, in fact, the Christian’s dirty work. Is that clear? [Applause from audience.]
STUDENT: You said that the liberal facade is not enough.
BALDWIN: I can’t hear you.
STUDENT: You said that the liberal facade and being a liberal is not enough. Well, what is? What is necessary?
BALDWIN: Commitment. That is what is necessary. You mean it or you don’t.
PROFESSOR MICHAEL THELWELL: I’d like to speak to that [inaudible]. [Laughter and applause from audience.] And I’m here, brother, because for the first time I’m not quite satisfied with an answer you gave. The young man who asked a question initially about Jewish liberals, I’m afraid, defined the question in such a way that the answer did not satisfy me. I’m not in the habit of speaking publicly and personally at the same time, but I’m going to do that. When I worked … when I was a young man in the civil rights movement, there was a set of alliances in this country, and the young black movement—and it was very young, in terms of age, in terms of capability, in terms of resources—made alliances with professional Jewish organizations in the sense that they sought us out and they became our allies. And they are formidable allies. I mean, they are capable, and they fight, and are incredible allies to have. By the same token they are incredible enemies to have also, as Jesse Jackson is finding out. But if we say “What about the Jewish liberal?,” by the imposition of that term, “liberal,” you distort the argument, because liberals of all stripes suffer from the disabilities that you have attributed to them. But it wasn’t liberalism that we were experiencing. There is a quality which comes out of Judaism—that is to say, the Jewish faith and experience. And what we experienced, there were some groups which were liberal, there were some groups which were professional kinds, Zionist groups—so the alliance ruptured very easily the moment black people raised the question of the Middle East. But if we say that and leave it there, then the situation is significantly distorted. Because what there is in the traditions of Judaism is, number one, a genuine sense of social justice which, as Jimmy says, frequently comes up against the impositions of American reality. But there does seem to be a real stream which characterizes the people, a sense of struggle and a sense of distrust of power and an outrage at injustice, a quality of morality, codified in the Bible and coming down … and a tradition of social struggle. And that, it seems to me, is a very strong element of Judaism quite separate from American liberalism or anything else; and if we don’t recognize that, then the situation is distorted, because there were people acting less out of a sense of American liberalism, but out of … I got the sense of … a tradition going far back, of a kind of spontaneous struggle, a kind of spontaneous joining hands with the afflicted and the weak, and that is a real element of Judaism about which, I think, every Jewish person should be very proud and, also, should think very carefully about how they preserve and strengthen. [Applause.] Thank you. And which is why it is so distressing, because the consequences of this very disastrous thing with Jesse is that there is going to be a further rift driven between the two most visible of the minority and oppressed communities in this country, because when American racism or the American state is pressured, that expresses itself in either anti-Semitism or racism. We both know that. And that is why the alliance has to be preserved, and we’ve got to go beyond this very temporary thing.
BALDWIN: Thank you, Mike. Yes?
STUDENT: I have a question on anti-Semitism and Israelis or Jews doing America’s dirty work. Has Jackson made any censorious remarks about Israeli arms sales to South Africa? And could you maybe talk about how Jackson might take a position on Israel and arm sales to South Africa?
BALDWIN: As far as I know, Jesse has said nothing about arms sales to South Africa, and I don’t think he will, you know. The arms sales to South Africa on the part of Israel are again an example of the traditional role that Jews have often played in Christendom. It is, uh … After all, the state of Israel, as a state, that is to say, in terms of who is responsible for it, where the money comes from, is a—what is a polite word we use?—it is a Western state, it is a Western creation, it is a Western responsibility, isn’t it? And Israel selling arms to Israel, selling arms … I mean, South Africa, well, we all know that. I think it would serve very little purpose to single out Israel as the supplier of arms to South Africa when the real supplier of arms, not only to South Africa but to many, many other parts of the world, is not the state of Israel, but France, England, this country above all—you see what I’m saying? The state of South Africa, the state of Johannesburg, cannot be blamed on Israel—you see what I’m saying?
STUDENT: Yes, I [inaudible] the accusation of anti-Semitism [inaudible].
BALDWIN: I think it would be a red herring; I think it would be a false trail—you see what I’m saying? It is not important in the context in which I am speaking that Israel can be accused of selling arms to [South Africa]. It is a distraction. In fact, the Western world is involved with selling arms not only to South Africa but to various other parts of the globe to keep, to maintain, the status quo. And Israel is simply a part of that structure. Where was I? Yes, ma’am?
STUDENT: I just wanted to say that when you said [inaudible].
BALDWIN: I can’t hear you. I’m sorry.
STUDENT: I’m sorry. I don’t know your name, but the professor—
THELWELL: Mike Thelwell.
STUDENT: What you said was very important, but the one thing that he did say was that also the Jews could be the blacks’ worst enemy.
BALDWIN: He said what?
STUDENT: He said that the Jews also could be the blacks’ worst enemies.
BALDWIN: He said they could be formidable enemies also.
THELWELL: I said that the Jewish organizations could be formidable allies and could make formidable enemies.
STUDENT: Formidable enemies, okay. I’m sorry, I don’t think I understand … But this seems to be something that is just influenced or brought down by the American system when we choose, as you said, to make a distinction between the true safety over honor, and I think this is something that is influenced by the American system and that this is where the distinction comes, where the system itself is the instrumental factor which separates minorities and we’ve been able to cause that …
BALDWIN: Well, the system is made for that. That is what it intends to do.
STUDENT: Yeah, and it just weakens the structural or the pattern [inaudible] by Jews and blacks together as a whole. I know on a personal level that it is obvious that the similarities are there but on a political level we seem to always see the separation that is trying to be, or how they are trying to separate us … the whole case with Jesse Jackson [inaudible] expounding on it.
BALDWIN: On the political level your options are, in principle at least, very different from mine. On the political level your options are white, you know, and it’s up to you.
STUDENT: What do you mean by that?
BALDWIN: Well, you are legally white in this country. I mean, I don’t know if you are white, but legally you’re white, and your political options, your social options, are, at least in principle, very different from that of any black person—you see what I mean? And the system knows that very well, and plays on that very well. It is very hard for a person to give up safety. The system knows that very well, and it can divide us and keep us both in the same place forever as long as we go for it, as long as we don’t see what they are doing. As long as you don’t see or I don’t see—you see what I’m saying?
STUDENT: Right, but I would think it’s also a fact that legally … I’m legally a woman, so these things come into play also.
BALDWIN: Yeah, of course, but you are the one who has to make the choice concerning these realities.
STUDENT: Right. [inaudible]
STUDENT: If you think that her political priorities are white—
BALDWIN: I don’t know what they are. I said the system assumes that they are white.
STUDENT: Okay, that is the question.
BALDWIN: Okay, wait a minute. You first, Okay.
STUDENT: If we accept that the essential character of the American heritage is immoral, do you then attribute to the elements of the civil rights movement which used these organs of immorality to achieve their aims—
BALDWIN: What do you mean, “organs of immorality”?
STUDENT: The courts and the political system established by the American heritage—do we consider them then as legitimizing or contributing to the immorality of the system?
BALDWIN: Well, no, I wouldn’t put it that way. I think what the movement had to do, had no choice but to do, was to challenge.
STUDENT: But challenge through the system or challenge by repudiating it?
BALDWIN: One does both at the same time. You cannot take—I cannot take, you know—a blanket position, because you move according to where you can move. Of course, we had to begin with the courts, the legal system. And it is, you know … a proof of its immorality was the fact that it had to be attacked. The fact that it is immoral doesn’t mean that it cannot change. It doesn’t mean that human beings cannot change it. If you see what I mean. In fact we—What?
STUDENT: Transcendence [inaudible].
BALDWIN: Well, one is not obliged to be at the mercy of the institution. You made it and you can unmake it. You made it and you can remake it.
STUDENT: We didn’t make it. We used it.
BALDWIN: So it’s a way of trying to make it serve a human purpose. Isn’t that the aim?
STUDENT: I’m not questioning that we did have a positive effect. I’m just asking whether or not you see that as again reaffirming an essentially immoral system by using it in that way, by using it as an organ of change.
BALDWIN: But all systems—for the sake of my argument, anyway, and in my experience—all systems are immoral, you know. Every system, social system, because it involves human beings in order to be made useful, has to be attacked and endlessly changed—you see what I’m saying? Where am I? I’ll begin way in the back and move forward.
STUDENT: Okay, let me see if I’ve got your message so far. If you go into a black neighborhood being the middleman and the media ploy—
BALDWIN: The what?
STUDENT:—the media ploy on the Jesse Jackson issue, trying to divide and conquer, and the event was the creation of the federal state. How else could Jews [inaudible] in response to the possibility of what would happen if the Jews stopped being the middlemen—
BALDWIN: The Jews stopped being middlemen …
STUDENT:—and somehow form an alliance with all the other people who are being oppressed by this system? What do you think about that, is there that possibility?
BALDWIN: Well, you’ve asked me an absolutely impossible question. If American Jews, or Polish Jews for that matter, if such an alliance could be—well, let’s leave it to America, let’s limit it to America. If the American Jew joined forces with the Native American, the so-called American Indian, and the blacks and Hispanics, which is not impossible, it would be bringing New Jerusalem much closer, but it is not very likely to happen. It is not likely to happen for a great many reasons, one of them being the American inheritance, one of them being the difficulty of turning your back on … and also a certain confusion, even a certain modesty. Some people in the civil rights movement were very hesitant about trying to—and this is in the best sense—were very hesitant about trying to intrude on the black experience. They were not only afraid of it in a negative sense, but afraid of seeming to be impertinent, afraid of seeming to be presumptuous. There is that too. But it is unlikely that such a coalition will be formed very soon. People form coalitions of that kind when they cannot do anything else.
Yes, ma’am.
STUDENT 1: I don’t know whether I can explain this in the way I want to—
STUDENT 2: Please stand.
BALDWIN: Please stand.
STUDENT 1: I don’t know whether I can explain this in the way I want to, but I think a major misconception in all the ideas that are going around here is that all Jews have money and are capable—
BALDWIN: Have money?
STUDENT 1:—have money and are capable in general of being middlemen. I know as a Jew, there are a hell of a lot of poor Jews in the United States, and I think that most Jews realize that if they had dark skin or if they had corns or something, they’d be just as oppressed as anybody else and it’s just because they are white and because we’ve been able to change our names from something really Jewish-sounding that we’ve been able to have the ability to succeed. So I, as a Jew and as a woman, tend to vote for people who are … support all people who support blacks, because I am black-oriented, and I don’t see myself as being a middleman or being rich or anything else.
BALDWIN: Well, I wasn’t accusing all Jews of being middlemen, and I certainly wasn’t accusing them of being rich.
STUDENT 1: No, that’s not what I meant. It’s the whole idea here …
BALDWIN: What’s the idea?
STUDENT 1: I don’t know … that Jews do realize, I hope, more of them than a lot of people think, do realize they are minorities, but I hope that they do vote along the same lines that any other minority votes.
BALDWIN: Well, I would hope so too. But I will tell you something else, which is … I will tell you very briefly: if you weren’t already a minority, you don’t really want to be part of another one. [Laughter from audience.] There is that, too.
STUDENT 1: But you can form an alliance with—
BALDWIN: You can form an alliance, but it is always at the mercy of another option.
STUDENT 1: Yeah. Okay.
STUDENT: Do you mind if I just answer that gentleman’s question back there—
BALDWIN: Please stand up.
STUDENT: Do you mind if I discuss a bit that question of that man back there about Jews and blacks and other minorities? Does Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition include Jews?
BALDWIN: Of course. How could it not?
STUDENT: In light of what he said …
BALDWIN: In light of what he said …?
STUDENT: … about Jews.
BALDWIN: In light of what he’s allegedly said about Jews. What did he say about Jews?
STUDENT: He called them “Hymies” and New York City “Hymietown.”
BALDWIN: Yes.
STUDENT: How should that be construed to mean …?
BALDWIN: I can’t answer that. I know that the Rainbow—
STUDENT: What does he then think about Jews being part of the Rainbow Coalition?
BALDWIN: Well, until, until he said that, I had no reason to wonder about it; neither did you. Now that he has made an anti-Semitic remark, one has the right to question everything. It is a … it’s a very serious event, maybe a disastrous event. I can’t answer the question otherwise.
Yes, man.
STUDENT: Yes. As far as I am concerned, I’d like to speak up, I’d like to express my life, my experience, growing up in Philadelphia, and from my experience I see alliance with a Jewish group very difficult because of the experience I had. That is, the apartment that my family lives in, which has dozens of fire violations, is owned by a minority real estate lawyer. He knows this. The first lawyer, the first owner who was also there, he moved out. He moved out. He sold the building to another dude [inaudible]. And the violations still kept continuing, the fire violations. After three fires in one week [inaudible] still nothing happened. The fourth fire, we saw the people hanging out the windows screaming, almost to the point of jumping out and [inaudible]. Then the following day after the fire [inaudible], a very serious fire [inaudible] because, in fact, the next day the owners come around, they look around, they pull up in their Mercedes-Benz, then they look around and they leave. And then the building manager comes up, he doesn’t even live in the building, he comes up and he says to me, “Oh, it’s not that bad—the fire wasn’t that bad.” He had no idea. I wanted right then to shoot that man. I would have … When these kinds of situations occur, it’s no way of getting around it [inaudible].
PROFESSOR JOHN BRACEY:* I don’t think this is going to get anywhere, but we’ve got one announcement from Ernie. But what’s remarkable to me in here is there’s a room full of white people and black people in a tremendously tense situation that has tremendous social ramifications, and people are sitting here trying to work out ways to make some sense out of it. Twenty years ago there would have been a fight breaking out. Black people would have said “To hell with it,” white people would have said … “I’m going back home to have some supper.” And what you have here is a rather remarkable attempt for people to actually make a coalition work. I think you ought to congratulate yourselves. [Applause.] Nobody said any kind of rainbow was going to be formed without some thunderstorms. [Applause.]
(1984)
*A UMass Amherst professor of Afro-American studies since 1972.