With just the introductions made by the producer of Soul, Ellis Haizlip, I was immediately taken aback. Every time I hear, watch, or read something from the past made by Black people, I feel a sense of belonging and how amazing it must have been to live in and experience that time. It is quite "duh" that slavery and fatal oppression were an enormous smear on the whole thing, so really, I speak of these past century fantasies and aspirations in imagination, without the impossible-to-survive circumstances we were dealt, either by the greater forces out there or, according to the Blackroots books by an anonymous author - the circumstances we dealt out to ourselves. The Blackroots books can be spoken of through a multitude of audio, visual, and written pieces, hopefully coming in the future of my work.
Ellis Haizlip. Creator, Producer, and host of the television variety show, Soul!
Today, I will be speaking on the conversation had by James Baldwin and Nikki Giovanni in 1971. And if you know anything about these two names, you know that the words exchanged by them are intense, of experience, of hurt, of tragedy, of a hopeful trajectory of our people, and of the potential of what Black people are capable of observing, learning and teaching the world - and we are capable of far beyond the imaginations. This conversation had my heart and attention the moment I saw it and I knew it was a conversation that had to be shared with the newer generation that are living in a different world.
I am truly interested in exploring the solo work of these two individuals, more especially after I listened to a part of the conversation I am looking to cover at this time. And without delay, let's get into it.
From the first question he answered, Mr Baldwin showed a spark of youth as he spoke of moving away to Paris at 24 years old in pursuit of a career as a Black writer, something purposefully never shared in his America. He even refers to Alexander Pushkin, a Black Russian poet, as the secret kept by the world of literature at the time. A secret so well kept that even his father knew not of him, only his work. In the same breaths, I saw memories of him leaving the U.S. and living in Paris play out in his mind and show up to him in his eyes, once again, as a living memory. And as he laughed, I saw the innocence of a child with the desperate trauma of the adult he was and is. This combination is so typical of Black people when they get older. It is almost tragic that we somehow still live with all that has been done to us while expressing and wishing upon the world and life with the naivety of a child - basically ignoring our experiences, or as some would argue, justifying our child-like actions and mentality using our experiences, as cruel and inhumane as they were.
Mr Baldwin also mentions how he was never able to write in New York. I believe that to be a symptom of the larger suffering that comes with being Black in America, but also the soreness of losing a home you never had and have been trying to create since you were born. Being a Black American has a scent of Stockholm syndrome put together with the nature of Black people to create upon the Earth peace, rhythm, and harmony that comes from any and every part of the Earth. And while home was continuously being destroyed and put together again in a vicious cycle, Black Americans made an impact on their oppressors and are the co-creators and liberators of America. As he went on, he compared himself to a cat condemned to live in a world through the lens of having to move from the U.S. to Paris, how difficult it is to live an unexpected life and live through different sets of challenges and changes. He also attaches to that statement how freeing it was, as you are no longer black or white, and the value found in the forcefulness of looking for your life elsewhere and using it and learning from it.
James Baldwin
This leads me to the maggot that fed on self slowly, Mr Baldwin felt responsible. Responsible for liberating his people, for freeing his people, for giving hope and proof of a better life to his people, and for speaking and writing the honest truth to his people. So many of that time, known and unknown, felt that same responsibility. And a good portion felt that they could do very little to nothing to stop the daily genocide and torture. Parents did what they could, giving all they had to their children; generational health and wealth were most definitely beyond their reach, but they tried anyway to the success of others such as Jackie Robinson, and many that were not named and acknowledged in movies and history books. And while the majority still live in perpetual extreme poverty, all those trials and errors did not fail in instilling the will to exercise one's will and to dream beyond your individual and collective circumstances. It always says to me, "Be proud to be Black!" And that I am, completely.
Nikki Giovanni asks a question, referring to 'Everybody's Protest Novel' by James Baldwin, and I quote,
"I think it was a magnificent piece. I went to first grade and said, "My God! Someone's really talking." How do your standing relationships say to that now? What do you think about, let's say, the younger writers, of which I am one, within that context? Are we, in your opinion, moving ahead? Are we moving out of that basic set of assumptions on our head?"
Parts of Mr Baldwin's answers to this, again, portray the typical nature found in Black people, especially when they get to an older age. He was 1) very proud that the younger generation had a sense of self-awareness, awareness of their environments, awareness of the harsh reality they all found themselves in, and proud that they were not only interested but proactive in efforts to change and fight against the tribulations active since they were kidnapped then shipped to America. 2) He showed great distress regarding the younger generation and how they had to live through that and become the revolutionaries who never got to reap the fruits of the revolution. How his generation and generations before him had failed to create a better future for their children. Black people, in general, seem to always live in a paradox constantly working to retain our souls and preserve our innocence. 3) When he looks at Nikki, he feels magic, perseverance, and a true sight of hope for a better future. He feels it for her entire generation and when great losses such as the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King happen, he said that he got stuck in limbo. Somehow the death of a non-relative hit him just as hard. And this is the novel-feeling answer he gave:
James: Oh I think... I, I think... It's very difficult to to say it, you know, it can be misunderstood but you have no idea and I can never express to you to what extent I depend on you or - I mean you Nikki Giovanni, and I also mean your generation. I can even say you have no idea and I can never express that either because in a way I've no right to say it, but I'm very proud of you. Something has moved. Things move in a very strange way and maybe inexpressible.
If I wrote that essay today, for example, I would be writing a very different essay, out of a very different kind of problem. I think that without quite realizing it and no matter, no matter what our hang-ups are as of this very moment - the hang-ups my generation or the hang-ups of your generation, you know, and the terrible situation in which all of us find ourselves - one thing has changed and that is the attitude that Black people have towards themselves.
Now within that change, and I don't want to be romantic about it, a great deal of confusion and coherence, you know, will go on for a very long time, you know, but that was inevitable. That moment had to come too, you know. In 'Everybody's Protest Novel', I was trying for myself, after all, first of all, to elucidate for myself a theology and the effects of a theology which I then one would realize I carried in myself, you know. It's not the world that was my oppressor only, because what the world does to you - if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough - you begin to do it to yourself. You become a collaborator, an accomplice of your own murderers because you believe the same things they do, know you. They think it's important to be White and you think it's important to be White. They think it's a shame to be Black and you think it's shameful to be Black and you have no corroboration around you of any other sense of life, you know. All those corroborations that are around you are, in terms of the White majority standards, so deplorable they frighten you to death. You don't eat watermelon, you know; you get so rigid you can't dance, you know; you can hardly move by the time you're 14, you know. You always scrubbed and shining, you know. A parody of God knows what because no White person has ever been as clean as you have been forced to become. And you've got to somehow begin to break out of all of that and try to become yourself, you know. It's hard for anybody but it's very hard if you're born Black in a White society. Hard because you've got to divorce yourself from the standards of that society.
The danger of your generation, if I may say so, is you substitute one romanticism for another, you know, because in fact, these categories are, to put it too simply but with a certain brutal truth, these categories are commercial categories, you know. There was a reason that when you and I were slaves, my son produced out of your body was by definition a slave but the master's son, also released out of your body, depending on his color - if he was light enough, he could live in the big house and if he wasn't, he took his condition and the condition of his mother. He was a slave.
He was a slave because even though might be the master's son, the master could make money off of his son. The whole institution was threatened if a slave woman could produce a free man and the dilemma begins there, did you see what I mean? The dilemma began there. A slave woman was forbidden by law, I said the regional commercial, to produce a free man because once you have a free man out of the body of a slave, you'd no longer have a slave, you know. And, but, it's very hard to recognize that the standards which have almost killed you, are really mercantile standards. They're based on cotton, they're based on oil, they're based on peanuts, they're based on profits, to this hour, which the church sanctifies.
Nikki: But the church is commercial.
James: It is when you begin to realize all of that, which is not easy, that you begin to break out of the culture that has produced you and discover the culture that really produced you, you see what I mean? What really brought you where you are? When you're in trouble, when I'm in trouble I do not sing, uhm, [song name was inaudible] you know. You find yourself humming and moaning, you know, something which our great-grandfathers did.
Nikki: (Giggling) But that has nothing to do with church. That has to do with us.
James: Nooo. Oh no. That has to do with us and what it's all about is the attempt now to excavate something which has been buried, you know. What you contain and I contain and what your kid contains and we just got to carry, which one has to hand down the line for the sake of your kid and for the sake of future generations and even for the sake of White people who have not noticed the idea of what this means because we have the edge over the people who think of themselves as White; that we've never been deluded into knowing, into believing what they believe. Well, that sounds like a contradiction, you know, but in fact, you watch the man you work for. You have to watch him, you don't know you're watching him, yeah, but you're watching him but he's not watching you. He thinks he knows who you are or what you are. You don't know who he is because your life is in his hands and you had to watch him because if you don't watch him, you may not have lived from Monday till Tuesday. It's as simple as that; and without knowing you know him, you know him. He can't fool you.
For me, the next 10 -15 minutes of the video including the answers of Mr Baldwin, to which I quoted, are hard to sum and digest. I find myself unable to outline to someone else what exactly is being conversed, what is being exchanged in between the hidden lines. I suspect that this could be due to my own relation to what is being said. That I am being aggravated and re-traumatized. That I watch these two great people speak to one another about each other and see their traumas and reactions come to life. When they do speak from a point of experience, I see their eyes change and what came to the surface, once had to be intentionally buried but in these moments, cannot be controlled, especially if elaborated any further. The elementary act of crying had become, over time, concretely complicated, even burdening.
Nikki Giovanni
Mrs. Giovanni caught me in a shock. She adamantly stated,
"For me, the question has always been power. And for, like, you all [referring to Mr Baldwin's generation] the question has been morals. You know, I never wanted to be the most moral person in the world. I would like... I mean I would sell my soul, you know what I mean. What is a profit a man to gain in the world and lose his soul? The world! You know what I mean - The World! That's what he'd profit. So you take the soul, you know. That's spiritual, you know. "Take the world but give me Jesus." Y'all can have Jesus. Give me the world. You know, even if its losing 25% of its energy every hundred years, or something ridiculous... No, but I'm saying its not my concern, you know. Even though its polluted, ugly, dirty. Give it to me. I will take it"
Her statement reminded me of how Black people, especially from those times and even further back than that, have tears in their eyes ceaselessly. And when you are like me looking back at these clips and finding old photos, I usually see death and deep despair. Their souls live with a hole of being robbed and they die never having been able to fill it. Their tears sparkle the presence of innocence found in a child who was forced to grow up and to never shed a tear, to live alone and die alone - a constant search to find one's self, to live the life self deserves and erase all the bad that came before. Unfortunately, this truth is ever more relevant at this hour.
The generation of Mr Baldwin was trying to carry Black people away from the dangers of becoming White people, something that could be easy to fall into when you are in our position. Mrs Giovanni's generation was hungry for power and angry at their mothers and fathers for not wanting it, even with its gratifying uses.
I say: Becoming White people would entirely destroy our Blackness, even bleach our melanin. As Dr. Martin Luther King once said, "Being white is a state of mind". As both of them agree with that statement, it reminds me of how a lot of people have come to believe that Black people can be racist.
Us.
A race that has been tortured and enslaved for centuries and yet can distinguish between a White face and a White mind is somehow racist.
Us.
A race who, for incredibly obvious reasons, would see a White face and hesitate at that face's mind and intention is somehow racist.
This is just another seed sowed by the White mind and race systems that have been created to oppress the Black and Brown faces of the world, regardless of the mind those Black and Brown faces possess. It is sad to say that there are Black faces with White minds, and it is also in fear and hope that there are White faces with Black minds. Fear because we would have to learn how not to hate those people. We would have to implement, even more, how not to impose trauma on a White face. We would have to face our own trauma and accept that healing is necessary and that somehow, it is possible to one day live in a world where the color of one's face wouldn't cease the success of one's life. Unfortunately, another real beast we have had, in all times, is the Black person who isn't a Black person. I am talking about the token Black; the Black in power only for their own success; the Black who sells other Blacks for points with master; the Black who separates themselves from being a Black or titles themselves as the "better Black"; the Black who works to convince other Blacks of growth and expansion only for the other Blacks to wake up in shackles.
A Black person in power who does not make an effort to inflict change upon the machine is useless to the cause of liberating our people and is doing an injustice to his own skin.
Basically, you can't tell a Black man by the color of his skin, even more so, you can't tell the color of the White man by the color of his skin. And as Mr Baldwin spoke in longing, "In that case, there is a great deal of hope."
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