Friday, July 8, 2022

Baldwin-Buckley Race Debate Still Resonates 55 Years On

All around us we are witness to the impact of ignorance, denial, distractions, projections, and poisonous polarizing propaganda. Every day there are threats and attacks on Blacks, Muslims, Jews, Mexicans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, women, politically based assaults, and on and on. This violence has always been there, ebbing and flowing from being more underground and less obvious to terrifyingly in-your-face. And now, in our times, the hatred and fear projected onto our fellow humans is horrifyingly, tragically ever present.

Amidst this ever rising violence of pervasive racism, antisemitism, and all forms of dehumanization, this renown debate between William F. Buckley and James Baldwin that I am sharing below illuminates the belief systems and blindness that is at the roots of so much harm and suffering. I am moved to once again share this particular interview from two years ago and the debate from 55 years ago as it is all indeed incredibly and tragically relevant to today. 

James Baldwin said, "Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced." So true. So true. 

May we allow our hearts to break open. May we Americans - and beyond - at long last have the courage to face the truth of the shadow side of our nation and how its poisonous legacy lives on in the present. There can be no solution for that which is unseen and denied.

All around us and within us, we are again and again reminded of how incredibly empathically impaired we humans can be. This must change. It must. Another world is possible. It is up to us. 🙏 Molly

“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates 
so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, 
they will be forced to deal with pain.”
James Baldwin
 

It has been 55 years since civil-rights activist, James Baldwin, and founder of the conservative National Review, William F. Buckley, Jr., met for a debate on race in America. That discussion and the lives of the two cultural giants are subjects of a new book, "The Fire is Upon Us." Zachary Green spoke with author and political scientist Nicholas Buccola about how the debate's still resonating.
 

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