In the Fall of ‘21 I was tasked to develop a verbatim performance project based on a found media artifact.
I first witnessed the virtuoso of James Baldwin’s 1965 Cambridge debate against William Buckley in the 2017 documentary I Am Not Your Negro. I see the debate “The American Dream is at the expense of the American Negro,” as nothing less than groundbreaking: a queer, black man standing entrenched with a white audience at his back, demanding they acknowledge their complicity in the drastic racial disparities of the world. America in 1965 was deeply divided and on fire. Emmet Till and Medgar Evers had become symbols of unspeakable horror and, Malcolm X, who stood in the same room at Cambridge only two weeks prior, within a week of the Baldwin/Buckley debate would also be dead. Baldwin is desperate for America to succeed but to him, there is no America without eliminating the power structures that allow it to thrive while people of color are used, misused, oppressed and murdered. And what happens? He receives a thunderous standing ovation. This moment to me signifies an appreciation for the momentum that just might carry the world to change its judicial, educational, medical and economic systems. And yet, no matter how fiercely unapologetic Baldwin’s voice resonates, the struggle for black freedom today remains, unfortunately, the same. In his pursuit for the realization of true democracy, a pained anger lurks below the surface. Throughout the debate it seems as if Baldwin jukes between optimism and pessimism, almost as if he sees the perfect roadmap to America’s future but knows the debris in the road won’t be cleared in time. Words are Baldwin’s greatest gifts (and weapons) and he demands that his audience examine the mythologies that overpower their learning and existence. He confronts the audience with questions they didn’t want to hear, much less, prepared to answer and it forces them to confront the consequences of white supremacy from the perspective of both perpetrators and victims. To me, the debate symbolizes a call to action: that as citizens we have a responsibility to challenge assumptions and must always be willing to look at the world through another’s lens.
After my investigation, I felt a fire to understand my own place and privilege in this world. I find myself asking, are we sure true democracy can exist when we know where we started? How do we know we are capable of upholding an absolute morality when our country has been founded and capitalized on appalling injustice? It’s amazing Baldwin has any hope, and yet we find in America that many of the people who live here, who have a voice here, continue to chip away little by little, in hopes of one day revealing America’s truest possible soul. Baldwin asserts that this examination into identity, and how we construct our sense of self, will better inform how to treat, and understand, our neighbors. Masks of power and control are the true fallacies that allow superiority over others and I stand firm with Baldwin’s assessment that such identity crises are at the core of America’s rot. We need to stop lying to ourselves about who we really are: generations of people avoiding the injustice of the past. How can I participate? I’ve always known that I have a duty to understand those who are different from me, as this responsibility reflects back to us important universal truths. I am afraid I might not be quite as far along, or advanced, as I believed, or hoped. Only after the horrors of the last few years, am I beginning to fully understand our country’s cowardice. Only now do I understand a sense of my safety and am left to wonder if I’ve turned away, learned not to see the harm and disaffection of others. Have I embraced the wrong parts of America’s history? How can it be this is the first time I’ve seen Emmet Till in his casket but have watched JFK in Dallas numerous times? Have I turned away from recognizing how this land has treated black bodies with violence and rage? I wonder if I’ve had the right heroes. I wonder just how much I’ve been in denial.
