James Baldwin Debates William F. Buckley (1965)

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Strong rec benbreen · 2017-03 · on “My adventures in digital history”

Thanks for posting this. I started teaching my first history lecture course this January and very quickly came up against what the author mentions - not only students but also teachers have a lot of trouble sustaining attention for more than 30-40 minutes of straight-ahead lecturing. It's a medium that I do think works well if the person doing it is a natural public speaker (I was watching James Baldwin's speech at Cambridge University the other day and was riveted the entire time [1]) but unfortunately there's virtually no training in public speaking provided by a typical PhD. If anything PhDs are rewarded for learning how to speak in a way that doesn't work at all in a classroom - hyper-at

Strong rec padolsey · 2024-08 · on “The Private Life: On James Baldwin”

I know only pieces of his life, but whenever a video or audio clip of Baldwin pops up, I listen voraciously. He is articulate in a way that seems to blend the cerebral with the emotive. He seems to summon forth both Maya Angelou and Christopher Hitchens; The level of articulateness is so rare. I wish I had him on tap as a podcast, ... endlessly ruminating. If you want a slice.. [1] [LINK] [2] [this video]

Recommends rtpg · 2016-05 · on “Why James Baldwin Still Matters”

There's a really interesting debate between Baldwin and William Buckley up on youtube. Riviting stuff: [this video]

Recommends ceilingcorner · 2020-05 · on “The Ghetto and the Mansion”

This is a pretty weak article with a smarmy attitude and mostly just a hit piece on Buckley (who I certainly have no love for) and a lionization of Baldwin. It's also filled with quite a few misleading, if not actually false, statements. See the paragraph mentioning Malcom X for an example. Nonetheless, it's interesting to watch old episodes of Firing Line on YouTube. Buckley doesn't generally come across as the smarter person, but the guests themselves are usually worth watching. The show is a calm, rational discussion between people with diametrically opposed worldviews. This seems almost unthinkable in the shouting match, tribalistic media we have today. [this video]

Recommends js2 · 2020-12 · on “What the Church Meant for James Baldwin”

Also watch Baldwin debate Buckley: [this video] (And as an aside, if you haven't had your fill of Buckley after that, watch Best of Enemies: Buckley vs. Vidal ) I recently came across an opinion piece Baldwin wrote for the NYT in 1967. I won't try to summarize it because it's short enough and I can't do it justice. [LINK]

Cites tptacek · 2016-11 · on “A Black History Museum”

Because there is in fact no such thing as a "white person". Believe it or not, there is a coherent shared cultural identity of American black people, most of whom are descended from slaves brought here from Africa who had their original cultures stripped from them, and who belonged to a community segregated against legally into the 1970s. That those people came from several different countries on the continent of Africa is of little meaning, because their culture was deliberately cut off from its roots, and was built largely anew in the United States. Your inclination is to assume that if "black culture" is a thing, then "white culture" must also be a thing. No, that is not the case. What th