Film Sessions: Baldwin Vs. Buckley Debate “Pin Drop” Speech

NinaIllingworth November 29, 2020November 5, 2022 1965, African American writers, America is a white supremacist country, American history, Baldwin destroys Buckley, Baldwin vs Buckley debate, blog, Buckley ratted out left wing students in college, Buckley was a cracker, Buckley was a fraud, Buckley was Ben Shapiro before Ben Shapiro, casual white supremacy, Civil Rights, colorblind racism, conservatism, crypto fascism, east coast nazis, ending white supremacy, FA1, fake intellectual, film sessions, Hooverism, James Baldwin, left wing Youtube, leftism, Media Madness, mid-Atlantic accent, National Review, Nina Illingworth, Offsite Writing, oppression, Pin Drop Speech, Politics, public intellectuals, public opinion, racial justice, Racism, reactionary thought, rigged, Social Justice, Socialism, ST2, Video, white supremacy, whiteness, William F. Buckley Jr

Editor’s note: after struggling against online censorship and some procrastinating, I’m getting around to reorganizing my website. As part of that process, I’m posting links to older content that I will never find again otherwise.

As tedious as this activity is, it’s necessary for my archives. Please bear with me in the meantime and thanks for all your support.

Darkness, Light, and the Dim Possibilities of Ignorance

By the time I wrote this late November 2020 informal essay over on Media Madness, our fledgling Film Sessions feature was starting to evolve into what it has become today; a discussion that not only recommends a video to watch, but seeks to move beyond the confines of that source material as well. Building on a timeless clip of James Baldwin’s argument in the 1965 Cambridge debate against William F. Buckley, I talk briefly about both the importance of the moment; both then, and today. As the whole world watched, Baldwin both destroyed Buckley’s reputation as an intellectual, and imploded the supposedly logical underpinnings of casual white supremacy.

It was a moment that changed history; and should have changed America forever. Sadly, the real legacy of the Baldwin vs Buckley debate is that after making one of the most brilliant men ever to walk this earth defend his humanity based on the color of his skin, we still don’t have the basic moral decency and courage to live the lessons his words imparted.

“The real question here, and the one I’d like you to keep in your mind as you watch this clip of James Baldwin speaking is why there was even a debate at all? As you listen to Baldwin calmly and emphatically explaining to a (primarily white) audience of British students that African Americans are indeed human just like them, and that racism is not only real, but a function of direct choices made by our entire society, never forget that the topic of this debate was seriously the question of “whether or not the American Dream has come at the expense of the American Negro” – a question that becomes repugnant in its own right once one remembers that the wealth and power of America was forged on the bloody, beaten backs of African Americans subjected to chattel slavery; even without considering the open white supremacy that fuels our society to this very day.”

To read more over on Media Madness, click on the quotation block above, or the header below:

American Amnesia and James Baldwin

nina illingworth

Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus. Please help me fight corporate censorship by sharing my articles with your friends online!

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