Showcasing three short films by American writer James Baldwin, wherein he muses about race, sexuality and civil rights, | dG1fbk15bWZXWVU2VzQ
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Short filmTranscript
00:00 [Music]
00:12 I suppose that many people do blame me for being out of the States as often as I am.
00:16 But, um, one can't afford to worry about that because...
00:21 [Music]
00:25 One does, you know, you do what you have to do the way you have to do it.
00:28 [Music]
00:31 I don't really know what I am, you know, politically speaking.
00:33 I don't consider myself to be a leader.
00:35 I consider myself to be a kind of witness, I suppose.
00:39 I don't know.
00:41 But my weapon, no, my tool is the, um, is my typewriter, is my pen.
00:47 It would be a mistake for me to try to play some other role, which I really couldn't play very well.
00:52 So there we are. That's it. That's it.
00:56 [Silence]
01:03 [Music]
01:06 Love has never been a popular movement.
01:10 If everyone had been in love, they'd treat their children differently.
01:13 They'd treat each other differently.
01:16 The world is held together, really it is held together, by the love and the passion of very few people.
01:22 [Music]
01:30 Many years ago when I first came to London,
01:39 I was in the British Museum, naturally.
01:43 [Laughter]
01:46 And, uh, one of the West Indians who worked there,
01:52 started a conversation with me, and wanted to know where I was from.
01:56 And I told him I was from Harlem.
01:58 And that answer didn't satisfy him.
02:00 And I didn't understand what he meant.
02:04 I was born in Harlem. I was born in Harlem Hospital, I said.
02:07 I was born in New York. None of these answers satisfied him.
02:10 He said, "Where was your mother born?"
02:12 And I said, "She was born in Maryland."
02:15 And I could see, though I didn't understand it, that he was getting more and more disgusted with me.
02:20 He was so, became more and more impatient.
02:23 "Where was your father born?"
02:25 "My father was born in New Orleans."
02:27 "Yes," he said, "but man, where were you born?"
02:30 And I began to get it.
02:32 No, I said, well, I said, "My mother was born in Maryland, my father was born in New Orleans, I was born in New York."
02:37 He said, "But before that, where were you born?"
02:39 [Laughter]
02:44 And I tried to say, "I don't know."
02:47 And I could see that he did not believe me.
02:52 And I tried to explain, you know, "There's no way for me," he said, "Don't you care not to find out?"
02:59 And I tried to explain that if I were originally from Dakar, from wherever I was in Africa,
03:08 I would find out where it was because my entry into America is a bill of sale.
03:15 And that stops, you know, that stops you from going any further.
03:21 At some point in our history, I became Baldwin's nigger.
03:27 That's how I got my name.
03:29 [Silence]