Rich Texts: "Now, this is the evidence"
James Baldwin on how America is a prisoner of its own history
I couldn’t close out February without sharing a quote by James Baldwin, despite my mixed feelings about Black History Month.
(Black history is American history, so it should be taught as an integral component of American history and not as something separate. But it isn’t, still. So I guess we need a designated month, but good god we can’t even do that well. In my childhood millions of American children were taught that George Washington Carver invented peanut butter, which he did not do. His real legacy was as the first Black man to earn a Bachelor’s of Science, then a Master’s, then he transformed southern agriculture through educating southern farmers on methods to increase efficiency and improve soil health, such as crop rotation. To top it off, he invented literally hundreds of products, edible and non-, that could be made from peanuts, soybeans, and sweet potatoes, which grew well in the south’s depleted soil.)
Anyway, this quote comes from a clip I saw in the 2016 documentary I Am Not Your Negro, though the whole clip from The Dick Cavett Show is available on YouTube and worth watching. Baldwin spends several minutes patiently explaining to Yale Professor Paul Weiss why life in America is challenging for Black people in particular, despite Weiss’s aggressive protestations.
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