Margaret Mead & James Baldwin - A Rap On Race (1971) 

What a valuable insight you’ve shared. I had never considered that point. Thank you.

Phyllis Russell, I'm a 78 year old white woman. . .and I first traveled abroad when I was 25 (1968). It was the Middle East. I was not homesick exactly, but I missed things "American" - people, breafast, etc. When we got to Cairo, I began to see Black people. . . and had the inpulse to rush and great a fellow American. My husband - sensing what was going on . . . quietly reminded me that I was in Africa! Maybe that was a reflection on me, but I took it be reflecting of Americans. (It was me. . my own growing up experience. . . schools that were predominantly Black. . . Motown was the soundtrack of my life. . .etc.)

really, how did you not know you were american. where were you born? what did your birth cerificate say unknown.

I remember the same experience! I was serving in the Air Force in Germany the first time I was called an American. I was 26 years old. A captain in the military And I heard a German on the telephone call ahead and make a reservation for me and my mother and she called us “two American women.” Not “two black women.” She identified us by our nationality. I was 26. That was 10 years ago. And I will never forget. To be seen as American for the first time. But as soon as I got back to The States, I was constantly reminded over and over that summer that I wasn’t quite American. I was an other.

@@UKBamagurl funny i had the same experience. my dad was in the army. we traveled all over it seemed. we were always called americans . when we came home , we were not called anything or reminded we we not quite american. we are not black, we are italian/pr.however very dark. parents were immigrants. so how did you feel other? who and how were you reminded that?

Wow, "the chickens have come home to roost."

It was either this, or harvey🤠

@Traci Waters-Fashoro I thought of it as well. Baldwin is someone who clearly points out whatever he disagrees on but this time, he was quite lenient. Nevertheless, he executed his conversation in eloquence and grace. I would recommend reading his interview with Chinua Achinebe. Great minds, brilliant conversation!

What’s a Native Black American, please?

Chuckles Savini: Because the negative impacts of institutional racism linger to this day. Because white, wealthy, powerful men continue to deny the consequences of institutional racism. Because racial healing is NOT possible until after we as a nation face the shame and hypocrisy of our collective narrative. Phone me and we’ll talk. (269)276-6342

Mead seems to be trying to impose authority over Baldwin. I can listen to Brother James all day long. I've admired him since the 1960's.

Feeling your hunger, perhaps you would enjoy a continuing on this important conversation. Dr. Marc Gafni has responded to this conversation and added important dharma of 'Unique Responsibility'. You're welcome to watch our clip called "A Covenant Between the Generations - Beyond Collective Guilt" ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-BLM5TWpUnmE.html

I felt the same way as I watched.

Keep Going

@@chucklessavini1778 what fuck are you saying

Christopher Harley This gave me chills, the way you explained the apathy. So true.

@@TigerPrawn_ , I'm just reading it again, and I'm shocked that I wrote it. My surprise makes me realize that if I were not myself, I would think it well-written. I don't think I could have read it more objectively. Thank you and the other commenter for bringing my attention back to this and thanks for appreciating it.

I think white people were more fascinated by black people than the opposite.

What a beautiful essay! You should write a serious paper on the topic, do some research and expand on your ideas.😊

I think there’s a distinction between individual response and structural forces at play that needs to be considered before thinking about what apathy means in this context. For example, the presence of homelessness elicits a strong human response (that is, if you’re not a sociopath or deeply cynical property owner) of concern and desire to help. However, one’s individual action in addressing homelessness in any meaningful way is obviously futile. Even if one were in the position to help a homeless person (through a direct offer of food, money, temporary housing), it doesn’t do anything to alleviate the plight of homeless people, broadly speaking. So is it a moral failure of the individual to pass a homeless person on the street and not do something? To whistle on past and “go about one’s business”? What does it mean to see something that makes you feel bad and not respond? What is our responsibility? Another way to put it: what is the best, most productive way to direct our energies over an issue we feel genuine concern for? Another example is climate change. Our individual efforts to “minimize our carbon-footprint” are clearly meaningless. Nonetheless, by focusing on it it gives us a feeling that we’re “doing something,” which is better than nothing. However, what’s obviously needed to truly address climate change (a global issue in the most literal sense) is well beyond one’s individual capacity to act. It requires nothing less than a large-scale governmental response, in collaboration with industry, regulators, labour, economists etc, and in cooperation with other governments, both foreign and domestic. But this can only happen if enough of us become engaged and make a lot of noise and demand action. This is how we understand activism. It is a democratic phenomenon borne out of individual feelings and a deep-seated sense of ethical responsibility. In this sense, feeling bad without finding a way to direct those bad feelings toward a good result (ie, meaningful action with goals and long-term solutions in mind) is itself a kind of apathy - an atrophying of the spirit. This is the paradox then: we’re both in history (living it, in a sense) and outside, observing it. We are responsible in some ways but clearly not in others - and this is of course relative to a host of other factors that beset the individual, including but not limited to economic, geographic, political as well as our own position in relation to power and ownership etc. So what then does it mean to be a “concerned citizen”? How great is our responsibility, our sense of duty to our own higher ideals? Apathy is a form of giving up, but just when we’ve reached that point, that is something that only we can judge for ourselves. That is our privilege and our burden.

Agreed

Oh she picked up on it. she didn't address it directly because she had no way to.

@@skyjuiceification narcissistic mentally😔😔 it's sad these have lived this way for so long.

He had the patience of an angel in this conversation because I may have been throwing left hooks LOL

Alan Peters Margaret Mead is considerably older than James Baldwin. I suspect Jimmy is simply deferring to an elder.

Mary Bourgeois uh...no

2019-Too

And now... 2020

2021 as well.

in 2023 even more so!!! TN3!!!! Rising!!!

guruuvy wow wow and wow. I'd have given anything to have met him.

Two of my older cousins are his niece and nephew and they carry on his legacy.

guruuvy your uncle has had such a profound and lasting wondrous impact on me. can't believe I just no discovered this convo/interview. It the most polite sense Margaret Mead is doing my head in. Of course that is because I'm far more interested it what James Baldwin has to say :)

guruuvy Beautiful! ✨🙏🏽✨❤️✨🙌🏾✨😘

@@noahotte2960 systemic racism [systemic racism] NOUN discrimination or unequal treatment on the basis of membership in a particular ethnic group (typically one that is a minority or marginalized), arising from systems, structures, or expectations that have become established within society or an institution

That stood out to me also!!👍

From a police perspective, it's not about where the drugs are pushed, it's about where violence over drugs is being committed. Most transactions in the suburbs go quite well as both parties generally have assets that they built up over time which they do not want to lose. Urban areas often have drugs being sold on the street by people who have nothing to lose and everything to gain, which means that streets become territory for gangs to conquer and fight over with each other, causing deaths. Suburban drug dealers have their customers call them and then drive over to their home to hang out for 10-15 minutes. Competition in the marketplace for drugs, in urban areas, takes its form in the shape of violence more often than competition in suburban areas, which more often takes its form in the shape of prices, availability, variety in drug, etc. Wealth + Drugs = You're generally safe from anything other than the drug itself. Poverty + Drugs = Violence It's not some engineered oppression, it's caused by the conditions that they're selling drugs in, this is pretty obvious with a lot of evidence to back it up -- forget drug busts, just look at records for violent crime / gang violence. There's far more desperation and power grabs, less organization, this will always lead to violence, which is what the police care more about. The answer is not to redirect the police, the answer is to end the government's War on Drugs.

Read Necromancer: Absolutely! Which is why all drugs should be decriminalized. It’s rewarding and pleasantly surprising to find mutually respectful dialogue in RU-vid comments.

What a romantic idea to say there's an oppression of black people by white people When the truth is there's an oppression of ALL the poor by the rich REGARDLESS of "colour, race etc" The race issue is just a distraction ( a divide and conquer) to what's really going on ,IE Money and POWER And the rest is bullshit Fact !! 🤒

@@chucklessavini1778 sounds like you're the racist. Shame on you for shaming a black woman just for using her voice to express an opinion. You're what's wrong with America. Go sort yourself out.

Chuckles Savini: I regret you refer to her as moron. Otherwise, I agree entirely this was relatively balanced conversation from place of mutual respect.

24:30 women lib

It’s supposed to be a debate, not a one sided conversation. I know there’s a trend now about getting white people not to say anything that clashes with black perspective but we live in a free society.

@@BLTKellys She was condescending and patronizing to Baldwin; or she tried to be. He was just too damned brilliant to be dominated and subjugated by her.

@@sonteesontee4227 you obviously don’t know what a debate is.

@@BLTKellys I do. I also know what patronization and condescension is.

We are Indians and cowboys

2024

Yea Right! More like Y'ALL listening to this shit😆😆😆

His voice, his tired sighs, "Well. Well. Well. Well. Well. Well. Well," he needed all the strength he could get to keep his patience.

Where can people hear the full 7 hours of this speech???

how's pizza Fort Worth, TX

Policies are forever white people's power! Until we have the power to change policies we will never be FREE!

1😊xx m

That's for sure. I used to admire Margret Mead (well she did lead an interesting life and did some ground-breaking work) but I am disappointed in this interview to hear her carry on, and on…..sounding altogether too full of herself.

mrskauvaka white noise

Souljahna wight ego

@@Souljahna ...She definitely should have been way less talkative. anthropology does not give her some kind of expertise on black people experience. she wouldn't let the dude even get the last word even once.

Quieten down in the peanut gallery or should I say banana gallery.

hmm, definitely a "dated" conversation to put it politely. @45:52 Mead asserts that Muslims don't have a sense of universal brotherhood that includes non-Muslims. Baldwin's following argument is lengthy, (w)holistic and so gently chiding that it is definitely something to study over and over again.

opera.mad if you knew the history of Islam, you would hear the truth in her statement.

I completely agree. I can't take it. I will not be finishing this over. 😠

Same!

I think she would have benefitted from listening at least as much as she talked

"Petite bonne femme bien pensante" --- James Baldwin knew what was! 😂😂😂

Well said, and I agree.

You are right. A society is the entirety of both: the good and the bad parts.