Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Bondy, Francois

Titel

The negro problem: A conversation with James Baldwin

Ist Teil von

• Transition (Kampala, Uganda), 1997-10 (75/76), p.82

Ort / Verlag

Cambridge: Indiana University Press

Erscheinungsjahr

1997

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• If we could tell the truth about what happened to Indians, what happened to the black man in America, and get rid of all those terrifying myths which are all over TV, and books and textbooks; if we could tell the truth about what our real relationship was to the Mexicans, for example, then we could begin to use a tremendous potential, and it might begin to save the world. James Baldwin, 1963 Archive Photos Postmark It: Memphis Transition Franco Giacomini Now, it is an awful thing to demand of a civilization that it begin to examine itself in these terms; but if we could begin to examine ourselves in these terms, we would all come much closer to some real sense of identity and be a good deal less menaced by black Americans, who have a much stronger sense of themselves. There is something very odd about it, even suicidal: if you go around telling your women to stay away from me because I am sexually more potent, and you in the meantime are on the other side of town with all the black girls you can find, or if you were simply dreaming of them, then you are not taking care of your wife. If you don't know how to make love-and making love is much more than a physical act-the size of your member doesn't matter.What: has happened here is that the American white man has trapped himself in a weird kind of adolescent competition: "I bet mine is bigger than yours is," and it is the Negro who pays for this fantasy.