James Baldwin Tells Us All How to Cool It This Summer Is it too late, now, to put out the fire this time? An interview, forty-five years later.

By The Editors

 

In Esquire's July 1968 issue, published just after the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., the magazine talked to James Baldwin about the state of race relations in the country. In light of the Trayvon Martin case, we've republished the interview in full below.

 

Q. How can we get the black people to cool it?

BALDWIN: It is not for us to cool it.

 

Q. But aren't you the ones who are getting hurt the most?

BALDWIN: No, we are only the ones who are dying fastest. 

 

Q. Can we still cool it?

BALDWIN: That depends on a great many factors. It's a very serious question in my mind whether or not the people of this country, the bulk of population of this country, have enough sense of what is really happening to their black co-citizens to understand why they're in the streets. I know of this moment they maybe don't know it, and this is proved by the reaction to the civil disorders.It came as no revelation to me or to any other black cat that white racism is at the bottom of the civil disorders. It came as a great shock apparently to a great many other people, including the President of the United States. And now you ask me if we can cool it. I think the President goofed by not telling the nation what the civil-disorders report was all about. And I accuse him and the entire administration, in fact, of being largely responsible for this tremendous waste and damage. It was up to him and the Vice-President to interpret that report and tell the American people what it meant and what the American people should now begin to think of it. Now!It is already, very very late even to begin to think of it. What causes the eruptions, the riots, the revolts- whatever you want to call them- is the despair of being in a static position, absolutely static, of watching your father, your brother, your uncle, or your cousin- no matter how old the black cat is or how young- who has no future. And when the summer comes, both fathers and sons are in the streets- they can't stay in the houses. I was born in those houses and I know. And it's not their fault.

 

Read the complete interview at Esquire Magazine

Is Baldwin a visionary, or what??   Wonder what his take would be on Obama. Like Cornel West, would James chide Barak for catering more to Gays than Blacks?  Or would  the President's endorsement of same sex marriage win Baldwin over??? 

I think Baldwin was a keen observer of his times.  He seems clairvoyant because nothing has changed.  Baldwin I think would be in West camp.  He had no problem dismissing Whitney Young and Roy Wilkins as leaders.