The American Dream Is at the Expense of the American Negro E-Book

James Baldwin

• Herausgeber: ERIS
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: ERIS Gems
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 16

Beschreibung

"It comes as a great shock to discover that the country which is your birthplace and to which you owe your life and your identity, has not, in its whole system of reality, evolved any place for you". James Baldwin was one of America's most powerful analysts of the psychology of white supremacy. In this speech, delivered in 1965 at the Cambridge Union Society, he offers a devastating, but also strikingly empathetic, account of the role played by racism in American society.

Leseprobe

James Baldwin

The American Dream Is at the Expense of the American Negro

ERISgems

Contents

Title PageThe American Dream Is at the Expense of the American NegroCopyright

The American Dream Is at the Expense of the American Negro

GOOD EVENING,

I find myself, not for the first time, in the position of a kind of Jeremiah. For example, I don’t disagree with Mr. Burford that the inequality suffered by the American Negro population of the United States has hindered the American dream. Indeed, it has. I quarrel with some other things he has to say. The other, deeper, element of a certain awkwardness I feel has to do with one’s point of view. I have to put it that way–one’s sense, one’s system of reality. It would seem to me the proposition before the House–and I would put it that way—“is the American Dream at the expense of the American Negro?”, or “the American Dream is at the expense of the American Negro”, is a question hideously loaded. And then one’s response to that question—one’s reaction to that question—has to depend on effect and, in effect, where you find yourself in the world, what your sense of reality is, what your system of reality is. That is, it depends on assumptions which we hold so deeply as to be scarcely aware of them. 4