It comes as a great shock around the age of 5, 6, or 7,
to discover that the flag to which you have pledged
allegiance, along with everybody else, has not
pledged allegiance to you. ... 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 a place for you.
- James Baldwin (1965)
It’s raining … and I’m seething, even though I’m in my happy
place. I just can’t shake an historical legacy about which I’m learning anew.
So, though I’m enthralled, engrossed and enlightened by Nicholas Buccola’s new
book The Fire Is Upon Us, I’m also appalled and infuriated: in setting a
full and revealing context for the book’s central focus, the 1965 debate
between James Baldwin and William Buckley at the Cambridge Union, the author rightly
reviews the history of each of these protagonists … and being reminded of the
Buckley’s record and legacy of insouciant, sophist racism is, in a word,
enraging, especially because it presages and echoes the themes of its modern
day complement.
It’s not just that Buckley was Privileged and pompous, it’s
also that, for the most part until that day in February, 1965, and since, his
racism has largely gone both unacknowledged and unchallenged. So reading of his
life and work before this fateful encounter exposes one to a person ultimately
utterly unworthy of the renown that he earned in his lifetime as well as that
accorded to him still by (too) many today. While there is no question that he
was a genius at wrapping inhumanity in eloquence, it’s nonetheless dispiriting
to review it in all of its inglorious depth and profundity.
Simply put, William F. Buckley, Jr., was a racist (and a chauvinist,
a bigot, a religiocentrist, etc.) a$$hole and that his legacy continues to
bedevil the lives of The Other in our society to this day is a damning
indictment of us. But it’s also an opportunity: if we expose ourselves to the
evil that this singularly loquacious and influential inhuman fomented, we can
learn from it, especially how to address and eradicate it in the future. This
will be a real challenge, because, every day, we regular folk-cum-social
justice warriors will have to inoculate ourselves from this evil in order for us
and others to transcend it.
Even now, as I write these words, they come slowly and
painfully: Mr. Buckley is such a horrible figure that it’s hard to refrain from
spewing one’s own invective while reviewing his. It pains me greatly that
though he is dead, his ideas, so damaging to so many, are not, and therefore
they continue to provide cover to the powerful in our own time to demean so
many of those whom they’re supposed to serve.
I’ll admit that, in the spirit of ‘opposition research’ and
largely in the ’80s, I used to read his primary publication, the journal The
National Review, from time to time, so exploring its roots in greater
detail is not an entirely unfamiliar endeavor … but is a most challenging one:
to make it plain, I find myself having to remind myself constantly not to
engage in the profanity that this exploration engenders involuntarily. (In
fact, the only person about whom I find myself saying “This MF!?!” as much or
even more is 45, another inhuman who, unfortunately, has proven himself utterly unworthy and is harming us even more
greatly at present.)
To study Buckley’s firm embrace of White Supremacy – which
he justified as being, in Mr. Buccola’s words, “contingent and temporary”
rather than “absolute and permanent” – is, for any compassionate and empathetic
human being – but especially for a Person of Color – an exercise in forbearance
and forcible self-restraint. His (sense of) Privilege is profound, especially
in its misguided, insulting and demeaning paternalism.
As the author points out, he was possessed of a “long-held
belief in the inferiority of black people” which led him to seek “to form a
philosophy of racial hierarchy that he hoped might be deemed more respectable
than what was being peddled by the ‘coarse’ demagogues in the Ku Klux Klan.”
Hence, he crafted a racially elitist position in which though “he rejected the
idea that blacks were biologically inferior,” nonetheless he deemed that theirs
was of a type “‘cultural and educational,’ and as a result, the superior white
community had the right and duty to uphold the standards of civilization until
blacks could show themselves capable of casting ‘a thoughtful vote.’”
I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that, as I read this passage,
I literally exclaimed out loud “Who the f@#k are you, Bill Buckley (to make
such a determination)?!?” Thankfully, there was no one else within earshot at
the time, although I did find myself apologizing silently to my late and
beloved (and very southern and proper) mother, who raised me better than this.…
To return to the book, it is a story perhaps too well told,
as, while it informs, it infuriates due to its clearly exhaustive research and
generally well-written prose. That we don’t come to the full story of the event
that precipitates it until well past its halfway point is a testament to this.
But it’s a hard read for anyone of a moderate (let alone progressive) bent and
especially so for a liberal Baldwin fan like myself. While I understand that in
order to tell the full (and a good) story one has to examine a reality from
multiple perspectives, it takes a formidable amount of self-control to parse
the passages on Buckley and to be exposed to his Privileged inhumanity in
painstaking (though appropriate) detail.
And, yet, if you’re a believer in social justice, you must,
for in it lies not only the enemy’s territory to be mapped but a like-minded
genius and trailblazer’s approach to doing so … especially so that we can carry
forward this continuing fight grounded both in historical and present
realities. In the Age of 45, we’ve been reminded just how much more work
remains in this regard – admittedly, often appallingly and invariably damagingly
so – which means that we need to prepare ourselves to play the long game
successfully … especially as regressive efforts increase in the face of the
continuing and accelerating Blackening and Browning of America. Is it not
reasonable to expect this dying, racist, sexist, xenophobic, etc., regime to
fight even more fiercely as minority status inexorably approaches for those
who’ve historically held the reins of power in this country?
So I continue to explore
the depths of the depravity and inhumanity as embodied in Mr. Buckley’s life
and work, as it prepares me to deal with his successors in this present day.
And I am mindful that, though costly, this battle isn’t voluntary … at least
not if one truly aspires to live the American Dream and bequeath it to our progeny.
Thus, I invite you to join me on this bracing journey of exploration and share
that it really is OK to drop as many “This MF!?!”s as necessary along the way….
This is not an act of God. We're dealing with a society
made and ruled by men. ... It is a terrible thing for an
entire people to surrender to the notion that one-
ninth of its population is beneath them.
- James Baldwin (1965)
