Friday, December 27, 2019

The Fire Is Within Us, Too....

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)


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