Nikki Giovanni Was A Revolution. Part Two Of Her Conversation With James Baldwin, 1971.
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The following episode of the Politocrat Daily Podcast contains racist epithets and other language you may find objectionable. Listener discretion is advised. Welcome to the Politocrat. I'm Omar Moore. It is Wednesday, December the 11th, 2024. On this edition of the Politocrat, part two of Nikki Giovanni in conversation with James Baldwin

The fascinating conversation from 1971 in London between these two titans as we continue to remember and reflect and celebrate Nikki Giovanni, who passed away on Monday this week. All of that coming up next.

Dear listener, welcome to this Wednesday edition of the Political Great Daily Podcast. Yours truly, Omar Moore here, as we are in midweek now, as we get ever closer to Christmas, exactly two weeks from today, to be precise, will be Christmas for those who observe it. Yeah, it's unbelievable. Christmas Day is coming exactly two weeks from today. Wow. Time doth travel extremely quickly, and we are going to be at the end of the year.

In a matter of days, it seems, because my gosh, as I said, time doth fly. It really does. So my goodness me, it is incredible how quickly the time goes. A week after that, we will be talking about a brand new year. Goodness gracious me, we are just that close. 30 days away now.

from new excuse me 20 days away that's almost three exact weeks from new year's eve so in 20 days time we are at new year's eve already my goodness me i do hope you're well on this wednesday and i do hope that you've had a chance to listen to part one of the conversation between nikki giovanni and james baldwin held in london back in 1971 i am omar more yours truly here

And I do hope that you have, as I said, listened to that portion of the conversation. It is incredible. It really is. And there's more of that conversation as well. Here is part two now. I'm going to go straight into this. Part two of the conversation between Nikki Giovanni, who passed away, as you know, a couple of days ago now, and James Baldwin. This conversation took place in London back in 1971.

How do we as a people begin to deal? What we have to do is a very difficult uphill road, uphill job, Nikki. What you have to do is begin to change the basis on which people think. For example, you have to begin to shift the basis of the language. Because the way people speak is also the way they think. And I haven't got to point out to you because you know. There's English spoken by black Americans. There's nothing English spoken by white Americans. Yeah, that's true. No. So that's given.

And we have to use it and do something with it which has not been done before. You know? We are in great trouble, but we have the great advantage of knowing we're in great trouble. You know, we're in trouble man to woman, man to man. We're in trouble, you know, father to son, mother to daughter. But we know we are. I can liberate my great nephew if black people can liberate themselves. And since we're talking about a commercial endeavor, too, by the way, you know, because of the great crisis, we have no land and no money.

That resides in power. You cannot purchase anything you can't take. We'll get the power. And the power is not the land or the money. The power is the ability to effect. But now you are agreeing with me. Of course. You're a wise man. You're a wise man, why wouldn't I?

And one of the strengths of the Afro-Americans, certainly in the last 20, 30 years, is that we have recognized we are not Americans on one hand. On the other hand, we are the only true inheritors of the place called America. That's right. That's right. It belongs to us. Because we are still outside of it. It belongs to us and nobody can do anything about that. And we will get it if we continue to move.

I think it's a guilt. In ways that one can't quite see yet. We already have it. It's one of the reasons for the panic. We have to effect it. Yes. And we have to know it, and we have to make sure that everybody else... We have to change it. It's like the South lost a civil war, but they didn't know it, which is why they continued. Because someone finally said, you know you lost, and then, oh, did we? You know what I mean? They continued to act as if they had won. Well, they still haven't lost it, because that war was a kind of... The results of that war are being paid for until today.

and will be paid for it. When he marched in Montgomery, Governor Wallace had the Confederate flag flying with the state from the Capitol building, which is legally insurrection. But nobody said a word about it because, in fact, the South and North simply included a contract between them to keep you and me in slavery. That's all that really happened. So the textile mills in Massachusetts got rich and the cotton fields got rich. Where did the textiles come from? South Mississippi.

But see, so many institutions to me are not but. So many institutions, like, it just doesn't make that much sense that Shirley Chisholm is in Congress or Richard Brooke is in the... Well, it's what I mean when I say, you know, the white and black are really very arbitrary categories which cannot be trusted. Well, certain things have certain color designations. Well, the fact that Ed Brooke is a senator in Massachusetts or that we have some black mayors, since it doesn't change the machine, it doesn't change the parties which they allegedly represent, it doesn't mean anything.

I'm saying you can't tell a black man by the color of his skin. Maybe you can't tell. My quarrel is very subtle, but maybe I'm saying you can't tell a white man by the color of his skin. Either. Either. In that case, there's a great deal of hope. If we could get a black mayor to come in and change, which I think Carl Stokes did, change the police department, change the way that the city goes about its services, then you could have something. But if he's not going to change it, first of all, the militia, which becomes the police department.

If he's not willing to make those kind of changes, or if he's not willing to, let's say, take on the McCarran Act, then he's just not doing black people any... Or the country. Well, it's one and the same. In my mind, it's one and the same. It's one and the same. Because, well, that's true. I'm not being a missionary trying to save America, but I do know that we have paid too much for it to be able to abandon it. We can never abandon it.

I don't think that that's a question because where else are we going to go? I mean, nobody else wants us. In any case, my father and my father's father's paid too much for it. I've paid too much for it. I'm only 28. Yes. I deserve it, you know, to do whatever I want to do with it. Thomas deserves it, you know, whatever that means. I just think that like how we go about it and what we're...

Well, personally, I'm just not interested in many things that people are interested in. I'm not interested in a president or a Congress. I wouldn't care Puerto Rican, you know what I mean? I wouldn't care. I just don't give a damn. Because it's still somebody trying to run my life. I'm not interested in movements and ideologies. Because I think that I would have a difficult time

No matter what was wrong. You would have a terrible time. Yeah, I mean, personally, it wouldn't change one bit for me, except maybe I would even have to go in exile and I can live there now. Yeah, but you see, that's a tightrope that we're on. Again, we come back to the whole question of labels, white and black. I'm terrified of cultural commissars, you know, on either side of the line. Yeah. The older you get, the more frightening.

It's terrifying because, you know, I'm not sure I'll be told how to write, you know, or what to write about. But that's a stupid... My theory is that the world divides into sort of like intelligent and weak and strong, which is awful. I mean, it's really awful for me to say things like that. But there's so many stupid people. It divides not so much between the stupid and the bright because most bright people I've encountered, not most perhaps, but many...

How wicked. I really think it's really wicked. But I think it divides between the people who have a certain kind of daring and the people who don't. And the daring is involved with the price you're prepared to pay for your life. For your life. Because then you may have been born stupid, but if you're willing to live, take your chances on living, you become very bright. But then in my world, that becomes a bright person. Yes, of course. Because it's not based on...

IQ. You know, that's like a very weak position people get into when they start... Well, in the States, we have a thing. I don't know how familiar you are with it. But we're going through a whole thing. There is no such thing as individual. Which, of course, is killing the movement. It's not only not true, it's stupid. It's killing the movement. And when you see the dum-dums perpetuating that, you don't want to be like them. So the very bright people are saying, okay, you all can have. And I hate to watch it happen because it's destroying what was almost at one point a nation. You know? It's not be cool, be cool. It's on...

I'm not trying, I don't mean be tranquil. No. No, but let it go. Don't worry. What you have to do is concentrate on what is essential. And not be sidetracked by very disturbing details. After all, you know and I know that the individual does exist. Not only does, but should. In any case, whether or not he should, he does. I'm concerned about it, I guess, particularly because there's so many young kids who want to believe.

And for me, when I look at, like, the energy, you know, I teach school. And when I look at my various classes, the few times that I'm there, and I see those hopeful little faces, and I know that they are just as eager to become, you know, fascist as anything else, that they don't really, what they want is to believe. Then I begin to feel an obligation to say, okay, try believing in yourself. Yes, but my dear, that's all you've been talking about. Yes. You know, you call it power, and I call it, I call it,

You call it power, I call it morals, or you say I do. No, okay, I don't know. No, but it's the same thing. It's exactly the same thing. What it's trying to do is teach those children something which they will need much, much later, because they can become fascists very easily. Especially if they really believe, you know, that all the legends which are now being fed, you know, that black is beautiful, black is beautiful. But since it's beautiful, you haven't got to say so.

You know, it's very important. The ego is the most important thing about exemplifying that beauty. Because it's a very dangerous slogan. I mean, I happen to, you know, I'm very glad that it came along because it had to come along. But, you know, I don't love all black people, really. You know, I know some deacons and preachers and congressmen and judges and teachers and lawyers, you know, black, but not like me, you know. You know, it's, you're trying to tell the child something

which transcends all those categories. So he won't become what you see all around you every day. One tries. But that has to be dealt with because they're constantly being fed that their ego is to be supplemented to what is constantly called the energy, which makes no sense to me. Because why should somebody who doesn't even know you run your life? Why should I run some kid's life? And I feel eminently equipped.

You know what I mean? I feel like, wow, I would be the best person. But why should I do that? Why can't you do it? You can make your own mistakes. Yeah, but you have to give the kid the morale which will allow him to do it. One tries. No. Because I really see so many games being run by uncreative, stupid, stupid people. And it's very disgusting. I'm sure that you also are. Oh, yes. But Nikki, most people really accept without very much question the assumptions that they're given.

But they must. I mean, it's so magical. When I was growing up, you know, the great trick was getting a civil service and work for the post office. You know, I can't blame most people. I don't blame you. It made them very unattractive people from my point of view. You know, but what else was a black cat to do? Create something. You can't create anything unless you have been given, however you get it, I don't know, been given...

the belief or the rage or the madness or whatever, the necessity out of yourself to do it. Look, read a book by Richard Wright, the late Richard Wright wrote a book called Lorde Today. It's about the post office. It's not about the post office. It takes place in the post office. Right. It's a tremendous, tremendous book. It takes one day in life, one black man. And no black guy can read that and not know, you know, because it's true. It's true.

Fantastic record. You see, the nature of the drama, in a sense, is that you and I both had to raise a child, but if I've been destroyed before I get home, you go one way, I go another, and the kid gets lost. And it isn't the fault of the woman or the man, and certainly not the fault of the kid. It's not a question of blame, though. It's a question of responsibility. And it is our responsibility to make sure that kid doesn't have to go. But what I'm trying to get at, Nikki, is that in order to take the responsibility...

You had to be able to take the responsibility. It's not a mystical act. Somebody's got to pay the rent. I can't put you on the streets. That's what you say. We have tried to make you able to pay your rent or my rent or our rent. We have found that there are not enough jobs. There is not enough money for you to do that. Now, why can't we try it my way? I think that the only thing that's changed in the last, since Martin Luther King, since 54, I think the only thing that's really changed is the black woman.

And what she said is... Why don't you change it? I think she's become more visible. I think she's changed. Because there was a time, let's say my mother, you know what I mean, my aunts and things like that, they would say, okay, if that's the way you establish your manhood, I'm going to go for it. And my generation says, hey, no good. You must establish a new base. I'll agree with that. And we are as a group demanding that a new base be established. Yeah, but be careful as a woman of what you demand of a man.

I demand that he be a man. Because the provision part. Yeah, but you can't say you demand it. You have to suggest it. That's your ego that says that. No, I demand it. Now, you deal with that. All right. Okay. I'll even go with that. I demand that you be a man. And I don't think that that's asking too much. Because if I wanted a provision, you know what I'm saying, I would get a camper. You know what I mean? I would get a camper that provides things. You know what I mean? You get an army surplus kit that provides things. I need a man.

And black men have always been offered to provisions. People are either going to eat or starve to death. You know, the men of beyond, the people starving, they were still the men. Had to be that way through that horrendous kind of war. But it had to be that way because sometimes you are not able to feed your family.

Sometimes you are not able to clothe your family. Do you then also deprive them of your manhood and of the input that a man has? Who teaches my son how to pee? Yeah, but you're talking... I agree with you. I see that very well. But it's one thing to be in a situation where you see that you have... where you see a future of a bloody...

And to be in a situation where you see no future at all. But you are, it is incumbent. If I know what I'm demanding of you, in some sense, makes sense. If I know the fact the kid is not leaving today or tonight or tomorrow, in some way makes sense. Yeah, then I can be there. But if it doesn't make any sense, and if I don't see anything coming out of it at all. Will he eat if you're not there? If you're on welfare, he won't eat if I am there.

That's the law. But I don't want to get bogged down into that. What I really mean is that, yes, a man can do that if he sees a way, if he sees that it means something. My father couldn't see that. And he was quite right, because there wasn't anything.

There's something because all I can all I know that works in the world is a relationship Yes, right. Okay, that that's all that's going to work. It takes two people to have a relationship But the relationship you don't have a dream fake it but the relation you can't fake a dream You got to fake it because we don't have dreams these days. How the hell can you have a dream for what? So everybody's everybody's jiving but let's jive on that level if I love you, I can't lie to you

Of course you can lie to me. And you will. If you love me and you're going off with Maddie someplace, you're lying to me. Because what the hell do I care about the truth? I care if you're there. What Billie Holiday say, hush now, don't explain. All right, I accept that. Of course. Of course you're lying to me. Because I don't even want to care. What does the truth matter? And why are you going to be truthful with me when you lie to everybody else?

You lied when you smiled at that cracker down the job, right? Laughed at me, smiled. Treat me the same way you would treat him. I can't treat you the way I treat him. You must. You must. Because I've caught the frowns and the anger. He's happy with you. Of course he doesn't know you're unhappy. You grin at him all day long. You come home and I catch y'all. Because I love you, I get least of you. I get the very minimum. And I'm saying, you know, fake it with me. Is that too much for the black woman to ask of the black man?

for 10 years so that we can get a child on his feet that says, "Yeah, father smiled at mother." He talked to me about school today. Who cares that you can read or can't read? Most Americans can't read. Most people can't read. They look at the pictures. Baby, baby, I know what you're saying. I know exactly what you're saying, and I don't disagree, but, no, I'm gonna be honest and think about it really. I'm not so sure that that is a human possibility.

The rent will get paid.

Look, baby, I'm willing to play it your way, but you have to see my point of view. I see your point of view, but the rent will have to be paid. The price of the rent is my smile. No, no, no. I don't want you prostituting yourself. I demand. I don't want you prostituting yourself either. One of us has got to work.

Okay, okay. Okay, I buy it. I buy it.

In case it was sort of like left up in the air or somebody, you know, like I didn't get it across. I really think that my father, you know, Jones Giovanni is a groovy cat, you know, and he's lived with my mother now for 35 years under holy wedlock. And I think that that's good for them. You know, I think that that sort of thing worked for them. And I think that that's the main thing that they were able to love.

Despite it all. That's what we were talking about before. Right, exactly. And by the way, you did not have to tell me that you see your father. I knew that. Yeah, I think he's a guest. Yes, yes. I just don't want to marry him.

But I think, let's talk about writing for a moment, because it seems that most black writers at certain points always come back to explaining who they are. They always come back to the personal essay. You've written several novels. One that I happen to love a lot is Tell Me How Long the Train Has Been Gone. I'm glad you like that. I'm particularly, I just felt madly in love. I gave copies to my friends. I was glad when it finally came out in paperback that I could afford to do what I was doing.

But it seems that even though we deal in the novel, we deal in fiction, or we deal in poetry, say, we always have to come back to say, you know, who are we? You know, I don't know. For example, in Train, one of the things I discovered in writing it, like I was telling you when I began it, to answer your question or to deal with the question, because it's an enormous question for me. There's a moment in the bar up in New York State when Leo was watching...

Jerry, the Italian. And he's watching him as an older Italian who's just come to America. And Leo thinks to himself that Salvatore understood Jerry because he existed in effect already in Salvatore's imagination. You know what I mean? And he understood Jerry because of the life that he himself had lived. But no one thinks Leo looks at me that way because I don't exist in anybody's imagination. Do you know? How can I put it?

the reason we are forced to become more and more open or overt is because in fact when you walk down the street coming back now the black man black woman thing you're my wife my sister and my mother i know very well the people are looking at you there's nothing whatever about you nothing at all you know if it's marilyn monroe or

Pat Nixon. You know, they know. But until this century begins to apprehend the experience out of which Alina Horne comes, you know, for example, or Anethel Waters, or you, or Paul Robeson, or Rita Franklin, because white people, or Ray Charles, they don't know what that comes out of. There's no metaphor in their experience for it. Or

The metaphor, in their own experience, is so deeply buried and so frightening. Because you see, the reason that people think it's important to be white is that they think it's important not to be black. They think it's important to be white because white means you are civilized, and being black means you're not civilized. And there's yet to be apprehended in any way whatever that in fact I will not be able to walk the streets or even look at you or you at me or do whatever we do in our terrible days, day to day.

if we were not civilized. You know, but we represent a civilization. I don't mean merely, literally the African civilization or the Indian civilization or whatever. I mean a sense of life, which is the only thing that civilizes anybody, which for mercantile commercial reasons, to put it a little bit too simply, the rise of Europe attempted to destroy. I say attempted to destroy because it did not in fact destroy it. It dispersed it and under that pressure,

it can become something else. What it comes to is I'm civilized in a way that Englishmen are not, you know, because I've had to depend on a principle which Europeans have learned to distrust. Does that make sense to you, though? Sort of on one level, and because I tend to be slow sometimes, not sort of on another. But what I'm trying to ask maybe is... That's a dirty chick, niggas. What I'm trying to ask, though, do you think that you would ever write, say...

A work of fiction, or maybe even a work of non-fiction that did not include white people. That was just about some groovy black people that you knew. You know, in terms of characters, in terms of who you're speaking to and why. I mean, you know what I mean? I do, I do. Well, how can I answer it? I'm working on something now which are no white people. But I'm also working on a novel which, for the most part, takes place in Europe.

And it's, to put it again, to simply concern the situation of an Arab in France. Now, in that context, I don't know. You know, the Arab is certainly a nigger in France, or he would be a Puerto Rican in New York, or a Mexican in California. And what I'm trying to... It's very tame to talk about something you haven't finished, but... Yes, I will understand that. What I'm trying to get at is...

my apprehension anyway in the crisis of this age you know and the crisis is something you do with identity and that is something you do with buried histories not merely our history has been buried but as we said before when i was talking about you know the thing my homework on brixton doing homework on the english working class that has been buried too no we're talking about liberation we're talking about writing what a writer is always doing whether or not he knows it is it

He has to go to the source because there isn't anything else to work from. You can't work from other people's assumptions. You have to work out of what you discover are your own. And your own assumptions come out of something much deeper than you. It takes a long time before you realize that there is a connection, in fact, between Tommy Long, The Train's Been Gone, and Swing Low, Speed Chariot. Or what Ray Charles does with Dreary Little Anthem. No one ever dreamed of hearing until he got his hands on them and put...

our experience into them you know all of a sudden yes wow wow well that's that's what i mean by energy that's that and that excuse me that's that's the assignment of an artist because the people who produced him i am not responsible to anybody but the people who produced me you know whether or not they knew they produced me whether or not they wanted to produce me you know i cannot drive a truck and i can't sing a song

But the people who produced me pretended to me to do something which they knew before I knew that I might be able to do. You know what I mean? Yeah, but there's a, and I keep coming back to this kind of a thing, but there's a whole movement or something that says that we have to write only about black people and you have to, you know what I mean? That there's a little thing that says we're going to dictate. Look, the very first thing that a writer has to face is that he cannot be told what to write.

You know, nobody asked me to be a writer in a way, you know, they didn't know in any case. No, in any case, I chose it. Since I'm a man, I'd assume I chose it. Perhaps, you know, in fact, perhaps in fact, I didn't choose it. But in any case, you know, the one thing you have to do is try to tell the truth. And what everyone overlooks is that in order to do it,

When the book comes out, it may hurt you. But in order to do it, it had to hurt me first. You know, I can only tell you about yourself as much as I can face about myself. You know, it's happened to everybody who's tried to live. You know, you go through your life for a long time and you think that no one has ever suffered the way I've suffered. You know, my God, my God. And then you realize, you read something, you hear something, and you realize...

that your suffering does not isolate you, that your suffering is your bridge, that many people have suffered before you, many people are suffering around you and always will. And all you can do is bring, hopefully, a little light into that suffering, enough light so the person who is suffering can begin to comprehend his suffering and begin to live with it and begin to change it, to change his situation. We don't change anything.

All we can do is invest people with the morale to change it for themselves. I agree with that. I'm pursuing this because it's something that keeps coming up that personally I'm interested in what you have to say. But the same argument, I agree with you as a matter of fact, but the same argument you make, they say, why should a writer be free to write what he wants when, say, a teacher is not free to teach what he wants? A teacher who is not free to teach is not a teacher.

Do you know? Yeah. That's true. Do you know? If I assume the responsibility, then I've got to be free to teach the way I see it. Angela Davis is precisely in trouble, not for all those nonsensical reasons given by those impeccable, honorable men like the governor of California and the head of the FBI. Not for any of those reasons, but because she was trying to teach. And to teach in the situation in which black people in America find themselves, really to teach...

is a revolutionary act. You solved it for me, because it's something I keep hearing. And they always say, well, why should the artist be free to do what he wants to do when nobody else is? The artist is not free to do what he wants to do. The artist is free to do what he has to do. And in fact, everyone else should pursue along those lines.

Yeah, that's wild. I hadn't thought about it that way. I've been having revelations a lot lately. It's a personal thing. So what do you think, you know, about the development, say, of the whole black literature trend from, say, Richard Wright till, let's say, me? All right, it's a good... It's a good cutoff period. No, it's a good beginning period. It's a good beginning period. Thank you. All right, I'll try to Richard Wright to you. A Chester Himes, since Chester goes beyond Richard. And since I happen to adore Chester.

Oh, Chester, yes. Chester's exciting to me because when you go from, say... Well, Chester's got guts. Oh, my God. Lonely Crusade. You're talking about Lonely Crusade. Which I didn't like when I was 22. I loved it. When I read it, I found the first edition. I won't even tell you what I paid for it. And I simply adored it. I could see why everybody hated it. Let me make a confession. When the book came out, I was working for the new leader. Oh. I see why you... Wait a minute. Hold on.

And I was doing book reviews for $10 a shot. And going through my own changes. And also, this is very important, really. I was in a kind of political crisis because I had been a kind of communist when I was 19. Whatever it means in 19. And I learned a great deal about the American Communist Party. It's a very...

I took me as an outsider. Indescribable organization. It was crazy. Well, I dislike that. But since the book, in a sense, for me, had the aura of the things I was battling, the political elements I was battling, the book frightened me. Because in those years, I don't want to get sidetracked from the Communist Party, but in those years, the Communist Party was, in a sense, the only haven for a young American black writer.

It was also a terrible trap, you know, in which most people lost their lives because the American communists were also, after all, Americans, you know. And you worked for them like you worked for everybody else. Except since they were communists, you know, you're not supposed to say you worked for them, you know. And all of that complicated my reaction to both Chester and to Richard in a sense which I can't exactly, it took me a long time to understand, you know. Mm-hmm.

But it's a question of generations again. No. They're both a generation. Yes, yes. It's a question of generations. I had to get to be a man myself in quite another context. And since I was, in effect, after the Second World War, the American Communist Party was a very different organization in a sense. And the black situation became different too. There was no haven at all for black writers, so I split. Mm-hmm.

I had to split. Otherwise, you know, I would be dead. And, you know, figure it out on the stones of Paris. Do you know what I mean? Now, Richard left a tremendous testimony, you know, about a time that will never be seen again, in which your son will read about the way he reads about Greece, you know. Yeah. You know, it came out of a set of assumptions, you know, which a boy of 21, that's what I was then,

had to fight if he was going to live at all. You know? You know? Because what you couldn't accept was that pain. You couldn't accept that past as being your present and still more your future. You know? You had to find some way of dealing with it. Of dealing with it. And to deal with it meant you had to find another vocabulary. You had to risk your life. You know? You had to risk it all. You had to go for bro. You know? Which both Chester and Richard...

Now I can see. Now I can see. What I owe to Richard, what I owe to Chester, what I owe to Langston, what I owe to W.E.B. Dubois, what I owe to Frederick Douglass. But I could not see that when I was 20. You know? I don't think anybody can see that at 20. You know? But you see, they were, on one level, simply more exalted victims. I still remember a boy named Angelo Herndon who wrote a book called Let Me Live. And I have no idea what happened to him.

He's probably like everybody else. And that's your future. And it takes a long time before you accept what has been given to you from your past. What we call black literature is really summed up for me by the whole career, let's say, of Bessie Smith, Ray Charles, Louisa Franklin. Because how it's been handed down since we couldn't read or write as far as they knew. And it was at one time, I draw another thousand years ago, a crime to be able to read if you were black.

You know, it was punishable by law. You know, we had to smuggle information somehow. And we did this through our music. We did it in the church. You know? You were talking before about, you know, the church you went to visit. I thought about the Apollo Theater. The last time I saw Aretha. And...

What did she do with the policy to turn it into a gospel church service? Everybody tested that. And that's true religion. And anything a black writer is trying to do has to come out of that. I don't mean it has to be limited to that, but it comes out of that because the standards which come from Greece and Rome, for example, even the standards come from what we call the Jewish Christian ethic.

are very dubious when you try to apply them to your own life. Dubious, yes. I use the word advisedly, yes. So you have to use what in fact you have as a signifier of what you've been told you have. There's a question someplace I'm trying to form it.

And again, I guess I'm stuck with Chester because, among other things, he's one of my favorite writers. And I've read everything to date, including his autobiography that he's written. So it's easier for me. But if you move from, say, If He Hollers, Let Him Go, right into...

Third generation caster. The first on that group of... Then he had to stop. He left the States also. He left the States much later than all of you are in terms of age. Not much later in terms of age. He was much older. Then he began Pink Toes and went into the coffin at Gravedigger Jones, which everybody assumed was safe.

You dig it? Everybody. Then he did. Well, most people, you know what I mean? That they could publish him because they said, oh, it's just a detective story. Then he did, of course, the master detective story, Blind Man with a Pistol. And he said, who's the murderer? He said, the state's the murderer. It's not a detective story at all. It's an allegory. It's fantastic. Exactly. But again, I'm talking about Chester and Chester's pursuit of truth. Mm-hmm.

Because Richard Wright died before he quit pursuing truth or was murdered before he quit. You know what I mean? But Chester could say, okay, I will pursue truth in this way, which looks a little better, that you can make a movie out of it if you want to. It'll still be true. And then takes it right to blind man with a pistol. It's the same thing that we were doing on the plantation when they thought of the same silhouetted Jesus. And I was telling you it's time to split. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

It's like, you know, steal away, steal away. Why do we always get hung up in, if I can use that kind of a word, why do we as black writers seem to be so hung up in the truth? I'm asking this as a younger person. Because the responsibility of a writer is to excavate, don't know where I can find. Again, the experience of the people who produce them because the act of writing is the intention of it. The root of it is liberation. Look, this is why...

No tyrant in history was able to read, but every single one of them burned the books. That's true. You know? Yeah. That is why no one yet believes, really, that there is such a thing as a black writer. A black writer is still a freak, you know, a dancing dog. We don't yet exist in the imagination of this century, and we cannot afford to play games. There's too much at stake.

But there has to be a way to do what we do and survive, which is, to me, what seems to be missing. Sweetheart, sweetheart, our ancestors taught us how to do that. We have survived until now. You used Cheston as a very good example, you know. And people may think, by and large, this is a detective story. You didn't write it for the people who think it's a detective story. That's a great book, though. But you see what I mean? Yeah, I do. Look, there was a law. Let me say a very brutal thing.

A very brutal thing, but it has to be said, I think. There was a law in America about a thousand years ago which stated that a black man has no rights. This was a law which a white man is bound to respect. Now, we have come to this. I can say now that the people who framed that law have no standards which I am bound to respect. That's the way the wheel goes round. No white critic can judge my work.

I'd be a fool if I depended on that judgment. You know what I'm trying to say? Exactly. But I'm not sure that anyone at this stage, I personally hate critics. Maybe they're right. I'm not sure that anyone... Actually, I love critics, but they're very rare.

A real critic is very rare. A real critic, to criticize a real book, would have to write a book of equal length, which case is a waste of time, because you could read the book that they're criticizing. That's right. Whether it be good or bad, whether it's to explain, you know what I mean? Mostly, though, the young critics are, I think, just trying to hurt people. And the young black critics try to hurt people, I think, essentially. And the white critics don't understand. In many cases, they would like to praise it, but...

I will be able to accept critical judgments. Do they understand Ray Charles? It never happened. No. When that day comes, then, okay, that's a new ballgame. We'll see. I would rather a 14-year-old kid said I didn't like that essay or didn't like that poem. I can relate to that because I know that he read it and that he understood it. I felt myself together.

By the judgments of a few people whom I trusted. Yeah. It's the way it has to be. Who I knew would not give me any... Yeah. It's a funny situation to be in these days because everybody's trying to delineate what you're doing. And to me, what's important is that things are being done. Well, baby, I know that my mother worked for them for a long time. A long time. A long time. And I know she came to the house every morning and left every night.

And they do not know anything about her at all. I can do it. The only thing that's coming from my mother is they may be able to tell me who I am. Until they do that, they can't. Until they do the one thing, until they know who that maid is, they can't tell me anything about me. And still less about you. You know, we were talking earlier about the junkie situation. Mm-hmm. Which I'm kind of curious. You said that it related to, like, that whole sexual thing. I'm kind of curious. Well...

We don't have to discuss it. I was thinking about something a junkie once said to me. It was a very good friend of mine, a musician. He said, you're a junkie too. I thought to myself, I mean, you know, something in the way he said it made me, because I came from the same streets. I knew why he was a junkie and I knew what had happened to me. He said, you're a junkie because you talk to yourself. I had to think about that. And I thought about it and I, what he meant was, you have to listen to your own sound.

You've got to find a way to listen to your own sound. You live in a kind of echo chamber. And it's true. And it also demands a terrible turning away from many things. On one level, I must say, some of the junkies I have known have been among the most valuable people I've ever met in my life. Because they know something. I'm not trying to be mystical about it. But they know that

They know their situation. George Kane wrote a book called Blue Child Baby, which is a tremendous, tremendous book. And the first honest book I've ever read about the condition of a junkie. But it really is exaggerated, or rather, you know, made clear, the situation of being a black man in America. You could even go further than that and say the situation of being a white man, being a man in this civilization. People are frustrated the hell out of me.

It's a tremendous book. Read it again. Read it again. It's a very frightening book. You have to, in order to live, finally, make so many difficult and dangerous choices that the one thing you really are trying to save is what you lose. What you're trying to save is one thing. Your ability to touch another human being or be touched by that person. That's what you're really trying to save. And when you realize you can't save that either, you hit the needle.

you know and it is one more way after all the junk comes from somewhere i don't care how many carboys i thought of the wolves and how many um you know drives against drugs i lived in the ghetto and i watched it you know i think that's the biggest hype in the world you buy drugs in the ghetto like like you buy like you buy whiskey in the deep south from the sheriff right you know it's part of a criminal conspiracy to destroy black people the proof of this is nobody came nobody cared

As long as our kids were dying. It's the only way they got the plague spread outward, up to Scarsdale, Westchester, and white kids started dying. Then we have a drug problem. They have a drug problem. I think that that's a big, I think it's a big hype. And I'm not on anything, so I don't know it from the inside. I don't try to. But all it's done is to divide the people who are not on drugs. Because the junkie and the bus should go on. Yeah, the junkie and the bus should go on. They have a love affair. Everybody's going to break them up. But you and I fight about it.

I think, you know, I think really, seriously, something my brother said to me years ago, he got robbed by a junkie, right? Okay. And he was very hot. He was very angry. But then he realized that the junkie didn't have any choice but to rob him. You know, the whole point was to set you at a division, you know. I decided after that, you know, that the junkie is a victim like me.

a brother like me, you know. I ain't no better than he is. I really am not any better than he is. We're in the same trap. We're in the same trap for the same reasons, you know. It's the same way, you know, that the great powers can use a tribal war in some unknown country, you know, set them against each other, then blame both parties and put the money in Switzerland, and they still own the country, you know. But both countries are to blame.

Because they have to stop and think about it. Of course. Of course. I mean, Nigeria just finished with that horrendous fiasco, which is what you're talking about. One of the examples that I mean. There was no point in it. But, baby, it takes people a very long time to learn very little. If you consider your own life, if I consider my life, when I think how little I've learned in, after all, a fairly long time, and what it has cost me to learn whatever I've learned, and then to face whatever it is I've learned...

And then to act on it, it takes a long time. Do you know? I don't think that... Do you see what I mean, though? Sure, but I don't think that I'm all that, like, different or exceptional or something like that. But I think there's certain things... Well, first of all, I don't need anybody to feel better than, you see? And I think that, like, that junkie hype, that whole war hype, that whole homosexual hype...

you know what i mean the whole do i not he's not black hype i don't need it because it doesn't make me any better people invent categories in order to feel safe white people invited invented black people to give them to give white people identity no it's it's insane themselves to straight invent faggots so they can sleep with them that's true without becoming a fact of themselves

Somehow. Somehow. Somehow. You know. It's a hype, though. If you're a writer, you're forced to look behind the word and to the meaning of the word. You know. And to the actions produced by the word. Yes. Yes. You are responsible for what that word means. I agree. You know. You have to find a way to use that word to liberate the energy in that word. So it has a positive effect on the lives of people. There is such a thing as a living word. The word was made for us. That's right.

That's not a mystical statement. No, it's true. It's true. I'm just always amazed at the number of hypes, though, that people go for. You know, like, if you don't eat meat now, you're somehow better than somebody who has a pork chop. And what does it matter? Baby, I told you. Baby, I told you. I told you before. You know, some things seem really huge. It doesn't. It's one of the problems, dear. I just can't get over how people continue the BS when we see that it has nothing to do with it. Because they're afraid to let it go.

But they're perpetuating their own destruction. You tell that to some white South African farmer. I can't tell that to some black guy. You know what I mean? That you're buying the destruction of your children. He doesn't have to hear it. I mean, see, we talk across the counter purposes sometimes. The white South African does not have to hear me. You know what I mean? If his children are straight tough.

If I walk down the street and tell some cat, listen, so what if you don't eat meat and you eat imported sugar? You're a nigger. You understand? He gets mad at me. Yeah, but you have to understand why he gets mad at you. Because he's a nigger. First of all, he ain't mad at you. He's mad because what you told him is the truth. It's true. He's mad because you peeped his whole card. He's mad because he is trying to establish an illusion which you are breaking.

He's mad the same way those terrible preachers in the church I grew up in were mad, you know, when I began to ask them questions about what does this really mean? You know, when I began to watch their lives, they were nothing but pimps and hustlers, really. You know, wrapped in a cloak, you know, in the blood of Jesus and all that jazz, you know. And you ask them a real question, they hate you. Of course they hate you.

But it just... It's so self-destructive. But it's got nothing to do with you. Of course it's self-destructive. Yes, I know that. But how are we going to get over that? Look, baby, I've written off my generation completely. I don't talk to them. Let's go back to the kid. You talk to those people who even hear you, and you say what you can say, and you are not going to live forever either. Thank God. What you have to do is make it possible for others to live.

You know, that's the only reason to be here. You know, who needs the rest of it, really? It's true. You know? It's so weird, though. It's counterproductive. That's very bad English. That's very bad. Would you say that, like, to sort of sum things up here, would you say, like, you tend to be optimistic?

You know, on those kind of levels. When I pick a kid up, my arms, yes. I look at you, yes. No. Not me. Yes. I'm very pessimistic. Oh, no, you're not as pessimistic as you think you are. I'm not pessimistic. You've got part of my energy to be as pessimistic as you think you are. I'm pretty pessimistic, though. No, I think you're pretty realistic. I think you're pretty cool. No, I think you're pretty clear. But pessimists are silent. Pessimists are people who have no hope for themselves or others.

Businesses are also people who think that the human race is beneath their notice. They're better than other human beings. Back to that. Hmm? People really feel the need to feel better than somebody, don't they? Because they can. That's a mystery, which I can't. But they do feel it. I don't know why they feel it. But they do. It's like being in competition with somebody, you know. Something I never understood. I've been in my own life, you know, in competition with me. Which is enough.

Enough. So what would happen? Yeah. Just be busy. It's very good for the figure. It makes you happy, you know. Well, it means that in any case, you can walk into a room and talk to somebody, look them in the eye, you know. If I say, I love you, I can say it, you know. But I can't, you know, get it out of my face. I can mean it, you know. I only got one life, and I'm going to live my life, you know.

In the sight of God and all his children. That's all I can see. You know, which is... It's maybe parochial, narrow-minded, bullheaded. But it just takes up so much energy just to keep yourself happy. You know what I mean? It isn't even a question of keeping yourself happy. You know, it's a question of keeping yourself in relation to... In some kind of clear relationship, more or less. To the force which feeds you. You know, some days you're happy, some days you ain't. But...

As long as we can manage to deal with it on the simplest level. Just bear in mind that this person facing you is a person like you. They're going to go home and do whatever they do, just like you. They're as alone as you are. That becomes a responsibility, doesn't it? Well, it's called love. We agree. Love is a tremendous responsibility. It's the only one to take.

There isn't any other. I agree. You have just been treated to part two of an extraordinary conversation between Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin, two titans of Black thought, Black literary writing, scholarship, and of course, two of the really great

Revolutionaries of thought, I think, and certainly revolutionaries of black thought as well. Thought anywhere. James Baldwin and Nikki Giovanni. They're both ancestors now. Nikki Giovanni passing away just this past Monday, just a couple of days ago at the age of 81. Nikki Giovanni taught at Virginia Tech. And one of the things that I have learned, I did not know this, is that she had told the

of the literary department that she was teaching out of at Virginia Tech back in the early part of this new century that there was a student in the school who needed to be expelled from her class and that she would actually say that she had bad vibes from this particular student. And she warned

the chair that if he did not remove this particular student she would quit teaching at Virginia Tech. Now as far as I know the student was removed from her class but that student went on to kill 32 people at Virginia Tech in 2007. That is a true story. Nikki Giovanni was ahead of her time. Nikki Giovanni was

wrote close to 50 books poetry novels stories essays she's also a spoken word artist she recorded for vinyl lps several of them and her books include poetry includes black thought black feeling i believe that's the exact title of one of her many books there is also a book

of poems from Nikki Giovanna that covers more than 50 years of her work. I will be playing tomorrow some of the interviews that

Nikki Giovanni gave, some portions of them. I was going to do it in this episode, but I just do not want to add anything to what you just heard from two of the greatest, Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin, there in 1971 in London, having a conversation. That was part two of that two-part conversation, which was

aired on the program Soul, which was aired on public broadcasting stations inside the United States at the time. Remember, again, I didn't say this before, this second part, that both Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin spent time together in that conversation. One of them, Nikki Giovanni, was 28 years of age. James Baldwin was 20 years her senior. And so there's this

intergenerational conversation going on and to listen to that exchange of ideas and you know you can hear the gentle at best perhaps maybe I should say gentle patronizing perhaps of James Baldwin and I you know I don't know you can judge for yourself how you feel about that when he says hey baby you can call it him saying that not out of disrespect you could say it's out of love

Or you might say that he perhaps is engaging in a disrespect of Nikki Giovanni. It depends on where you sit with that. I tend to think it's him doing that out of a kind of love and respect. And I don't think that at least from listening again to what you and I have just listened to,

that it's out of, that Nikki Giovanni takes any umbrage to it. In fact, I think knowing Nikki Giovanni and at least not knowing her personally, but knowing her and knowing of her, she would have said something if she thought that what James Baldwin was doing was disrespectful in any way. I mean, she spoke up several times during the course of this part to the conversation and she did so again, of course,

as you know, in her life and criticized a lot of people who needed, I think, to be criticized, including Bill Cosby, among others. So I do hope you've enjoyed that. And I certainly did. And you really have to experience that to grasp it and to that conversation. Again, you can look at this conversation in its entirety, and it is broken up into two parts.

But I really urge you to do that. And I will this time on this particular episode put two portions, put that link up so that you can listen to it. It's an extraordinary, extraordinary conversation to watch the reactions as well. It's just absolutely unreal. But I really think that the mileage out of this conversation comes from

by just listening to it. And I'm glad, dear listener, that you have done that in these last two episodes, parts one and two of one of the great conversations, I think one of the greatest conversations of the 20th century, if you will. I am not exaggerating that. Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin.

Nikki Giovanni passed away this past Monday at the age of 81. And we will continue here on the Politocrat Data Podcast to celebrate and commemorate and remember and honor the griot, educator, activist, artist, poet, writer, author, teacher, Nikki Giovanni, who, as I said, passed away at the age of 81 on Monday.

Of course, you can find this podcast on numerous podcasting platforms, including Spotify and Apple and Audible and Odyssey and, of course, Pandora, as well as others. And you can find me on social media, on numerous social media platforms, including Spoutable. You can find me there, spoutable.com, four-star popcorn, R-E-E-L. You can also find me, of course, on

Fanbase.app forward slash popcorn. Join the Fanbase revolution today. Please do. And please go to startengine.com forward slash fanbase to invest today in Fanbase. Fantastic platform. Isaac Hayes III. You can find me on sez.us.

forward slash popcorn r-e-e-l and of course as you know you can find me on blue sky popcorn r-e-e-l dot b sky dot social as well i'm against me there's so many threads dot net forward slash popcorn r-e-e thank you very much for listening to this edition of the politocrat i'm omar moore