# James Baldwin on Racism, Paris, and American Institutions - Original post: https://www.twitter.com/i/status/2102050378673979445 - Source account: [@AfricanArchives](https://x.com/AfricanArchives) - Source language: English - Duration: 2:05 - Published: 2026-09-22 - Canonical URL: https://www.translate.mom/transcript/DiLpF3ULxZZV/en/james-baldwin-on-racism-paris-and-american-institutions ## Transcript [0:00](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/DiLpF3ULxZZV/en/james-baldwin-on-racism-paris-and-american-institutions) And you have more in common with a white author than you have with someone who's against all literature. So why must we always concentrate on color or religion or this? There are other ways of connecting men I'll tell you this. When I left this country in 1948, [0:15](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/DiLpF3ULxZZV/en/james-baldwin-on-racism-paris-and-american-institutions?t=15) I left this country with one reason only, one reason. I didn't care where I went. [0:18](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/DiLpF3ULxZZV/en/james-baldwin-on-racism-paris-and-american-institutions?t=18) I might've gone to Hong Kong, I might've gone to Timbuktu. [0:21](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/DiLpF3ULxZZV/en/james-baldwin-on-racism-paris-and-american-institutions?t=21) I ended up in Paris, on the streets of Paris, with $40 in my pocket on the theory that nothing worse could happen to me there than had already happened to me here. [0:30](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/DiLpF3ULxZZV/en/james-baldwin-on-racism-paris-and-american-institutions?t=30) You talk about making it as a writer by yourself. [0:32](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/DiLpF3ULxZZV/en/james-baldwin-on-racism-paris-and-american-institutions?t=32) You had to be able then to turn off all the intent of which you live, because once you turn your back on this society, you may die. [0:39](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/DiLpF3ULxZZV/en/james-baldwin-on-racism-paris-and-american-institutions?t=39) You may die. And it's very hard to sit at a typewriter and concentrate on that if you're afraid of the world around you. [0:46](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/DiLpF3ULxZZV/en/james-baldwin-on-racism-paris-and-american-institutions?t=46) The years I lived in Paris did one thing for me. [0:49](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/DiLpF3ULxZZV/en/james-baldwin-on-racism-paris-and-american-institutions?t=49) They released me from that particular social terror, which was not the paranoia of my own mind, but a real social danger visible in the face of every cop, every boss, everybody. [1:05](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/DiLpF3ULxZZV/en/james-baldwin-on-racism-paris-and-american-institutions?t=65) Oh, James Baldwin. I don't know what most white people in this country feel, but I can only include what they feel from the state of their institutions. [1:12](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/DiLpF3ULxZZV/en/james-baldwin-on-racism-paris-and-american-institutions?t=72) I don't know if white Christians hate Negroes or not, but I know that we have a Christian church which is white and a Christian church which is, which is Black. [1:18](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/DiLpF3ULxZZV/en/james-baldwin-on-racism-paris-and-american-institutions?t=78) I know, as Malcolm X once put it, that the most segregated hour in American life is high noon on Sunday. That says a great deal to me about a Christian nation. [1:25](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/DiLpF3ULxZZV/en/james-baldwin-on-racism-paris-and-american-institutions?t=85) It means that I can't afford to trust most white Christians, and certainly cannot trust the Christian church. I don't know whether the labor unions and their bosses really hate me. That doesn't matter, but I know I'm not in their unions. I don't know if the real estate lobby has anything against Black people- More, I know more about it [1:40](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/DiLpF3ULxZZV/en/james-baldwin-on-racism-paris-and-american-institutions?t=100) ... but I know the real estate lobbies keep me in the ghetto. [1:43](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/DiLpF3ULxZZV/en/james-baldwin-on-racism-paris-and-american-institutions?t=103) I don't know if, if the Board of Education hates Black people, but I know the textbooks they give my children to read and the schools that we have to go to. [1:50](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/DiLpF3ULxZZV/en/james-baldwin-on-racism-paris-and-american-institutions?t=110) Now, this is the evidence. You want me to make an act of faith, risking myself, my wife, my woman, my sister, my children, on some idealism which you assure me exists in America, which I have never seen. [2:04](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/DiLpF3ULxZZV/en/james-baldwin-on-racism-paris-and-american-institutions?t=124) I know it, sir. I know it.