AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman. As I said, we’re now turning to a debate between Malcolm X and James Baldwin, Malcolm X born 72 years ago today. This is a debate that took place in 1961 here in New York City.

MODERATOR: For many American Negroes, the sit-in movement has become a rallying point in the struggle for full equality. And yet there is, as well, a significantly large number of American Negroes, the Muslims, who have objected strenuously to the sit-ins. In view of this, Mr. Malcolm, I would like to ask you: What is it precisely that the Muslims object to about the sit-in movement?

MALCOLM X: Yes, Mr. Donnell. And first, I would like to say that I am speaking, not for myself, but as a follower and helper and representative of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, who is the spiritual head of the fastest-growing group, religious group, of black people here in the Western Hemisphere. And when we give our views, we don’t give them as a civic group. We don’t give them as a political group. But we give them primarily as a religious group. And any solution that we set forth, we absolutely feel that it’s a religious solution rather than a political solution.

One of the reasons that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, in teaching us here in America, is giving us a solution that differs drastically from the sit-in movement, he’s trying to make us men. Now, the very fact that you find students all over the world today are standing up for their rights and fighting for their rights, but here in America the so-called Negro students have allowed themselves to be maneuvered under a tag of sit-in. The word “sit” itself is not an honorable tag. Anybody can sit. An old woman can sit. A coward can sit. A baby can sit. Anything can sit. But it takes a man too stand. And when they attach this “sit-in” term or title to this movement, it stigmatizes it, in my opinion.

MODERATOR: Is it the passivity of it that you object to?

MALCOLM X: Well, that — actually, I guess it describes — the name describes its nature. It’s a passive thing. And also, we feel that to try and sit down in another man’s restaurant to drink a cup of coffee is insane. If I were in the South and a Southerner didn’t want me to eat in his restaurant, and I forced my way in and then let him go back in his kitchen and prepare some coffee for me to drink, I’d consider myself insane to drink it. We don’t think that that’s the solution. We feel that rather than to force our way into someone else’s restaurant or a public place that they have established, that we should get our own. Once we have our own, we’re respected for the fact that we can create our own. And that’s equality right there.

Thirdly, we feel that the sit-in movement actually represents a new Negro, in the sense that it represents dissatisfaction. It shows that the new generation here in America of Black students have lost the fear of the white man that our parents had 20 years ago. The average so-called Negro, if he was dissatisfied with something, the degree of dissatisfaction that he would show would be tempered or controlled by his concern as to what the white man’s attitude would be if he showed that he didn’t like it. And the sit-in movement — the good part of the sit-in movement, in my opinion, represents the fact that there is a new generation of so-called Negroes who are dissatisfied, and the fact that they will go into these places shows that they differ from their parents in that they have lost fear of that obstacle that their parents feared.

MODERATOR: Would you agree that their goal is a worthwhile one?

MALCOLM X: If their goal is integration, it’s not a worthwhile one. But if their goal is freedom, justice and equality, then that’s a worthwhile goal. If integration is going to give the Black people in America complete freedom, complete justice and complete equality, then it’s a worthwhile goal. But if this word that they’ve invented, “integration” — and as I mentioned, the Novocaine that is put into the patient’s jaw, in this sense, it would be integration. Just the holding this integration bottle and dangling it in front of the Negroes in America today has actually disabled them, or it has nullified their ability to stand up and fight like a man for something that is theirs by right, rather than to just sit around and beg and wait for the white man to make up his mind that they’re worthy to have this type thing.

I think that this is, in my opinion, why we disagree with the sit-in movement. If they are willing to wait for another hundred years for the white man to change his mind to accept them as a human being, then they’re wrong. But if they’re willing to lay down their life tonight, or in the morning, in order that we can have what is ours by right tonight, or in the morning, then it’s a good movement. But as long as they’re willing to wait for the white man to make up his mind that they are qualified to be respected as human beings, then I’m afraid that all of their waiting and their planning is for naught.

AMY GOODMAN: Malcolm X in 1961 debating James Baldwin about the strategy of the civil rights movement.

JAMES BALDWIN:* What has happened in the world in relation to Black people is not that white people have suddenly changed or become more conscious of the Black man’s humanity. What has happened is very simple, which is that white power has been broken. And this means, among other things, that it is no longer possible for an Englishman to describe an African and make the African believe it. It’s no longer possible for a white man in this country to tell a Negro who he is, and make the Negro believe this. The controlling image is absolutely gone. Now, it seems to me the responsibility which faces us then, the question which faces us, which faces me, in any case, is, since there is a distinction between power and equality, there is a distinction between power and freedom — and I know that in terms, for example, of Africa, that an African nation cannot expect to be respected unless it is free. I know that unless it has its political destiny in its own hands, which is what we mean by power, there is no hope that the English will deal with an African nation — they will deal with an African nation as a subjugated nation as long as it is in fact subjugated.

Now, this is not quite the same situation that we face here in America as American Negroes. It is not, in my mind, yet anyway, conceivable — I can see that I might very well, for one reason or another, leave this country tomorrow and never come back. But this will not make me — this will not cease — I will not cease to be an American Negro for this reason. And the history of — our history in this country is something that I think we have to face, especially since we’re demanding that white people face it. And whether I like it or not, whether you like it or not, this issue about integration is a false issue because we have been integrated here ever since we got here. I am no longer a pure African. There are no pure Africans in this country. The history which has produced us is something which, in any case, we’re going to have to deal with one of these days. And I think it is a mistake — I think it is a mistake to pretend this history did not happen.

What we’re arguing about, I think — one of the things, in any case, I think I would be arguing about is the effect of this on the Negro world and the great divisions in it, so that it does in fact range from people who imagine they are white, you know, who never talk to Negroes, to people who imagine that if they can make a buck, they will somehow beat the system, to homeless and demoralized Black boys and girls who have nowhere — who don’t know where to go. The issue, it seems to me, the reason that the sit-in movement is important, the reason this whole ferment is of such importance, is not that I want anybody’s cup of coffee or even to go particularly to anybody’s school; it is because the country cannot afford — the country cannot afford to have, as it has at this moment, millions of Black boys and girls in various ghettos all over the country either perishing literally or perishing, I must say, finally, with the kind of demoralization and bitterness and hatred which can, after all, blow this country wide apart.

The importance, in my mind, of the Muslim movement, in conclusion, is that it is the first time, I think, in the history of this country that a Negro audience, a Negro laborer, a Negro schoolboy has heard his own condition described without anybody trying to flinch from it. It is very different from hearing a speech by Roy Wilkins in which, you know, when it’s told, in one way or another, that tomorrow will be better. And I think this has a tremendous effect. This is the reason I think the Muslim speaker has so much power over his audience.

It comes out of a failure in the republic. This country had lied about the Negro situation for 100 years. And now what has happened is that the lies are no longer viable, can no longer be accepted, even when they can be told. And the country has waited so long, and it does not know how to handle this, and it’s created a moral vacuum. There’s a moral vacuum in the Negro ghettos in the same way there’s a moral vacuum in New Orleans, which is filled with desperate people. And I don’t think that we can afford this. This is — we can go on about this a little longer; there’s something else I wanted to say.

It seems to me — and now I speak for myself — my quarrel with the official Negro leadership and my quarrel with those such Negroes that imagine they are integrated or imagine they somehow escaped the Negro condition is they are not willing to do what I think is absolutely essential. One has got to reexamine the basis, the standards of this country, which do not only afflict Black people. They afflict the entire country. No one in this country, as far as I can see, really knows any longer what it means to be an American. He does not know what he means by freedom. He does not know what he means by equality. We live in the most abysmal ignorance of not only the condition of 20 million Negroes in our midst, but of the whole nature of the life being lived in the rest of the world. And I think that the American white man, the republic, is paying, is beginning to pay for his treatment of the Negro in terms of what he does not know about the rest of the world.

You cannot live, it seems to me, in — you cannot live 30 years, let’s say, with something in your closet, which you know is there, and pretend it is not there, without something terrible happening to you. By and by, what I cannot say — if I know that any one of you, you know, has murdered your brother, your mother, and the corpse is in this room and under the table, and I know it and you know it, and you know I know it, and we cannot talk about it, it takes no time at all before we cannot talk about anything, before absolute silence descends. And that kind of silence has descended on this country. I think that this country has become almost inconceivably radical overnight. It has really got to do something it has not done before, and this involves the humanity of everybody in it. And the key to this is in the Negro. If one can face that, one can face anything. But that has not been faced. And I think this is the reason for the confusion and the ferment and the great, great danger.

Again, let me say this, and I will stop. I don’t think — I am not religious. And therefore, since I am not religious, all theologies, for me, are suspect. All theologies have a certain use. But I never, for example, believed in the myth of the virgin birth, and I never quite understood why it was necessary to propagate such a peculiar notion. Therefore, you know, as theologies go, it seems to me the Muslim theology is just as good as any. One cannot quarrel with it there. I can’t anyway. But I don’t think — I personally reject that theology as I reject all others, and I don’t think that we need it.

Now, this is a great — this is a gamble. This is a very reckless thing to say. And perhaps, you know, I’m — perhaps this is very mystical. I know the kind of world I would like to see. I would like to think of myself as not needing to be supported by a myth. I would like to think of myself as being able to face whatever it is I have to face as me, dealing with what I have and what that is, without having my identity dependent on something which, finally, has to be believed, which cannot be tested. This is why one is converted to a religion, you know. I think that there is something very dangerous in it.

What I would like to see, and maybe we will never live to see it, is a world in which these things are not necessary, in which it will not matter, in which I will not need to invent, in effect, a heritage and a history, but I can deal with the one I have, and will not need, in order to — in order to deal with the rest of the world, will not need to feel superior to them, but simply be a part of them. And it seems to me this may happen, rather than, obviously, a world in which there are no Blacks, there are no whites, where it does not matter, because as long as it does matter, as long as it does matter, and it doesn’t matter who is wearing the shoe, the confusion will be great, and the bloodshed will be great.

MODERATOR: Mr. Malcolm, do you see yourself as an expression of the kind of radicalism that Mr. Baldwin is talking about?

MALCOLM X: Well, I, as a Black man, and proud of being a Black man, I can’t conceive of myself as having any desire whatsoever to lose my identity. I wouldn’t want to live in a world where none of my kind existed. And I do think that the Negro, the American so-called Negro, is the only person on Earth who would be willing to lose his identity in what you might call a new product. I heard one fellow say one day that eventually intermarriage and intermixing would take place on such a vast scale that it would produce a chocolate-colored race. I think that it’s disastrous for the Black people in America to reach the point where their racial pride disappears and they don’t want — they don’t care whether their blood is mixed up with someone else’s.

I think that also one of the things that brings this about, as the Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us, the very fact that you have to refer to the Black man in America as a “Negro” shows you that right there something is wrong. An African doesn’t accept this term “Negro.” And you find they teach us in the educational system of this country that “Negro” is a Spanish word that’s supposed to mean “black.” Yet, when you find the Black people who live in Spanish-speaking countries of South and Central America, they don’t accept the word “Negro” to identify themselves. No one allows himself to be classified under the word “Negro” but the Black man here in America who is a descendant of the slaves. And very seldom is it ever applied to anybody but the Black man in here, here in America, who is the descendant of the slaves. When you ask a man his identity, he should use a word that connects him with a culture. If you ask him his nationality, it should connect him with a nation, like if I ask a man his nationality and he says, “German,” that connects him with Germany. Or if he says — even if he says, “German American,” it still …

AMY GOODMAN: You’re listening to Malcolm X and James Baldwin in a debate they had on the civil rights movement in 1961. Again, today would have been Malcolm X’s 72nd birthday. And if you’d like a copy of today’s show, you can call 1-800-735-0230 to order a cassette copy of today’s show. That’s 1-800-735-0230. Democracy Now! is produced by Dan Coughlin, our engineer and assistant producer Errol Maitland, our engineer in Washington, D.C., and New York. Julie Drizin is our executive producer. Special thanks to Dred Scott Keyes, Samori Marksman and Bernard White. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for listening to another edition of Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now!