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The historic debate concerning racism in the United States, titled Baldwin vs. Buckley, took place in 1965 and has since been viewed millions of times online. Today, it remains astonishingly pertinent and is currently being re-enacted at the Avignon Festival by an American theater company.
This head-to-head exchange between two prominent intellectuals, African-American writer James Baldwin and William F. Buckley, Jr., a figurehead of American conservatism, was conducted at the University of Cambridge Union before an audience of British students.
Fast forward nearly six decades, and the experimental theater company from New York, Elevator Repair Service, is reviving this debate virtually verbatim for one hour, under the question: “Is the American Dream at the expense of the American Negro?” “When I watched the debate, I was staggered by how relevant the issues raised are, just as relevant as they were in the past,” confided actor Greig Sargeant, who portrays Baldwin and initiated this performance.
In the gymnasium of the Lycée Frédéric Mistral, two lecterns face each other, surrounded by the audience. The lights shine equally on the spectators and the performers. Baldwin, whose speech received a standing ovation from the students, offers a compelling dissection of “structural racism” in the United States.
“It is a profound shock to discover that the country that gave you birth, to which you owe your life and identity, has not ensured there is a place for you within its system,” posits the writer, who died in 1987. Baldwin, who recounted in one of his writings being beaten by the police when he was just 10 years old, experienced a resurgence of interest following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020.
White police officer Derek Chauvin asphyxiated Floyd by kneeling on his neck for over nine minutes. Floyd’s agonizing death, filmed by a bystander and shared online, sparked massive protests across the United States and the world.
For Greig Sargeant, racism remains “endemic” in the United States. “We have problems with healthcare, with voting. Black men are killed simply because they are black, and white supremacy is revealing its grotesque face,” he states.
Opposite him, Buckley, equally articulate, tries to deconstruct Baldwin’s discourse, arguing that his “accusations against our civilization are unfounded.”
“There is no silver bullet for the racial issue in America,” he asserts. “Under no circumstances should America be told that the only alternative is to overturn this civilization, which is nothing less than the faith of our fathers, the faith of your fathers,” insists the intellectual. “It’s challenging to listen to Buckley’s viewpoint. It resonates so much with today’s debates,” comments John Collins, co-founder of the company.
“The reason this debate is timeless is that we cannot agree on history,” he adds. Despite the historical differences, he believes that the face-off can have resonance in France, which is also grappling with its own debate on racism and has recently been shaken by riots following the death of a young man named Nahel. The Elevator Repair Service is known, among other things, for having performed the entirety of The Great Gatsby in a sort of theatrical reading over eight hours. Why did they want to recreate the Baldwin vs. Buckley debate, recorded by the BBC, on stage?
“If you watch the debate on YouTube, there’s a certain detachment. In the theater, we address the audience directly as if they were the Cambridge students, there’s an immediacy,” explains Mr. Collins. Above all, “it is crucial to keep the conversation going,” he affirms.
With AFP
