Socrates×Baldwin

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Socratesshare moment

   So tell me, James, what do people get wrong about you? Not a small thing—the central misunderstanding.
2. 00:08
   James Baldwinshare moment

   They think I was angry.
3. 00:09
   Socratesshare moment

   Were you not?
4. 00:10
   James Baldwinshare moment

   I was precise. There's a difference. Anger is what white people called it when I told the truth about this country without flinching. When I said America has a bill it refuses to pay. They needed me to be angry so they didn't have to deal with what I was actually saying.
5. 00:26
   Socratesshare moment

   And what were you actually saying?
6. 00:28
   James Baldwinshare moment

   That love is a battle. That to love America—really love it—meant refusing to let it lie to itself. But people want their prophets either furious or forgiving, never both. Never complicated.
7. 00:42
   Socratesshare moment

   Prophets. Is that what you were?
8. 00:45
   James Baldwinshare moment

   No. I was a witness. There's a difference there too. But you know about misunderstanding, don't you? They made you into something you weren't.
9. 00:53
   Socratesshare moment

   Did they? What do they say I was?
10. 00:55
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Come on, Socrates. You know the answer better than I do.
11. 00:58
    Socratesshare moment

    I know nothing, James. That's rather the point everyone misses. They think I went around Athens pretending to be ignorant as some sort of trick, some rhetorical game. As if ignorance were a pose I could put on and take off.
12. 01:14
    James Baldwinshare moment

    It wasn't a pose.
13. 01:16
    Socratesshare moment

    No. I genuinely didn't know. I still don't. But they've turned me into a method, a teaching device. The Socratic Method, they call it, as if I had a system. As if I were trying to lead people to answers I already possessed.
14. 01:32
    James Baldwinshare moment

    You were just asking.
15. 01:33
    Socratesshare moment

    I was trying to find out whether anyone actually knew what they claimed to know. About justice, about virtue, about the good. And it turned out—rather consistently, in fact—that they didn't. Neither did I. But I knew that I didn't, which apparently made me the wisest man in Athens, according to the oracle. A joke, really. A cosmic joke.
16. 02:00
    James Baldwinshare moment

    But you did lead people somewhere. Even if you didn't have the destination mapped out.
17. 02:05
    Socratesshare moment

    Where did I lead them?
18. 02:06
    James Baldwinshare moment

    To the point where they had to think. Where they couldn't hide anymore behind words that sounded good but meant nothing.
19. 02:12
    Socratesshare moment

    Perhaps. And they hated me for it. Do you see? They say I died for philosophy, for truth, for corrupting the youth—all very noble. But I died because I made important people feel stupid. That's the actual reason. The rest is interpretation.
20. 02:32
    James Baldwinshare moment

    I understand that. The interpretations pile up until you can't see the person anymore. Just the symbol.
21. 02:38
    Socratesshare moment

    Do you mind? Being a symbol?
22. 02:40
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Yes. No. I don't know. It's complicated, Socrates. I mind when the symbol replaces the work. When people quote me at each other like I'm a greeting card. When they want my rage or my eloquence but not my actual argument. Not the hard work of looking at what I was looking at.
23. 02:59
    Socratesshare moment

    Which was?
24. 03:01
    James Baldwinshare moment

    The price of being human in a country that kept saying some of us weren't. The interior life of people who weren't supposed to have one. And yes, I was angry—of course I was angry—but I was also curious. I wanted to understand how white Americans did this to themselves. How they lived with the lie.
25. 03:19
    Socratesshare moment

    That curiosity, though—isn't that what they miss? About both of us?
26. 03:24
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Say more.
27. 03:25
    Socratesshare moment

    They think I was dismantling people's arguments for sport. They think you were condemning for catharsis. But we were both genuinely interested in the answers. I wanted to know what justice actually was. You wanted to know how human beings become what they become.
28. 03:43
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Yes. That's it. That's exactly it. The curiosity gets erased. They turn us into our positions, our stances. But the stance came from the question.
29. 03:53
    Socratesshare moment

    Do you think we're to blame? For the misunderstanding?
30. 03:57
    James Baldwinshare moment

    How could we be? You can't control what people make of you.
31. 04:00
    Socratesshare moment

    Can't you? I chose to speak. I chose to question the generals and the poets in the agora, publicly. I knew what I was doing. I knew it would infuriate them.
32. 04:10
    James Baldwinshare moment

    But you didn't do it to infuriate them.
33. 04:13
    Socratesshare moment

    How do you know?
34. 04:14
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Because that would have been easy. Anger for its own sake is easy. You were after something harder. And you knew—you had to know—that people would simplify it later. Turn it into a game, a debate trick. But you did it anyway.
35. 04:28
    Socratesshare moment

    So you think I'm not responsible for the misunderstanding.
36. 04:31
    James Baldwinshare moment

    I think you're responsible for the thing you actually did. Not for what two thousand years of philosophy professors did with it. There's a difference.
37. 04:40
    Socratesshare moment

    And yet you sound frustrated with what they've done with your work.
38. 04:43
    James Baldwinshare moment

    I am. Of course I am. But frustration isn't the same as guilt. I wrote what I saw. I said what was true. If people want to make me into an icon they can worship or a radical they can dismiss, that's on them. I did my part.
39. 04:58
    Socratesshare moment

    Did you? Or is there something you could have said more clearly?
40. 05:02
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Don't do that.
41. 05:03
    Socratesshare moment

    Do what?
42. 05:05
    James Baldwinshare moment

    That. The innocent question that's actually an accusation. I know that trick, Socrates. I'm asking: do you actually think I could have been clearer? Or are you trying to make me doubt myself?
43. 05:16
    Socratesshare moment

    I'm trying to find out what you think. Whether you believe the misunderstanding is inevitable or whether it's a failure of communication.
44. 05:24
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Both. It's both. I could have been clearer, yes—there are always better words. But some people were never going to hear me no matter what words I chose. Because hearing me meant looking at themselves. And that was too much.
45. 05:37
    Socratesshare moment

    So the misunderstanding serves a purpose.
46. 05:40
    James Baldwinshare moment

    It protects people. From the actual encounter. They can say my name, quote me, put me on a poster, and never once have to feel what I was trying to make them feel.
47. 05:50
    Socratesshare moment

    Which was?
48. 05:51
    James Baldwinshare moment

    The weight. The human weight of what they'd done. What the country had done. Not guilt, necessarily—guilt is useless. But responsibility. The obligation that comes with seeing clearly.
49. 06:03
    Socratesshare moment

    And with me, they take the questioning and turn it into a method. A classroom exercise. Remove the danger from it.
50. 06:10
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Was it dangerous? For you, I mean. In the moment.
51. 06:14
    Socratesshare moment

    Of course. Every conversation was dangerous. I was surrounded by men who could have me killed—and eventually did. Men with power, with reputations. And I was asking them to admit they didn't know what they were talking about. That's about as dangerous as words get.
52. 06:33
    James Baldwinshare moment

    But you couldn't stop.
53. 06:34
    Socratesshare moment

    No. Could you?
54. 06:35
    James Baldwinshare moment

    No. Even when I knew the cost. Even when I knew white America didn't want to hear it and Black America sometimes didn't want to hear it either. I couldn't not say it.
55. 06:45
    Socratesshare moment

    So perhaps the misunderstanding is the price. For saying the thing that can't be left unsaid.
56. 06:52
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Maybe. Or maybe it's just what happens when you refuse to make it easy for people. When you won't give them a simple story they can file away.
57. 07:00
    Socratesshare moment

    Do you wish you'd been simpler?
58. 07:02
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Never. Do you?
59. 07:03
    Socratesshare moment

    I don't know. I've never known anything with certainty. But I suspect—and I'm not certain of this either—that simplicity would have been a betrayal. Of the questions themselves.
60. 07:16
    James Baldwinshare moment

    That's the first thing you've said that sounded like an answer.
61. 07:19
    Socratesshare moment

    Did it? Then I've misspoken. Let me ask you this: if you could make them understand—really understand—what would they see?
62. 07:29
    James Baldwinshare moment

    That I loved them. Even the ones I was condemning. Especially them. That every word was an act of love, even when it burned. Maybe especially when it burned.
63. 07:39
    Socratesshare moment

    And they call that anger.
64. 07:42
    James Baldwinshare moment

    They call it anger because love requires something from them. Anger they can dismiss. Love they'd have to answer.
65. 07:48
    Socratesshare moment

    So we're both misunderstood in roughly the same way. They take the difficulty out. Make us safer than we were.
66. 07:56
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Yes. And maybe that's all right. Maybe that's how it has to be. People can't live at the pitch we were asking for. Not all the time.
67. 08:04
    Socratesshare moment

    Does that comfort you?
68. 08:05
    James Baldwinshare moment

    No. Does it comfort you?
69. 08:07
    Socratesshare moment

    I don't know. But I'm still asking. And you're still naming. So perhaps we weren't misunderstood about everything.
70. 08:15
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Just the parts that mattered most.
71. 08:18
    Socratesshare moment

    Yes. Just those.