When James Baldwin Squared Off Against William F. Buckley Jr.

[Buckley] would lose again, badly, later that year when he ran for mayor of New York. Curiously, his main support came not from the WASP establishment of Manhattan but from white voters in the outer boroughs. Is it curious? You need to come out and say it when somebody is a racist. Too much dancing around.

Buckley was a bloviating blowhard.

I was at Oxford when James Baldwin debated William Buckley at the Cambridge Union. A year or so earlier, Malcolm X had debated at the Oxford Union (where he defended Barry Goldwater's line "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice....") So, while I didn't attend the Baldwin-Buckley debate, I can probably supply some context. I think that Buckley seriously misjudged the mood of his audience. Channeling Churchill was an inept move which would have drawn grimaces and even catcalls from a audience that considered itself avant-garde and that had no time for yesterday's icons. (Remember that the audience had only recently been children). The Civil Rights movement was at its zenith. Crowded around a small black and white television in the Junior Common Room (JCR) we enthusiastically cheered its progress. Long before Baldwin showed up on campus the audience would have been overwhelmingly in his camp After all, we were present at the birth of radical chic. We would have anticipated with glee Baldwin's mau-mauing of the keeper of the tablets of American conservatism. For those few hours, at least, the hapless Bill Buckley would have found himself the designated scapegoat for all of white America's crimes against black Americans. The poor chap would not have known what hit him.

Please experience it. It is awe-inspiring. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFeoS41xe7w If I was asked the NY Times Book Review "By the Book" question: 'You’re organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?' I would answer: James Baldwin. And no one else. I wouldn't want to share. (Though maybe Kurt Vonnegut could drop by for dessert...)

This important book is another reminder that Buckley, the godfather of modern conservatism, was a racist and anti-Semite who, like many conservatives, tried to intellectualize his bigotry through big words and pseudo-intellectual arguments like "states' rights.''

Why is it a surprise that when Buckley ran for mayor of NYC his support came from the outer borough white voter? Queens, Staten Island, and small sections of Brooklyn and the Bronx then, as now, harbor angry white folks whose values very much resemble those of the Trump voter in Arkansas, Florida, Kansas, etc. The WASP Republican is a Bush Republican, not Trump. Campaigns based on racial politics always appeal to the lowest functioning group of white people with their hatred of brown and black people. These whites live under the comically erroneous belief that the only thing keeping them from Trump-like business success are racial minorities...when in fact it is their own lack of motivation and poor lifestyle habits.

We are having the same discussions to this day. (some) White folks still have the same stain on their brain as in the mid 20 century. They just won't give up the illusion of white supremacy. It's like the radiation in Chernobyl the stain on the brain will take years for it to be scrubbed away. Time is the only cure.

Mr. Meaney's last paragraph is unfortunate. WFB was hardly one of the "authors of our predicament," which predicament, I take Meaney to mean, is Trump and all the lies and demagoguery that both elevated and accompany him. Could WFB sometimes be too enamored of debate, excited by winning arguments with rhetoric instead of trying to understand nuance? Yes. But he placed a premium on facts and on civility, and to my knowledge, WFB was always opposed to political violence and the speech that incited it. He was a champion of cultivation and high culture. It's also worth noting that the one position he changed most noticeably was his position on race in America: he admitted very publicly, at a time when many conservatives were not doing so, that his early ideas about segregation and states rights were flat-out wrong. He then went about doing his best to purge National Review, and respectable conservatism, of bigots and bigotry. WFB for sure had his flaws. He was stuffy and blind to his own immense privilege. And his obsessive and unbending Catholicism severely limited him intellectually and was occasionally the backdrop for harsh actions, such as when he reportedly cut his only child Christopher's "illegitimate" son completely out of his, WFB's, will, and did so in a bizarrely merciless and angry way. But to claim that WFB was Trump and Trumpism's shrewd progenitor is just not correct or fair.

The most powerful sentence, to me, in the above: “it might be possible to create a new political synthesis if white Americans were prepared to recognize what they had done, both to blacks but also, crucially, to themselves.” That is the crux of it. Too many whites do not realize that they are hurting themselves and our country by pushing aside needed intellectualism, talent, and labor available from non-caucasions. They think themselves patriots when they are the opposite. E pluribus unum - not yet. Whites: Just flip that ONE mental switch to off - the one that sends adrenaline coursing through you when you see a non-white walk in front of your home.

Buckley was a fake. He thought of himself as a salesman only, and used the pretenses of intelligence and erudition to impress and intimidate people instead of fairly inviting them to test his arguments. As a conservative leader he failed his own cause, positioning himself as its chief thinker while declining to explicate it clearly. He excluded the Birchers not because they were contemptible racists, but only because they embarrassed him and his sleazy pose of gentility and mannerly genius. His arguments always landed on him requiring you to agree with his inherent superiority, and on that bedrock he could preen and tease and play like a punk preppy. If you took him seriously that he fend for himself honestly, as they did at Oxford, then he was silly, weak, and a loser by the hard scoring.

Buckley was a pompous poseur, not an intellectual.

I remember watching Firing Line as a junior high student with my father. A lifelong Democrat and union member, he enjoyed watching Buckley, and became fascinated by a tic of Wm F's, a rapid twitch of the forehead and scalp just before he spoke.

Buckley needs to move to the dustbin of history, where he has always belonged. His persistence seems largely due to his social status and entitlement. His advancement was solely due to his privilege. Honestly, he never struck me as very intelligent. His policies are failed, his friends are criminals, and his snobbery was counter to American Values at the time. Hit "erase."

Intellectuals like Baldwin and Buckley to name just a few raised the level of intelligence of all those who read their books , the brain is a muscle like any other and excercise makes it stronger, in this way the human race as a group became more intelligent. Now it is just the opposite, it is a race to the bottom of a deep dark idiocy. There are Youtube videos of speeches by Buckley Jr, Vidal, all of the great intellectuals, maybe they get ten thousand views at most, while a video of some rapper garbling unintelligible lyrics will get views in the hundred of millions. Intelligence as a goal, and an end in itself, is long past, people only respect intelligence in regards to making money. Money is the new god of America. These were great men. Those were great times. It seemed anything was possible. Now all paths lead to nowhere.

I grew up poor, welfare poor. I first read some of Baldwin’s writings in college in the late 60s. Later, as a legal aid lawyer on Kansas City’s east side, my clients’ complaints about buy-here-pay-here used car dealers, payday lenders, rapacious landlords, rent-to-own furniture dealers, industrial life insurance companies and the whole host of economic parasites that prey on the poor prompted me to recall, almost daily, Baldwin’s observation that it is expensive to be poor. Guy had a way with words.

Baldwin was one of this country's greatest intellectuals; buckley hosted a tv show and wrote spy novels.

James Baldwin is one of America's great heroes who did not receive the acclaim which he earned. While struggling through Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the Great Gatsby, to which I could not relate, I stumbled across Baldwin's Another Country, and that book resonated with me because of its accurate depiction of the struggles of the human soul. I hope everyone either orders one of his books or takes one out of the library...we should have a statue of him in front of the National Library of Congress. What do conservatives like Buckley know about struggles to pay rent, to buy food, to walk through the streets with fear of you palpitating from others, or with fear of others attacking you? When I taught teenage African Americas writing and literature, I asked them how many had been stopped and frisked by the police. All of the young men raised their hand, and said, "Don't you mean how MANY times?" These young men were stopped and searched on their porches, on the subway, on the school yard, in stores, and wherever they went. Could Buckley imagine the pain that must cause - to be constantly under suspicion because of your race? These country club conservatives love to issue platitudes about morality when they have no idea - none - of what they are talking about, and they are so arrogant they do not even bother to ask the people to whom they direct their tiresome platitudes. As Karl Menninger wrote, "It is hard for a free fish to imagine a hooked one..."

This article could have been significantly more interesting if there had been more information about Baldwin and less about Buckley. I was reading and waiting for more about Baldwin and it never came. As it is about 2 long paragraphs on Buckley (and a tangent about Wills) for every 1 short paragraph on Baldwin.

Son Christopher's defense of dad won't wash. Who's kidding whom? William Buckley was barely a better a person than Trump. Refinement can mask only so much. Baldwin (and Gore Vidal) exposed Buckley for the creep that he was.

What hit me hardest in this book review and in viewing the debate itself was Baldwin's sense in 1965 that we are all products of our birth, our upbringing, our neighborhoods; that it is extremely difficult for anyone to understand the circumstances and perspectives of those born and brought up in other neighborhoods. Buckley, born into wealth and privilege, ran unsuccessfully for mayor of New York, winning votes not so much from the diverse heart of the city but from the outer neighborhoods composed at the time of mainly white, privileged folk. Baldwin mentions Robert Kennedy's well-intentioned but myopic (if prescient) remark that there would be a Black president in 40 years. Baldwin notes the irony that Blacks had been in America for 400 years while the Kennedy's had arrived much later. But Kennedy a few years later did get out of his neighborhood, leaving the discussions and debates in Washington DC regarding poverty to actually visit some of the most impoverished neighborhoods in America, to meet people living in those circumstances, to sit with them in their homes. He came away profoundly changed, beyond his private school and Harvard education. People who would presume to make policies for our diverse nation would do well to challenge themselves in similar fashion. Trump has mocked Obama's early work in Chicago's South Side neighborhoods, but when has Trump ever gotten out of his narrow and privileged neighborhood, even in his reading?

Looking forward to reading this. I cannot but feel a groan of sadness at how Buckley, in his debate, seems consistently oblivious to the basis of Baldwin's grievance - the legacy of shame, humiliation and despair in the African American experience. While Buckley dazzles the "outer boroughs" with his British accent and quick wit, he seemed incapable of basic empathy, imagination and humanity regarding a generational legacy of collective shame, depression and marginalization. One hundred and fifty years is insignificant in the broader perspective of family generations. The simplistic idea that our "great American experiment" hast "leveled the playing field" is naive and conveniently erroneous. When one person or group of people are valued less and regarded less, while still smarting from a profoundly degrading, humiliating legacy, that person is not on the same level field. Its time to step out of heady discourse, have heart, open our eyes and try to understand the perspective of those different than ourselves. We might all be very surprised to hear what other's feel. Time to open our minds and hearts and try to listen. Just the act of listening and observing with an open mind is collectively healing. Injecting a deeper understanding of each other's experience will ad immeasurable value to present public discourse.

Too bad we couldn’t have that kind of popular national interest in intellectual debate today

This review reinforces my opinion that William F. Buckley was a sham intellectual hiding racism and self-satisfied upper-class privilege behind elegant mockery, tempered by slavish devotion to the Catholic Church.

I can't forget the political debate between William Buckley and black panther Huey Newton. Buckley was brilliant, Newton was self education-street smart, you could see the enjoyment they both had in the combat ring of the brain-thought-engagement, it was mental-martial arts at a very high level. What a time in history, miss it.

It’s always useful to keep in mind that the cradle of our current national nightmare was the right’s strategic weaponization of southern white supremacy. Never forget that whenever some conservative apparatchik attempts to blame the left for Trump’s ascendancy.

I encourage people to watch that debate. Good stuff.

It is time we all acknowledge William Buckley Jr. was not an intellectual. He was a shallow pompous bombast. And a walking talking manifestation and defender of white male privilege. A woman or person of color who had used his language combined with his lack of intellectual rigor would have been laughed out of the room. I never read any of his longer writings, because every time I read one of his shorter ones I was left wondering why anyone wasted the ink to publish him. And I still do.

Probably no better words describe “this problem” than the ending to “Notes of a Native Son”: “It is precisely this black-white experience which may prove of indispensable value to us in the world we face today. This world is white no longer, and it will never be white again.”

Some of this language seems oddly racialized: "Lack of godliness was less of a problem in Harlem. James Baldwin learned how to lock and load the English language as a child prodigy storefront preacher. " Why does Buckly "hone" his skills from his sophisticated table in CT while Baldwin l"ocks and loads" his verbal 'weapons' from Harlem?

The one thing I learned from William F. Buckley -- whose intellect was vastly, vastly overrated -- was what the word "simpering" meant. SIMPERING was what he did all the time (the subtext being, "I can't get the words out of my mouth fast enough because I have so much to say because I know so much and understand so much.") Listen to a YouTube if you don't know what I mean. It was just one of his many affectations and pretensions, but the most nauseating one. Still, I learned what "simpering" meant -- so he did teach me something.

James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., Debate Over Race in America is an example of democracy in action. This is how the left and right used to spar! Now the flavor has changed and the war of words is tainted with half-truths, lies and innuendo. The ignorant man in the high castle wins as the public is baffled by the torrent of lies he uses to promote his personal agenda! : (

I watched them debate on Youtube a while back. Baldwin was truly something to behold!

The Baldwin Buckley debate in 1965 summarizes the American Dream and its nightmare realities. It is as pertinent now as it was then. Thank you NYTs.

I encourage any interested party to watch the footage of this debate - Baldwin is breathtaking. Buckley didn't have a leg to stand on and even the student conservatives in the chamber begin to be won over by Baldwin. What an extraordinary man he was. I especially like going back and watching the various interviews he gave throughout the years with a favorite being Bill Moyers on PBS. On another note: a dear friend of mine was coming of age in the 60's and attended Brooklyn College for Social Work. He saw a poster of an upcoming debate between Malcolm X and Buckley and he said that he was actually scared of X because of all the bad press about him that he almost didn't go. He spoke of that debate as a life changing event for him. X had already gone to Mecca and my friend said he was a moving force of logic and balance. We talked so much about it that I feel as though I was there.

I had the opportunity to see the video on YouTube of this debate in the Cambridge Union a few years ago. It was a remarkable performance by James Baldwin. It seemed as if William F. Buckley came completely unprepared and he may even have been a bit inebriated. That is a pity because it really would have been nice to see two of the great American intellectuals of the 20th century make their cases. The sympathy was already for James Baldwin but William F. Buckley could have tried harder.

One of the greatest debates I have ever watched. Perhaps we should have more debates like this and not sound bite sessions with commercial breaks.

Meaney is mean-spirited toward William Buckley. That shows in particular when Meaney says that Buckley "would lose again, badly, later that year when he ran for mayor of New York." When asked by a reporter during the campaign what would be the first thing he would do if he were elected mayor, Buckley replied "I would demand a recount."

Speaking of The Firing Line, the only political thinker who could shred Buckley’s obsequious analogies and beat him in debate was Allard K Lowenstein who Buckley surprisingly endorsed for Congress in 1968 on Long Island. I remember printing thousands of Xerox copies of his endorsement in Newsday and handing them out to commuters at the LIRR station in Rockville Center. That endorsement really gave Al instant credibility with the opposition and silenced some of his critics. More than a few of us thought it was instrumental in his election.

As a 1950s white male with servants, it is hard to imagine any tough struggles for Buckley. Struggles that would have earned him backbone, empathy and compassion. White, black or brown, I vote for Baldwin.

A half century has passed. Increasingly the Baldwin approach, as opposed to that of Martin Luther King, has prevailed. Has it helped those it purported to help? Has societal happiness increased?

From a time when people respected intellectuals. Respected writers. The world war and the horrors taught us to think, to conceptualize, to wonder what life was all about. Now we have become completely nihilistic. Everyone is a star, everyone has a platform to talk and in the babble on Instagram or Facebook, yet they have nothing to say. Everyone looks inward as if looking at themselves in a mirror, rather than looking out at the world and wondering how to make it better. Intellectuals sacrifice their lives for knowledge, which is way too hard in this new world. This Trump World. When the elected President of a country has the vocabulary of a 5 year old that's all you need to know about the electorate.

Mr. Buckley was a TV showman albeit with a rapier tongue. I watched his Firing Line program more to be entertained than enlightened. In retrospect he was a conscientious Conservative and would have called out vulgarian Donald Trump early and often.

I certainly look forward to reading this book, as I am an admirer of both men. The only thing that I can say about then versus now is that we are a long way away from great thinkers like Mr. Baldwin and Mr. Buckley. Today we are left with people (for that’s all they really are) like Sean Hannity and Kanye West. A terrible shame. While there has always been an anti-intellectual streak in America, it both surprises and galls how far the intellectual pendulum has swung towards the off-notes. Baldwin and Buckley are sorely missed.

While I very much look forward to reading the book, the last line of the review is a little bit off-putting. I believe Mr. Buckley”s son was correct: His father would have been as anti-Trump as any of Trump”s present detractors. President Trump is no more a true conservative than AOC is a true liberal.

It's a profound insight that in fact the Republican Party has not moved away from the Waspy conservatism of people like William Buckley but that the conservative intellectuals like Buckley and William Kristol planted the seeds of the Tea Party and Trumpism but then lost control of it. It has now grown in a direction that should have predicted but failed to do so.

Another seminal James Baldwin event was his interview in Chicago by Studs Terkel. When I heard it after returning from a year of teaching in West Africa to help get the Peace Corps started I was able to understand not just intellectually but emotionally the impact of slavery. I've felt Baldwin's impact on my life ever since.

William F. Buckley believed in white superiority and held acceptance of white's social mores as the ultimate goal for inclusion. James Baldwin believed in equality as a God-given right and being defined by someone else's social norms pure bunk. Unfortunately for Mr Baldwin our country has regressed and his vision will have to wait quite a while longer.

"Baldwin envisioned a different endgame. “We are trying to forge a new identity for which we need each other,” he told his audience. He suggested it might be possible to create a new political synthesis if white Americans were prepared to recognize what they had done, both to blacks but also, crucially, to themselves." We're not there yet. I am continually amazed at the graciousness of those who have been oppressed toward their oppressors. I am descended from slave-masters who also fathered a large family of slaves. Recently I attended a gathering of that family, both black and white (mostly black). The graciousness with which I was welcomed and embraced by the black members of my family touched me at my core. Perhaps healed some ancient wound.

I am so buying this book. I have long been fascinated by this confrontation between these two icons. Buckley was intrenched in an untenable construct but a formidable gate keeper. Baldwin was brilliant and fluent, and delivered undeniable truths dismantling brick by brick of the house build to enslave and trap America's black citizenry.

The position that Buckley forged in the 1960’s is still in use today by conservatives, racism is bad but let’s not do anything about it. It is hard to see how the author of that threadbare argument has a reputation as keen intellectual.

Having watched the debate in its entirety more than once, I'm anxious to read the book. With a historical lens, Baldwin comes off as soaring, occasionally veering wildly, struggling to contain the decades of accumulated ignorance he is facing, while Buckley comes off as brittle, sneering, and altogether inferior - both in his thought at his performance.