I Am Not Your Negro

at the moral apathy, 470 00:32:45,089 --> 00:32:46,633 the death of the heart, 471 00:32:47,467 --> 00:32:49,218 which is happening in my country. 472 00:32:49,886 --> 00:32:54,432 These people have deluded themselves for so long 473 00:32:54,891 --> 00:32:56,809 that they really don't think I'm human. 474 00:32:57,810 --> 00:33:00,605 I base this on their conduct, not on what they say. 475 00:33:01,230 --> 00:33:03,941 And this means that they have become, in themselves... 476 00:33:05,652 --> 00:33:07,403 ...moral monsters. 477 00:33:43,064 --> 00:33:45,566 Most of the white Americans I've ever encountered, 478 00:33:45,733 --> 00:33:48,277 really, you know, had a Negro friend or a Negro maid 479 00:33:48,444 --> 00:33:51,364 or somebody in high school, but they never, you know, 480 00:33:51,531 --> 00:33:54,075 or rarely, after school was over or whatever, 481 00:33:54,242 --> 00:33:55,827 came to my kitchen, you know. 482 00:33:55,993 --> 00:33:59,622 We were segregated from the schoolhouse door. 483 00:33:59,789 --> 00:34:02,291 Therefore, he doesn't know, he really does not know, 484 00:34:02,458 --> 00:34:04,085 what it was like for me to leave my house, 485 00:34:04,252 --> 00:34:05,795 to leave the school and go back to Harlem. 486 00:34:05,962 --> 00:34:07,422 He doesn't know how Negroes live. 487 00:34:07,588 --> 00:34:10,216 And it comes as a great surprise to the Kennedy brothers 488 00:34:10,383 --> 00:34:11,843 and to everybody else in the country. 489 00:34:12,552 --> 00:34:14,679 I'm certain, again, you know, 490 00:34:14,846 --> 00:34:17,932 that again like most white Americans I have encountered, 491 00:34:18,099 --> 00:34:19,350 they have no... 492 00:34:19,976 --> 00:34:21,728 I'm sure they have nothing whatever against Negroes... 493 00:34:21,894 --> 00:34:23,521 That's really not the question. 494 00:34:23,730 --> 00:34:26,190 The question is really a kind of apathy and ignorance, 495 00:34:26,524 --> 00:34:28,276 which is the price we pay for segregation. 496 00:34:28,443 --> 00:34:29,610 That's what segregation means. 497 00:34:29,736 --> 00:34:31,571 You don't know what's happening on the other side of the wall, 498 00:34:31,738 --> 00:34:32,864 because you don't want to know. 499 00:34:33,030 --> 00:34:34,699 <i>I was in some way,</i> 500 00:34:34,866 --> 00:34:37,952 <i>in those years, without entirely realizing it,</i> 501 00:34:38,327 --> 00:34:41,414 <i>the great Black Hope of the great White Father.</i> 502 00:34:42,373 --> 00:34:46,377 <i>I was not a racist, or so I thought.</i> 503 00:34:47,170 --> 00:34:51,674 <i>Malcolm was a racist, or so they thought.</i> 504 00:34:52,675 --> 00:34:57,096 <i>In fact, we were simply trapped in the same situation.</i> 505 00:34:58,639 --> 00:35:00,433 Well, you tell that to my boy tonight, 506 00:35:00,600 --> 00:35:03,352 when you put him to sleep on the living room couch. 507 00:35:03,770 --> 00:35:05,188 And you tell it to him in the morning, 508 00:35:05,354 --> 00:35:06,481 when his mother goes out of here 509 00:35:06,647 --> 00:35:07,982 to take care of somebody else's kids. 510 00:35:08,149 --> 00:35:10,735 And tell it to me, when we want some curtains or some drapes 511 00:35:10,902 --> 00:35:13,321 and you sneak out of here and go work in somebody's kitchen. 512 00:35:13,488 --> 00:35:15,323 All I want is to make a future for this family. 513 00:35:15,490 --> 00:35:18,242 All I want is to be able to stand in front of my boy 514 00:35:18,451 --> 00:35:20,870 like my father never was able to do to me. 515 00:35:28,461 --> 00:35:31,380 <i>Lorraine Hansberry would not be very much younger</i> 516 00:35:31,547 --> 00:35:33,716 <i>than I am now, if she were alive.</i> 517 00:35:34,967 --> 00:35:37,386 <i>At the time of the Bobby Kennedy meeting,</i> 518 00:35:37,553 --> 00:35:39,430 <i>she was thirty-three.</i> 519 00:35:41,349 --> 00:35:45,603 <i>That was one of the very last times I saw her on her feet,</i> 520 00:35:46,354 --> 00:35:48,940 <i>and she died at the age of thirty-four.</i> 521 00:35:51,400 --> 00:35:52,985 <i>I miss her so much.</i> 522 00:35:55,655 --> 00:35:58,407 <i>People forget how young everybody was.</i> 523 00:35:59,367 --> 00:36:02,620 <i>Bobby Kennedy, for another, quite different example,</i> 524 00:36:03,120 --> 00:36:04,413 <i>was thirty-eight.</i> 525 00:36:05,832 --> 00:36:07,959 <i>We wanted him to tell his brother,</i> 526 00:36:08,125 --> 00:36:10,586 <i>the president, to personally escort to school,</i> 527 00:36:10,753 --> 00:36:14,298 <i>on that day or the day after, a small black girl,</i> 528 00:36:14,674 --> 00:36:17,426 <i>already scheduled to enter Deep South School.</i> 529 00:36:17,927 --> 00:36:19,637 <i>"That way," we said,</i> 530 00:36:20,263 --> 00:36:24,058 <i>