Abstract
The 1965 debate at Cambridge University between James Baldwin and William F. Buckley, Jr., posed the question: “Has the American Dream been achieved at the Expense of the American Negro?” Within the contours of the debate, Baldwin and Buckley wrestled with the ghosts of settler colonialism and slavery in a nation founded on freedom and equality. Framing the debate within the longue durée, this essay examines the deep cultural currents related to the American racial paradox at the height of the Civil Rights movement. Underscoring the changing language of white resistance against black civil rights, the essay argues that the Baldwin and Buckley debate anticipated the ways the U.S. would address racial inequality in the aftermath of the civil rights era and the dawn of neoliberalism in the 1970s.
Document Type
Article
Source Publication
James Baldwin Review
Version
Published Version
DOI
Publication Date
9-1-2016
Volume
2
Issue
1
First Page
49
Last Page
74
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Rights
© 2016 Daniel McClure
Recommended Citation
McClure, Daniel Robert. “Possessing History and American Innocence: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley, Jr., and the 1965 Cambridge Debate.” James Baldwin Review 2, no. 1 (September 1, 2016): 49–74. https://doi.org/10.7227/JBR.2.4.
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