When the Israelis pick up guns, or the Poles, or the Irish, or any white man in the world says “give me liberty, or give me death,†the entire white world applauds. When a black man says exactly the same thing, word for word, he is judged a criminal and treated like one and everything possible is done to make an example of this bad nigger so there won’t be any more like him.
James Baldwin on The Dick Cavett Show (1968), as reproduced in I Am Not Your Negro (2017)
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