transcribings:

okayysophia:

[image description]

a tweet from @ReddLegend on twitter posted on October 28, 2020 containing a photo of james baldwin, who is a black man wearing a blue jumpsuit. the text in the image reads:

“Interviewer: How would you define someone who smashes in the window of a television store and takes what he wants?

James Baldwin: Before I get to that, how would you define somebody who puts a cat where he is and takes all the money out of the ghetto where he makes it? Who is looting whom? Grabbing off the TV set? He doesn’t really want the TV set. He’s saying screw you. It’s not judgement, by the way, on the value of the TV set. He doesn’t want it. He wants to let you know he’s there. The question I’m trying to raise is a very serious question. The mass media-televsion and all the major news agencies endlessly use that word, “looter.” On television you always see black hands reaching in, you know. And so the American public concludes that these savages are trying to steal everything from us. And no one has seriously tried to get where the trouble is. After all, you’re accusing a captive population who has been robbed of everything of looting. I think it’s obscene.”

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