E-mail a friendHarry Belafonte
airdate February 4, 2004
Over the course of a very full life, Harry Belafonte has been an actor, producer, singer, music composer and arranger. He was TV's first Black producer, the first Black performer to win an Emmy and the first recording artist to have a million-selling album. He's also known for his passionate commitment to civil and human rights issues. Belafonte was a confidant of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and raised money to release imprisoned civil rights protesters. He was also involved in the anti-apartheid movement.
Harry Belafonte
Tavis: I am so pleased--actually, honored--to welcome Harry Belafonte to this show tonight. His list of awards and accomplishments could fill the entire half- hour I've been given here. But really, all I have to say is just... Day-O! And you know exactly who I'm talking about. Mr. Belafonte, nice to see you.
Harry Belafonte: Tavis, wonderful to see you.
Tavis: How have you been, man?
Belafonte: Not bad. A little overly active, I think. But, uh, it's just really doing things that I have great interest in, and I feel a great sense of urgency about the pattern in which we live. And I figured that by the time I reached the 3/4-of-a-century mark, I'd have long since either been dead and gone, or lying on a beach somewhere, just being nostalgic. But, in fact, there's just so much to be done that I find that such luxuries are not affordable.
Tavis: Most find it difficult to believe that you've reached the quarter-century mark, let alone passed it 'cause you look so dapper every time I see you, number one--I'll look about half as good when I'm your age, number one. But secondly, to your words, I'm glad you said it. You really are overly active, but you're overly active because you choose to be overly active. It's one thing to have done all that you have done in your lifetime, and indeed, you've done much, as I intimated a moment ago. But why still so active after all these years?
Belafonte: I genuinely believe that our planet is in a place of great crisis, with all the violence, with all the wars that are going on, with so much destabilization. When I do my work with the United Nations and I go to many countries that make up the developing world, it is absolutely astounding to see so many countries that just 25 years ago held great promise for the future, and now they're all in a place of tremendous depression, social upheaval, HIV/AIDS--so dominant on the continent--hunger, poverty, all of it.
And here in the United States of America, here we have so much power and so much resource that we, first of all, from the national perspective, should really be so indifferent and somewhat mindless about all that goes on in our world, except that which directly touches our mechanisms of fear? So that around the issue of Iraq and around Afghanistan, we stay somewhat preoccupied with that zone. But, in fact, we're in a global crisis that will continue to shift from area to area as upheavals begin to express themselves.
Tavis: You really think that Americans are indifferent? We have a president who talks all the time about being a compassionate conservative. We have Americans who give to charity all the time. We saw the outpouring of love after 9/11. Do you really think in the world that we live that Americans are really indifferent about the concerns that others have around the globe?
Belafonte: Yes.
Tavis: You think so?
Belafonte: Yes, I do. The compassion that poured forth after 9/11 was Americans for Americans, and that is to be expected.
When we try to define how we find ourselves in this place, we have been hard-pressed to give our citizens a very clear and precise view of what role America really plays in the policies of all these nations around the world. We are a giving nation. Most people think that we are singlehandedly carrying the world on our shoulders in some benevolent and some humane way. And although there are some aspects of that that are true, by and large, we are the exploiters of this planet.
We have moved aggressively to take advantage of our financial interests, our military interests, and we have been somewhat mindless about what we do in order to protect those very narrow interests. We have made more agreements with countries that have undermined the economy of the countries that we are dealing with than we have done to enhance the economies of these countries. We talk about world trade; we talk about leveling the playing field, open markets, globalization, all the titles that sound very fanciful. But upon close scrutiny, you'll discover that nations which came to the table with expectations that our plan was to their best interest have now become nations that are in debt: beggar nations. Schools are closing. Senegal is in the worst state it's ever been, mostly through the IMF and the World Bank and American policy, which drives both of those institutions.
Tavis: I ask this question respectfully, as you well know. But how do you respond to folk who say that Harry Belafonte's best days are behind him? He's an old man now by his own admission, and what we're really getting is the rant of an old guy.
Belafonte: Well, those who do that either have an agenda to discredit and to--to contain my voice. Others who come to that without any such selection process are people who just are not connected with the greater truth. I'm really not driven by criticism of that kind. I really pay no attention to my detractors. As a matter of fact, the more noise they make, the better I realize I'm doing. I feel very comfortable with that. I really do.
What I do respond to are the millions and millions of people whom I meet and greet and sit and talk with, who put their feelings and their points of view on the table--the millions of people I speak to in Africa, all over the continent of Africa, the millions of people that I talk to within the Caribbean and South American region. What they say. How they listen to what points of view I might bring to the table that might enhance how they may help themselves and how we may, in turn, help them fulfill their own right to self-determination and their right to develop their own self-reliance.
It is a cruel thing that we do, and until Americans begin to understand more clearly how that cruelty plays itself out, the more we are prone to have criticisms that come from all over the world that are very anti-American, have people who are looking at us in some ways that are filled with great vengeance. It is one thing to identify Osama bin Laden and that narrow group of people who sit as our arch-enemy. But there's a vast planet of people here who are deeply unhappy with the American presence in their lives and the duplicity with which we treat them.
Tavis: I wonder how much, and we talked any number of times over the years, but I've never had the chance--at least I didn't take the chance, I should say--to ask you how your coming to this nation as the son of immigrants shapes or shades your world view and your opinion of what America is or what she ought to be? How much of that is determined or is part and parcel of your having come to this country as the son of immigrants?
Belafonte: A great deal of it. Especially since I've come to know through Nelson Mandela and through Martin Luther King and Eleanor Roosevelt and others who are in my life that we are not an isolated island. The United States of America is part of a planet, and everything that happens on this planet has serious ramifications to our own vital interests, as well as our external interests.
As an immigrant, I'm no different than most first-generation-born Americans who know life through the eyes and through the prisms of their immigrant experience, whether it were the Jews or the Irish who came here during the Irish rebellion and the potato famine, whether it were Russians that came here. Whoever has come to this country brings with them a history and a story about why America means not only so much to us, but why you would like to shape America to be the promise that we were told America holds for all of us.
Tavis: Why take the risk, and I say risk because you didn't have to, as a celebrity, use your exposure to highlight the plight of those who are disenfranchised politically or socially or economically. What is it about Harry Belafonte that has made you for all these years or convinced you or driven you all these years to speak out through your celebrity on behalf of those who are, shall we say, the least among us, not just here but, indeed, around the globe?
Belafonte: Almost all the role models that have influenced me were people who possessed enormous celebrity. And how they applied their celebrity had a tremendous impact on what I thought I would do if I ever had--acquired celebrity. Paul Robeson, man of enormous stature intellectually, culturally, artistically--
Tavis: Last week they just released his stamp.
Belafonte: That's right.
Tavis: The postal stamp.
Belafonte: Finally.
Tavis: Finally.
Belafonte: This great African American who gave so much to the world. When I first met him, I was quite young. And he embraced those of us in our little group of cultural activists in New York. And he came to see a play that we were in, and at the end of the play, he stayed behind to talk to these young people, of which I was one. And he said to us, "You know, the purpose of art is not just to show life as it is, but to show life as it should be."
And when later, I turned my attention to singing, he said, "Harry, you're in a remarkable place. Get them," meaning people, "get them to sing your song. They want to know who you are. And when that moment comes, seize upon the opportunity to take them to places they have not heard of and tell them stories about those whom they should come to know and befriend. Let them see in diversity the fact that there is something to be embraced, rather than something to be feared. Let them understand that a strange tongue does not have to be a hostile tongue."
And I really found the use of my platform as an artist, my power as a celebrity. I've always been applied to the process of being a facilitator. If I meet you in one part of the world and know that what you bring is such a richness to another person in another part of the world, my task is to use myself as a conduit and get you to greet and to know each other.
Even just months ago, when you had these comments to make about Secretary of State Colin Powell that many, again, thought was the rant of a guy who had lost it. When I saw you in Los Angeles last week for the King dinner, at which you were honored, it was the first time I'd seen you, since those remarks about Secretary of State Colin Powell, address this in a forum where I could actually see you in person talk about this. And I was fascinated by your response about why you have not been more vocal in responding to the criticism that was levied at you for what you said about Colin Powell. Can you share with me and the audience why you've chosen not to say so much about that?
Belafonte: Well, 2 reasons. First, let's deal with my detractors. They're the ones that have been heard. What people have not looked at are the vast numbers of people who have been my validators, who have supported, who have said, "Thank you so much for having the ability to be able to focus on things that have long since eluded us, or things that we would like to have said."
Tavis: Now, some of that was just mean-spirited, though.
Belafonte: Oh, yeah. That's OK. I've been around a long time. People have always been mean-spirited when you talk about freedom. A lot of people have been very mean-spirited when you talk about leveling the playing field. A lot of people have been very mean-spirited when you talk about what are the rights of people and where is our compassion as a species, one for the other? And as Dr. King used to say, I'm not really governed by consensus. Consensus does not determine my moral values. Consensus does not concern my ethical sense of life. I do what I feel I must do and what I think is valid.
And when you get the embrace of people like Mandela, Bobby Kennedy, with whom I was very close, the family whom I'm still close with. When you look at a host of people of high-profile who say, "We are glad you are among us. We are glad that you help support the things that we believe in," I sit in a rather large segment of the human race. So those who are my detractors and have the platform to be heard more loudly are the least of my concerns.
The other part of the equation is that, you know, a great American president once said that, when the state moves into a place of villainy and begins to chip away at the fabric of the rights of the peoples of this nation and the Constitution of our nation, it is the mandate of the citizens of this country to speak out against such tyranny, against such folly, and to bring criticism and dissension to the table. Those who do not do that should be charged with patriotic treason.
And I genuinely believe that the democratic process--what we're about--is that we're a nation of opinions, and the voices of dissent bring a richness to the table, so you hear another point of view. If you listen to the Bush administration or those who articulate for it, anyone who criticizes what that administration does, immediately your patriotism comes under attack. Who you are, your character begins to go through a process of assassination. They try to relegate you to the dustbin of history. They say he's an old malcontent, just some disgruntled old man that has nothing else to do with his time.
Well, then, let me tell you about the disgruntled people I speak for. 2 1/2 million incarcerated Americans in the prisons of America are the men and woman whom I speak for. They validate me. When I go around and I speak for Kofi Annan and the United Nations and what goes on with 27 1/2 million people in Southern Africa who sit as the victims of AIDS, and the 47 million of the world who are carrying it while America sits in some mindless, selfish, greedy place on the issue of pharmaceutical application, opening up opportunity for people to have nourishment for their bodies so they may be resistant to all kinds of ills. That's whom I speak for.
Those who do not want to hear that voice and who feel that it has no place on their menu are the peoples whom I am not only trying to attract their attention, but to speak for those who will be empowered and ennobled by what I say, because I do believe very strongly in dissent. And I also believe very strongly in social reaction. I believe in people mobilizing. I believe in disruptive politics. I believe that America should do no more business... There should be no bottom line for corporate America until there's a bottom line for the poor, a bottom line for those who are the victims of the greed of this society in which we live.
Tavis: Dr. King, just days before he was assassinated on that balcony in Memphis, was at your house, as he was many times, at your dinner table, in fact, organizing and talking literally just days before he was gunned down in Memphis. And he said something, as I recall, that I still find terribly interesting, to you about what black folk were integrating into.
His concern was that the things that he'd worked for in his lifetime would come to pass. But he was afraid that once they came to pass that it would raise a different dilemma for black folk in terms of the issue of integration. Can you share with me what he told you that day?
Belafonte: At that moment we had just concluded that much that we had been striving to achieve--voting rights, access, the ending of the laws of desegregation, et cetera, et cetera--were very much on the table and would, in very short time, be the law of the land. As he always did, he said, "What comes next? Why do the things that we have just achieved not fulfill the larger picture that we're looking at?" And he came to the conclusion, and as he put it, he said, "I'm very concerned that in our quest for integration, I've come to believe that we are integrating into a burning house."
And when we heard that remark, many of us were quite taken aback for the moment. We're integrating into a burning house. How did we come to be here? He said that America has not yet understood its moral responsibility to its citizens who are oppressed, and that the indifference that we had been finding in the political arena, which was changing, had not yet reached into the soul and the hearts of the American people.
And we live that credo out today. As a matter of fact, the prophecy of what he said... What he said was most prophetic, and the prophecy is unfolding itself. And when we asked him what do you do about integrating into a burning house, he says, "We have no alternative and no choice but to become firemen," and that he felt that the black community in particular had a special role to play in that. Because, as the greatest experiencers of oppression--not that others didn't experience oppression, like Native Americans and Hispanics, but we were the most oppressed and the most recent to come to a place of some triumph through our mobilization--that we should continue this momentum of setting the pace, raising the bar on the issues of injustice, and changing the way America was doing business, morally as well as politically.
Tavis: Speaking of politically, great segue. Thank you. I wonder whether or not you think that these days, the political process is, in fact, the way to accomplish what you think needs to happen to make America a better country, to make the world a better place to live?
During the movement, what we were fighting for, what you all were fighting for on my behalf and those of us who are alive today, you were fighting for access to the process, to the political process. We've got that access now. We've got more African American, more women, more elected officials of every stripe than ever before. Is the political process as we know it, the body politic as we know it, the proper vehicle, the proper channel to accomplish the kind of vision that you suggest today we need to be about?
Belafonte: Access to the process is the easiest and the smallest component of what the process is about. Dr. King already made the point that how glorious for those who work with the experiment of democracy that we have the most powerful nonviolent weapon in the world to apply to the governance of society, and it is called the vote. And the fact that we have access to the process to use the vote, and many of us have denied using that to its fullest appreciation, is where we sit with a dilemma.
The multi-party systems that we live with, the idea of debate and consent and dissent and exchange of thoughts on the subject is a perfect place for the world to be in. What we do in not exercising the protection of that process by capitulating, by not voting, by not fiercely defending the rights to continue to play that role is when we surrender to the enemy. And once you do that, you get what you have now: an ideologically strongly driven component in our society-- the Christian right, the evangelical crowd that names the game, the policies, that affect our nation, a president who articulates for them.
It is quite disturbing that the separation between church and state has become so blurred, and that the church is beginning to name the game. We are off to a war of ideology right now between Islam and Christians. No matter how we try to codify it, the truth of the matter is that they're 2 major forces in the world that are headed for an enormous confrontation. And the fundamentalist Christians in this country are as dangerous to the world as are Osama bin Laden and the fundamentalist Islamics. Therein sits a great part of our dilemma and our problem.
Tavis: I've only got a couple minutes left with you, literally, and I could do this forever, but that's all I have left.
Let me ask you: I can't imagine that you are this--well, you're always on point. But you gotta relax sometime. Even Dr. King played pool and took it easy every now and then. What do you do when you're not out representing for the least among us? How do you relax? These are your glory years. You gotta relax sometime, Mr. B.
Belafonte: Well, I do. But what I do is that when I go to these places where mostly I'm taken for political and social concern, I find myself immersed in cultures that just bring so much pleasure and joy--to listen to Hugh Masekela play in South Africa, to listen to Yousssou N'Dour in Senegal...
Tavis: So you mix work and pleasure. Ha ha ha!
Belafonte: Art and culture is... I can sit back and listen to great artists any day of the week and really feel calm and soothed and encouraged by who and what they do.
Tavis: In the minute that I have, you have clearly found your purpose and you have served it well. What do you say to people who are struggling, trying to find what their purpose is here on the planet?
Belafonte: I think it's very simple. If people will administer the thought each day that's very simply this: leave the world a better place than it was when you came into it. And I think each of us have the capacity to do that. It doesn't take celebrity to be able to make that, to accomplish that. It takes being a father and a mother in the best way you can for your children. It's about your community. It's about your church. It's about what goes on in the state and in the nation. And take time out to look into the hearts and minds of others and see if you are not mirrored at that moment, if you do not see yourself in the eyes of others.
Tavis: You know, the chance to chat with you is always a pleasure for me.
Belafonte: Thank you, Tavis. I love you.
Tavis: Thanks, Mr. Belafonte. I love you back. Thank you, man.
That's our show for tonight. Join me tomorrow on the radio on NPR, National Public Radio, and I'll see you back here next time on PBS. Good night from Los Angeles, and keep the faith.
Back to February 4, 2004