WAFR Recording of Ronald Dellums at Duke University, Winning as the Top Value of the US, 1972-1973

WAFR Recording of Ronald Dellums at Duke University, Winning as the Top Value of the US, 1972-1973

This is a recording from WAFR—a Black-owned community radio station in Durham, NC—of Ronald Dellums speaking at Duke University around 1972 to 1973. This clip is about the winning being the top value in the US and how that has led to/impacted the Watergate scandal.

WAFR (Durham, NC); Dellums, Ronald V., 1935-2018

From WAFR: Ronald Dellums, Duke University, Audiotape T-70092/54 in the Media and the Movement Project Collection of Black-Owned Radio Station Broadcasts #70092, Southern Historical Collection, Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

1972-1973

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

audio/mp4

English

Sound

https://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/ref/collection/70092/id/94

“What are some of the important insights into our body politic as we reflect on Watergate? One of the most important learnings that can come out of Watergate is the danger of placing winning as the number one value in this country. Watergate points up the mentality of seeing one value, winning, as the most critical value of all. Steal? Just win. Corrupt? Just win. Burglarize? Win. Lie? Win. Intimidate? Win. Launder money? Win. And that same mentality, those same values, are being taught to our children. And so we have some plastic, middle class values that say that the only reason for a human being being on the face of the Earth is to win, not simply to live and to love. To win. Be corrupt? Win. Take money? Win. Be a crook? Win. The important thing is to succeed, a Madison Avenue concept of power—power mad, power lusty, power greedy human beings. And one important lesson that we must learn from Watergate is that as long as winning is the most important goal in this country, we will always have corruption, injustice, insensitivity, and inhumanity. That’s the most important thing that we can learn from Watergate. And when you isolate the value of winning from any other value so that winning simply becomes an objective by which you attempt to achieve other more noble goals, you have a corrupting influence. And then you can see the parade of acts that are justified on the basis of the fact that we had to win to save America.”

00:01:55