"While Niebuhr agreed, he did not want to throw out "the white man as white man," and asked "whether there is not a leaven in the other classes that would correspond to the light of truth in the despised minority." Baldwin replied that "I don't mean to say the white people are villains or devils or anything like that," but what "I do mean to say is this: that the bulk of the white . . . Christian majority in this country has exhibited a really staggering level of irresponsibility and immoral washing of the hands, you know. . . . I don't suppose that . . . all the white people in Birmingham are monstrous people. But they're mainly silent people, you know. And that is a crime in itself."