Film Review: I Am Not Your Negro

I first read James Baldwin recently, and it seemed serendipitous that this film was released so soon after.  I’ve seen the famous Oxford Union debate between Baldwin, the subject of this film, and William F. Buckley, an unbearably pompous, verbose and slimy writer and pundit famous in the US in the 1960s.  That debate, about the state of race relations in the USA at the time (1965), was won comfortably by the commanding and erudite Baldwin, who even got a standing ovation from that most august of crowds.  (White liberal privileged students are so predictable, aren’t they?  Doesn’t mean they’re wrong, mark you.) 

This debate is referenced in the film, along with many of Baldwin’s other TV appearances and excerpts from his writing.  The narration (by Samuel L. Jackson, if you’re interested) is taken from Baldwin’s unfinished work, Remember This House, on which the whole film is based.  The book was intended as a history of race relations in America, as told through the lives of Baldwin’s friends and contemporaries, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King.
It’s a more interesting take than the usual biopic stuff; Baldwin remembers his three friends, all very different characters, all political campaigners, all important figures in the civil rights movement, all assassinated.  Sounds like a great idea for a book to me…sadly, Baldwin died before completing the book, even though he wrote about the three assassinations in other collections.

Baldwin’s assertion that the problem was with America in general echoes the views of the three friends on whom he intended to base his book. 
“The story of the Negro in America is The Story Of America.  And it’s not a pretty story.”

The book also takes in a lot of the cultural criticism for which Baldwin is well known; he writes about realising, while watching Western films as a child, that he was not the hero – and that those who fought against the heroes were the victims of America.  He realised he was not the tall white dude on the horse, bravely shooting natives – and never would be.

There are a few surprises in the film: that not only Marlon Brando, but also Charlton Heston, were at the march on Washington in 1963 – you know, the one where Dr King delivered his famous “I Have A Dream” speech in the shadow of the US National monument.  This was also a speech that called the Hip Hop community into existence, but that’s a story for another time…

Bringing the ideas and criticism right up to date, the film shows images from Ferguson, Missouri, and other places where people still struggle to convince others of their humanity.  Baldwin, in railing against White America’s refusal/inability to confront the past, to accept the humanity of the black population, posits the notion – very shrewdly, without really spelling it out (because he knows why) – that white people cannot face this reality because it would force them to confront the real history of the USA: built by wiping out the native population, and built with, and on top of, black bodies.  The reason that race is still such an explosive issue in the 21^st century USA is surely, at least partly, caused by this inability, this lack of understanding on the part of the privileged group.  White children do not learn that their ancestors committed genocide and enslaved and traded in humans to give them their privilege. 
(British children do not learn what their ancestors did in Kenya, India, Jamaica and Ireland (and everywhere else) for similar reasons.)

As Bob Dylan would have it:
“And the names of the heroes, I was made to memorise; with guns in their hands, and God on their side.”
Bob Dylan appears in the film, briefly; fifty years before he made an advert for IBM, he sang at the aforementioned March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, as well as plenty of others.  What with him continuing to be an interesting artist ever since, we may forget that he wrote some of the most politically insightful songs of the 60s.  While most of his contemporaries were saying Love Is All You Need, or whatever, Dylan was getting to the heart of the issue:

“The south politician preaches to the poor white man:
‘You got more than the blacks, don’t complain –
You’re better than them, you were born with white skin’, they explain
And the negro’s name is used, it is plain,
For the politician’s gain, as he rises to fame,
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train,
But it ain’t him to blame,
He’s only a pawn in their game.”

That’s from Only A Pawn In Their Game, which first introduced me to Medgar Evers.  He was the leader of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), and was assassinated in 1963. 

“Today, Medgar Evers was buried from the bullet he caught
They’re lowering him down, as a king.
But, when the shadowy sun
Sets on the one who fired the gun
You’ll see by his grave
On the stone that remains
Carved next to his name
His epitaph plain:
Only a pawn in their game.”

James Baldwin was as incisive in print, and on TV, as Dylan was on record.  Given that he was speaking from the personal experience of being on the receiving end of The Official (and Cultural) US unwillingness to recognise his humanity, his views on it are more significant.  (Dylan was good because he was a white man telling white people what was up, which is a different thing.)

“I am not a nigger. I’m a man.  So, if there is a nigger, you had to create it.  And you have to ask yourself why that was necessary…the future of the country depends on it”

The use of contemporary footage is telling: James Baldwin was saying decades ago – like Malcolm X, like Martin Luther King – that the race problem in the US was a human problem, and not something black people needed to get over….so.  Think on.

There are so many quotable quotes in the film; far too many to list here.  Also, I’m not trying to give you edited highlights – just go and see this thing, OK?

Still, I must include this one, because it says it all, as far as is possible in a few words:

“White is a metaphor for power.” 
BOOM.  There it is.

It’s a great loss to literature and culture, and a tragic loss for America, that Baldwin didn’t live long enough to complete his book.  This film goes some way towards addressing that loss.  See it if you have any interest in the contemporary USA, or the state of the world today.