I AM NOT YOUR
NEGRO
Directed by Raoul Peck
Magnolia Pictures, 93 minutes,
PG-13 (language, brief nudity)
★★★★
Incredibly,
there are still those who ask why so much attention is paid to race. This ought
to be self-evident in the age of Ferguson, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, and Eric
Garner, but I can think of few more poignant ways of explaining why race
matters than Raoul Peck's documentary I Am Not Your Negro*. It is a look at playwright, novelist,
and poet James Baldwin, who was also
one of the sharpest and smartest social critics of his day. Therein lies a tale
of its own; Baldwin's day was 1924 to 1987 and the fact that we wrestle with
the same crap with which Baldwin grappled thirty years after his passing is a
searing indictment of American society.I Am Not Yur Negor
The
film is loosely based on Baldwin's Remember
This House, his planned remembrance of three martyrs he knew well: Medgar
Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Baldwin had finished just 30
pages of this book at the time of his death**, so this film isn't really about
these three individuals as much as it is a reflection on what Gunnar Myrdal
dubbed An American Dilemma back in
1944: race and racism. Peck's film is a pastiche of words from Baldwin himself,
Samuel L. Jackson's narration, and archival footage—some of which features many
of Baldwin's friends and associates: Harry Belafonte, Marlon Brando, Lorraine
Hansberry, Charlton Heston, Sidney Poitier and others. But Baldwin didn't even spare friends;
he insisted, for example, that most of Poitier's films were a bromide for white
audiences. Baldwin also noted that American "entertainment is often
difficult to distinguish from the use of narcotics," a phrase Peck uses to
buckshot his film sprays of images such as a Doris Day film clip followed by
Baldwin's trenchant thoughts on school desegregation and archival photographs
of Little Rock in 1957. There are also snippets of Hollywood embarrassments
such as Dance, Fools, Dance and Uncle Tom's Cabin.
One of
the film's unintentional spotlights is cast upon the dumbing down of American
culture. There is footage from The Dick
Cavett Show that makes this painfully clear. Watch any (non-PBS) talk show
of your choice and ask yourself when was the last time it devoted an entire
segment to someone with the articulate genius of James Baldwin, gave that individual
free rein to deliver an unvarnished indictment of American society, and then
introduced a Yale philosophy professor to comment upon it! (Okay, that guest, Professor
Paul Weiss, was a pompous ass, but really—who does this anymore? Surely not Jimmy Fallon or Seth Myers.)
I Am Not Your Negro is not a perfect film. As
noted, it isn't really based very much on Remember
This House because thirty pages isn't much to go on. Whether Peck's
structure is a brilliant patch job or a chaotic jumble probably depends upon
the age of viewers and their familiarity with the people, events, and
references flashing on the screen. In a controversial move, Peck completely
ignored Baldwin's homosexuality. It's contentious whether doing so was an
inexcusable obliteration or a wise choice that kept the focus on race. It is,
however, completely fair to take Peck to task for suggesting that Malcolm X's
assassination was a direct result of white racism. Malcolm was, indeed, often
the subject of white ire, but his 1965 murder was at the hands of the Nation of
Islam, a Black Muslim group. ***
Still, I Am Not Your Negro is a powerful look
at white privilege. Baldwin's charge that "This is not the land of the
free" is, tragically, as true then as now. There is a telling moment near
the end of the film in which he claims, "I can't be a pessimist because I
am alive. I'm forced to be an optimist." Yet Baldwin's worn countenance,
his heavy sighs, his arched eyebrow, and his resort to scolding are the marks
of a prematurely aged fighter who has taken enough blows for one lifetime. Still,
all Americans should feel the sting his punishing left hook: "What white
people have to do, is try and find out in their own hearts why it was necessary
to have a nigger in the first place, because I'm not a nigger, I'm a man, but
if you think I'm a nigger, it means you need it."
Rob Weir
* For younger readers, "Negro" was the preferred
term for African Americans in post-World War Two America until around 1974,
when it was supplanted by the term "black." The "Black
Power" movement of the late 1960s and James Brown's 1968 hit single,
"Say It Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud)" were instrumental in shifting
language in ways consonant with black-generated cultural identities, but it
took a while for these to shake their associations with fringe radicalism.
** When Baldwin died, his publisher, McGraw Hill, attempted
to sue his estate for the return of a $200,000 advance. This suit was dropped
in 1990, an outcome occasioned by public outcry and negative publicity.
*** Malcolm X was a Nation of Islam loyalist until a 1964
pilgrimage to Mecca, which convinced him that the exclusivity of Black Muslims
was wrong, as was their assumption that all non-whites were racist. He became a
universalist Sunni Muslim, thereby infuriating the Nation of Islam.
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