FilmLit: I Am Not Your Negro (2017)

James Baldwin's words mesh with American history to create a crushing documentary you must watch. You can thank me later.

Film Review: I Am Not Your Negro is necessary. See it. Please. (If you don't trust me: it has a 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.) Get it from the internet, check your local library, wherever, and help us all become the people we were meant to be. If you've seen Eyes on the Prize, this is that turned up to 11 and transported to 2017. Ken Burns with a passion and a mission. If you've read Ta-Nehisi Coates, this is him on steroids with visuals (Coates himself being influenced by Baldwin). This is James Baldwin (1924-1987) brought back from the grave so his zombie corpse can speak to a time in which Black Lives Matter is a thing and introduce Medgar, Martin, and Malcolm to a time that has forgotten it needs them; hearing them in their own words is mesmerizing. This is the book he began in 1979 but never completed, now resuscitated and given a new and more powerful voice. All the narration is from Baldwin's words, read immaculately by Samuel L. Jackson (who's never given a better performance -- straight from the heart). We remember what a brilliant writer Baldwin was. He is the center of I Am Not Your Negro through clips of interviews and speeches, interspersed with bits of films (Baldwin was a movie fan) and visuals from throughout American history, photos and footage of the civil rights struggle from the 1950s to 2017. We see how so much of what was feared in that time has come home to roost today. For Baldwin's "Birmingham," the viewer can substitute Charlottesville, or any city in which an unarmed black man was shot dead by the government. Too many similarities still exist from then to now -- recent events have made Baldwin's words not only prophetic, but contemporaneous. We learn that seeing through others' eyes is necessary, but blacks and whites in our national book club are reading two different books, and then discussing as if it's the same book. We can also see that this is not solely a racial problem, but a human problem, an American problem, in which no Americans should be treated as some Americans are treated. One third of America consists of racists and racist enablers. This documentary is not for them, as watching it will only make them purchase another gun, buy a new lock for the front door, and feel a certain smug nostalgia while watching the swastikas and frothing mobs try to prevent small black children from going to school. This film is for decent Americans and traditional liberals, and for those who lament Charlottesville, routinely vote for civic improvement, and can stare unflinchingly at racism without seeing it. I Am Not Your Negro may help us all see the world just a little more clearly. Maybe we'll all move closer to reading the same book.  🐢