In I Am Not Your Negro, Raoul Peck directs the movie to follow the texts written by James Baldwin. Originally, James Baldwin had the idea of using his writing to create his final book, Remember This House, about the life and death of three famous activists, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, and Martin Luther King, Jr. The film focuses on the issues of the mistreatment of African Americans in film and in society. The use of montage allows Raoul Peck to compare past injustices towards African Americans with present inequalities. Raoul Peck creation of this film wasn’t meant to be a Civil War documentary, but instead, he wanted people of all races to understand the truth about the nation's racism. I believe that I Am Not Your Negro, shows that there …show more content…
is a parallel between the 1960s Civil Rights Movement and the current fight for equality. James Baldwin was born on August 2nd, 1924.
While he was alive James Baldwin became a novelist, essayist, playwright, poet and social critic. Baldwin has a personal connection to I Am Not Your Negro because the racism and homophobia in the United States pushed him to the point of moving to France. At the age of fifteen, Raoul Peck began reading the work of James Baldwin. James Baldwin allowed Raoul Peck to see that even though they had lived parallel lives they had shared similar racist experiences. When Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Medgar Evers were assassinated, it affected both James Baldwin and Raoul Peck. For James Baldwin, the assassination of his friend encouraged him to write a book about their personal lives. For Raoul Peck, on the other hand, the assassination made him reflect on his own life. Reflecting on his life, Raoul Peck soon decided to turn the writing of James Baldwin into a movie. On January 4th, 2017, Raoul Peck published I Am Not Your Negro. That was three years after the Black Lives Matter campaign began and three months after President Trump was elected. The film being published three months after the election of Donald Trump is significant because the President has made multiple racist comments, making it clearer to see that we are a divided nation. The film makes viewers see that racism has always existed even before the …show more content…
President. In the film I Am Not Your Negro, Raoul Peck incorporates a scene were James Baldwin discuss the famous meeting between Bobby Kennedy and Lorraine Hansberry.
During the meeting, Lorraine Hansberry had asked that President Kennedy escort a small black child to school. She had felt that the gesture would make it clear that, “…Whoever spits on that child would be spitting on the nation” (Peck 43). President Kennedy did not agree with the gesture and felt it was meaningless. 1963, meeting between Bobby Kennedy and Lorraine Hansberry gives an example of the government ignoring the fact that there is a racial. Fast forward to 2017, when white nationalist marched on the University of Virginia opposing a plan to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general, from a city park. During the protest, James Alex Fields plowed his car into a group of counter-protestors, killing one person, 32-year-old Heather Heyer. While this was occurring African American hoped President, Donald Trump would speak out against white nationalist. Instead, he did the opposite, according to PBS.org, Donald Trump stated, “Both sides deserved blame for violence in Charlottesville and that counter-protesters had acted very, very violently. I love all the people and Confederate statues are “our heritage.” Instead of speaking against racism and violence the President makes it clear that he does not support African Americans. As a viewer since both President Bobby Kennedy and Donald Trump didn't come
to the defense of African Americans shows that they are not accepting of the fact that racism exists. I Am Not Your Negro by Raoul Peck depicts examples of racism that has long been denied and compares them to present events. With the use of video montage, Raoul Peck shows scenes from movies that display racist characteristics. James Baldwin states, “Both [Sidney Poitier] and Harry Belafonte, for example, are sex symbols, though no one dares admit that, still less to use them as any of the Hollywood he-men are used” (Peck 83). In making this comment, James Baldwin is telling audience member African Americans are not given equal opportunity to display their skills. This similar treatment of African Americans not given a fair chance in Hollywood can be seen in the 2015 Oscar Nominations. According to the LATimes, “A Times study revealed that the academy was 94% white with a median age of 62.” With the use of this information, audience member can draw the conclusion that African Americans are still not given a fair chance in Hollywood. James Baldwin allows historically knowledgeable viewers to be aware that even though a few things have changed for African Americans there are still steps that need to be taken. In 1965, during the Cambridge University Debate James Baldwin showed his disbelief with the fact that African Americans must go through lots of difficulties to become president. During the interview, James Baldwin states, “We’ve been here for four hundred years and now [Robert Kennedy] tells us that maybe in forty years, if you’re good, we may let you become president” (Peck 71). In other words, African Americans must work harder than whites for a chance at presidency. Fast forward 44 years to 2009, President Obama was elected as the first African American president of the United States. His presidency brought up a lot of controversies, according to PBS.org, on March 2011, “Trump [went] on “The View,” [saying] that President Obama must show his birth certificate.” This was the beginning of the Birtherism movement, were many people began claiming that Obama was not a citizen of the United States because he was African American. James Baldwin and Raoul Peck’s view of racism still occurring can be seen in the statement by Donald Trump. As the first African American president Barack Obama had to face many critics. I Am Not Your Negro by Raoul Peck shaped together the Civil War and the current fight for equality, to show viewers the similarities between the two events. For those of us who are aware and unaware of the injustices faced by African Americans, this film makes them face the racism in the United States and inspires people to join and fight against it. The use of video montage from interviews of James Baldwin, Malcolm X, Martin Luther, and Medgar Evers inspire us to continue the fight for change like they had done before their deaths.
This week I read the short article on Alan Locke’s, “Enter the New Negro”. This article is discussing the Negro problem in depth. “By shedding the chrysalis of the Negro problem, we are achieving something like spiritual emancipation”. Locke believes that if we get rid of whatever is holding us back we would gain something renewing and beautiful.
James Baldwin wrote “Notes of a Native Son” in the mid-1950s, right in the heart of the Civil Rights Movement while he resided in Harlem. At this time, Harlem housed many African Americans and therefore had amplified amounts of racially charged crimes compared to the rest of the country. Baldwin’s life was filled with countless encounters with hatred, which he begins to analyze in this text. The death of his father and the hatred and bitterness Baldwin feels for him serves as the focus of this essay. While Baldwin describes and analyzes his relationship with his father, he weaves in public racial episodes occurring simultaneously. He begins the story by relating the hatred he has for his father to the hatred that sparked the Harlem riots. He then internalizes various public events in order to demonstrate how hatred dominates the whole world and not only his own life. Baldwin freq...
In 1955 a civil rights activist by the name of James Baldwin wrote his famous essay “Notes of a Native Son”. James Baldwin was born in Harlem, New York during a time where racial tensions where high all throughout the United States. In this essay he highlights these tension and his experience’s regarding them, while also giving us an insight of his upbringing. Along with this we get to see his relationship with a figure of his life, his father or more accurately his stepfather. In the essay James Baldwin says “This fight begins, however, in the heart and it now had been laid to my charge to keep my own heart free of hatred and despair”. This is a very powerful sentence that I believe
“Their struggle has been a struggle that every black person went through, one that grew from the seeds of slavery and took hold in a post-civil war America, when blacks gained their freedom (Shadow Boxing - The Journey of the African-American Boxer (Great Documentary), 2012).” It was interesting to learn from the movie that “reconstruction is a defining moment in African-American history in which blacks gained political rights in the south. With these rights, whites saw the blacks gain social equality. Fearing what they saw, whites brought a quick end to reconstruction. (Shadow Boxing - The Journey of the African-American Boxer (Great Documentary), 2012)." It would be interesting to interview people from the past to ask them why they think it 's okay to treat African Americans like that. It made me wonder what white people were thinking in the past. It brought tears to my eyes to learn that blacks quickly lost their new found freedom and lynching
From slavery being legal, to its abolishment and the Civil Rights Movement, to where we are now in today’s integrated society, it would seem only obvious that this country has made big steps in the adoption of African Americans into American society. However, writers W.E.B. Du Bois and James Baldwin who have lived and documented in between this timeline of events bringing different perspectives to the surface. Du Bois first introduced an idea that Baldwin would later expand, but both authors’ works provide insight to the underlying problem: even though the law has made African Americans equal, the people still have not.
Baldwin’s father died a broken and ruined man on July 29th, 1943. This only paralleled the chaos occurring around him at the time, such as the race riots of Detroit and Harlem which Baldwin describes to be as “spoils of injustice, anarchy, discontent, and hatred.” (63) His father was born in New Orleans, the first generation of “free men” in a land where “opportunities, real and fancied, are thicker than anywhere else.” (63) Although free from slavery, African-Americans still faced the hardships of racism and were still oppressed from any opportunities, which is a factor that led Baldwin’s father to going mad and eventually being committed. Baldwin would also later learn how “…white people would do anything to keep a Negro down.” (68) For a preacher, there was little trust and faith his father ...
Although Baldwin’s letter was addressed to his nephew, he intended for society as a whole to be affected by it. “This innocent country set you down in a getto in which, in fact, it intended that you should parish”(Baldwin 244). This is an innocent country, innocent only because they know not what they do. They discriminate the African American by expecting them to be worthless, by not giving them a chance to prove their credibility. Today African Americans are considered to be disesteemed in society. They are placed in this class before they are even born just like Royalty obtains their class before they are even conceived. We may think that this is a paradox but when d...
The essay “Notes of a Native Son” takes place at a very volatile time in history. The story was written during a time of hate and discrimination toward African Americans in the United States. James Baldwin, the author of this work is African American himself. His writing, along with his thoughts and ideas were greatly influenced by the events happening at the time. At the beginning of the essay, Baldwin makes a point to mention that it was the summer of 1943 and that race riots were occurring in Detroit. The story itself takes place in Harlem, a predominantly black area experiencing much of the hatred and inequalities that many African-Americans were facing throughout the country. This marks the beginning of a long narrative section that Baldwin introduces his readers to before going into any analysis at all.
In his collection of essays in Nobody Knows My Name, James Baldwin uses “Fifth Avenue, Uptown” to establish the focus that African Americans no matter where they are positioned would be judged just by the color of their skin. Through his effective use of descriptive word choice, writing style and tone, Baldwin helps the reader visualize his position on the subject. He argues that “Negroes want to be treated like men” (Baldwin, 67).
James Baldwin, an African-American writer, was born to a minister in 1924 and survived his childhood in New York City. The author is infamous for his pieces involving racial separatism with support from the blues. Readers can understand Harlem as a negative, unsafe environment from Baldwin’s writings and description of his hometown as a “dreadful place…a kind of concentration camp” (Hicks). Until the writer was at the age of twenty-four, he lived in a dehumanizing, racist world where at ten years old, he was brutally assaulted by police officers for the unchanging fact that he is African-American. In 1948, Baldwin escaped to France to continue his work without the distractions of the racial injustice
“In 1963, Attorney General Robert Kennedy invited Baldwin and other prominent blacks to discuss the nation's racial situation” (Magill 103). The meeting only reminded Baldwin on how far the nation still had to come (Magill 103). Baldwin continued to write. “During the last 10 years of his life, he produced a number of important works of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry” (PBS 4). For awhile he taught and lectured, but soon it became more and more difficult for him to write (Magill 103). The years of drinking, smoking and traveling finally took their toll (Magill 103). “In 1987, James developed stomach cancer, and it took his life at the age of 63 on December 1, in his home in France” (PBS 4). Being a successful black man in the 1900s shows how smart and gifted James Baldwin
James Baldwin is described in the film James Baldwin – The Price of the Ticket as a man who resisted having to deal with the racism of the United States, but eventually found that he had to come back into the country to help defend the cause of civil rights. Baldwin was an American writer who was born in 1924 and died in 1987. He wrote a wide variety of different types of books, examining human experience and the way in which love was a part of that experience. However, he was also very active in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. He was a voice that helped to bring about understanding, even if sometimes it was by slapping White America in the face. His message
The “Introduction” by Arnold Rampersad that is about The New Negro: Voices of the Harlem Renaissance that was written by Alan Locke focuses on the writer’s work in an admirable and critical ways. Even though most part of the Introduction focuses on how well the author takes on the significant of the important time of the significant movement of the African in Harlem, the Introduction also discusses about the lacking of some important work that needed to include in the book, which is claimed by other African American writes. As of all the critics that are stated in the Introduction, I believe that these happened because of the author’s lack of knowledge about the African Americans’ lives in the South, the limited opportunity of sharing his knowledge
Baldwin and his ancestors share this common rage because of the reflections their culture has had on the rest of society, a society consisting of white men who have thrived on using false impressions as a weapon throughout American history. Baldwin gives credit to the fact that no one can be held responsible for what history has unfolded, but he remains restless for an explanation about the perception of his ancestors as people. In Baldwin?s essay, his rage becomes more directed as the ?power of the white man? becomes relevant to the misfortune of the American Negro (Baldwin 131). This misfortune creates a fire of rage within Baldwin and the American Negro. As Baldwin?s American Negro continues to build the fire, the white man builds an invisible wall around himself to avoid confrontation about the actions of his ?forefathers? (Baldwin 131). Baldwin?s anger burns through his other emotions as he writes about the enslavement of his ancestors and gives the reader a shameful illusion of a Negro slave having to explai...
The poem “Negro” was written by Langston Hughes in 1958 where it was a time of African American development and the birth of the Civil Rights Movement. Langston Hughes, as a first person narrator tells a story of what he has been through as a Negro, and the life he is proud to have had. He expresses his emotional experiences and makes the reader think about what exactly it was like to live his life during this time. By using specific words, this allows the reader to envision the different situations he has been put through. Starting off the poem with the statement “I am a Negro:” lets people know who he is, Hughes continues by saying, “ Black as the night is black, /Black like the depths of my Africa.” He identifies Africa as being his and is proud to be as dark as night, and as black as the depths of the heart of his country. Being proud of him self, heritage and culture is clearly shown in this first stanza.