I am not your Negro review

I am not your Negro review

I am not your Negro, a 2016-documentary, directed by Peck Raoul features African Americans plight for justice and equality. James Baldwin’s writings majorly inspired the filming of this movie he wrote before his demise in 1987. This film evaluates the assassinations of the three black icons that championed for the people of color equality during the civil rights movements. Medgar Evers, Luther King Jr and Malcolm X make the theme of ethnicity and racism, struggles of the people of color, representation and chances of survival intriguing in the film. The film discusses the generations of slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and lynching in the United States. The author uses characterization to show the depth of discrimination in the country. The film also puts into consideration the political, cultural, and historical aspects of the African Americans in the struggle for equality. The stylistic devices used such as drama and comedy through the narration by Samuel L. Jackson, help the director achieve the ultimate goal. The director of the film, I am not Your Negro, enhances the success of the film narration using thematic concerns, ideological and aesthetic considerations that elucidate the political, historical, and cultural issues faced by the African Americans.

The thematic expression in the film is rich in social injustices, racism, and ethnicity, the power of words and the representation of people of color. I am not your negro outspokenly displays the degree of social injustices and racism troubling the people of color decades after the civil rights movement declared equality for all, but according to the documentary, it is evident that for people of color nothing changed. The movie shows the extreme measure of the inadequacy of America’s failure to put right its acts of inequality that had taken root in the 19th century. The accounts of Baldwin’s personal life are a reminder that some much work is still needed even after the civil rights movement. The country has done less in the quest for justice for all as Peck traces the violence committed against forerunners of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. Not forgetting the recent black and white archival footage so disturbing in the streets of Missouri, riots that broke out after an incident where a white police officer shot dead Michael Brown.

The film commences with the return of the author to the United States in the year 1957, having stayed for nearly ten years in France. Dorothy Count’s photo provokes the author’s reappearance in the country. A15-year-old girl surrounded by a furious mob, all who are white. This happens when the girl makes her way to school, Harding High School, which is located in North Carolina. Following the scene in the photo, Baldwin clarified that he could not continue sitting around Paris involving himself on discussion that touches the problems which existed between black Americans and Algerians. It was the right time to get back home since he believed that everyone was paying their dues, and this was the right time for him to pay his due. The documentary gives a chronology of Baldwin’s life through civil-rights movement, which focuses majorly on his relationship to Malcolm X., Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King Jr.

Time and again, the documentary illustrates Baldwin’s unique capability to uncover ways in which the sentiments by anti-black established not only the political and social life of the United States but also its traditional fancy. Peck’s films have served as an annotation on a United States movie industry inclined on reifying racial labels and on the continuation of the falsehood of the U.S. as the utmost provisionary of democracy, freedom, and happiness.

I Am Not Your Negro is not just a film focusing on American life in the 1960s and the civil rights movement but a 400 years crime perpetrated against black humanity. Baldwin’s insights have been used in this film to illuminate the contemporary reality faced by individuals. The film’s most fascinating scenes alternate footage of police focused towards the black individuals in the 1960’s and reports of related violence ordained today, using expressions of Baldwin to breakdown the detachment between the two ages. The connection restoratively points out the weird resemblance between the sequences of lost black lives that accentuated the experience of Baldwin throughout civil rights, plus the series of deaths of Garner, Martin, Rice, Brown, Bland, Gray, Jones, among others. All these deaths mark America’s calendar.

The death of the three men who are weaved into faces of young brown and black deaths of today is made relevant in the film. The still photos of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and Cameron Tillman which flashes on the screen, have been crafted to portray the images of the three men, each of them with a smiling face. According to Baldwin’s message, each one of them was carried away like a sack of potatoes exceptionally away like a foot that has lost its song. This film is an attestation to the damages that white hatred, fear, and power has produced. It clearly indicates how white America has succeeded in creating an entire world revolving around it like a dome. This “entire world” has kept itself in dirt and pollution that they know not its existence. The act of John Wayne shooting ruthlessly at Native Americans shows how the whites thought that they were the heroes of all human lives.

The whole new perspective can be drawn from the statements by Baldwin who purports that, “when you realize around five or six-year-old that you are not those cowboys and you are the Indians that the whites are trying to kill off.” The film is occupied with contrast. Each chapter of the film is introduced by a strong statement “I am not a nigger,” and the background is the natural black and white font. Dick Cavett, who is being addressed by Baldwin on TV in the continuous clips, barely tolerates the truth about white America. The mockery of how it was created to be cheerful in the media and the TV agonized severely as a result of lack of will to face the outrages, the lies it peddles. The film rightly smacks white America in its cold blue eyes.

I Am Not Your Negro conveys an extraordinary portrayal of the life of Baldwin and also that of America’s perpetual racial impasse at large. It is a suitable consequence for an author who demonstrated an occasional vulnerability in his exertion, putting unembellished his own experience as a text to be used by all individuals in the nation for self-reflection.

In the minds of the American people, we live in a wonderfully free nation where the sun shines, rainbows decorate the sky, and people of all differences come together smiling and holding hands. There is a limited amount of intellectuals who realize that this illusion is not the reality the United States is living in. Truth is American society has been oppressing the unalienable rights of African Americans for almost the entirety of their existence in this country. In the film, I Am Not Your Negro, James Baldwin’s ideas regarding the life of the civil rights movement to refresh the racial perspective of modern-day society. Baldwin’s beliefs and the roots of civil rights displayed in the documentary is exactly the revival needed to continue and achieve racial equality. Society can overcome its antiquated prejudices; however, the implication of this knowledge needs to begin to reform in all social interactions from human to human. With more and more awareness of the racism engraved in everyday institutions such as education and the media, we can reform racial oppression.

Racial representation in the media has not favoured black for a very long time, and Peck takes advantage of this fact to advance on the theme of racial representation. In I am not your Negro, Baldwin’s passionate writings and other clips display how racial inequality was deeply engraved in the previous films and its perception by the audience.

Baldwin gives an account of how Luther King Jr, Malcolm X and Medgar Evers were different, and at the same time so similar, this is because these individuals committed and dedicated their lives to one common goal, fight for fundamental civil rights.

Words have the power to alter the perception of the audience, and Baldwin uses his writings using the voice of undisputed Samuel L. Jackson. The film is mostly dependent on Baldwin’s essays and the voice of Samuel L. Jackson, especially while speaking on the camera. Therefore, the voice and power of his words have made the film so powerful in voicing out the poor state of the African Americans.

I am Not Your Negro was a subtly powerful film about the recent history of our young nation and the struggles we have faced while finding an identity. This film is one of truth, passion, and power. However, its excellence is in documenting the perspective of James Baldwin during the Civil Rights Movement, which erupted in the late ’50s and ’60s. The documentary is produced excitingly with recounts of Baldwin’s experiences throughout this revolutionary time in our country’s history. Baldwin speaks about triumph, tribute, and tribulation in this story of profoundly rooted history

In my immediate reaction to the film, I was rather impressed with the Raoul Peck’s method of storytelling, and his ability to recreate Baldwin’s account of the opening scene consisted of a segment from an interview of Baldwin on the Dick Cavett show. The abrupt cut to the slideshow eye-opening images of abuse and oppression captured over the years was a tone-setter for the rest of the movie. The usage of these types of images was a recurring theme throughout the film, and I felt that each time they were used it emphasized the surrealism of the times. Baldwin would speak about the theoretical framework of the mistreatment of colored people, while the images provided the factual proof of the times that many white people attempted to hide. I thought the film integrated Baldwin’s notes and these clips and pictures of historical events seamlessly, giving the viewer a glimpse of the suffering which Baldwin so passionately speaks about throughout.

Another scene that I found particularly moving was a clip of one of Baldwin’s interview playing back and forth with the Ferguson riots in 2014. It was a unique editing choice, and extremely useful in showing how Baldwin’s words back in the nineteen sixties resonate even years after his death. It was also a troubling thought to realize that as a society, we have not entirely evolved away from that stubborn way of thinking that was such a prevalent issue nearly six decades ago. The film did an excellent job with drawing parallels between the conversation that were pressing problems back then, that are still relevant today.

I found the most impactful scene of the entire documentary to be during one of Baldwin’s speeches in front of a relatively large crowd in a town hall it appeared. Baldwin tells the story of remembering his childhood, and the old cowboy movies he used to watch. He finishes the story by saying that it took him years of growing up to realize this, but the Natives, who were always the ones being hunted in the films, which the entire audience would root for to die, was himself, and his people of color. They had been oppressed for as long as they could remember, and the cycle of oppression was so strong they did not even realize the own prejudices that they faced, this scene, provided the audience with a powerful revelation about the truth of black oppression.

To understand the message that Baldwin is spreading, one needs to consider the long record of oppression which he was witness to his entire life. Growing up in the streets of Harlem, Baldwin experienced racial discrimination and segregation very early on and began to understand it quite soon. He references watching cowboy movies in his childhood and noticing how all the ‘heroes’ were always white, and the only black characters at the time were portrayed as always dependent on a white character. Baldwin also notes that it was this early on where he realized he had begun to despise the white, cowboy, ‘hero’, because they had the power to capitalize on their social position and display their vengeful, sinister actions, as heroic adventures. Meanwhile, the black man was being shown on television as ‘lazy’, for example. Their roles in theater, television, and entertainment at the moment were wildly undermining, and it was part of the discrimination that Baldwin began to witness at a young age. His interaction with his white female teacher shaped his thoughts about white people a little later on in life. It was the influence of his teacher that led Baldwin to have an almost indifferent opinion on the race early on. He was not a racist; he was speaking out about the inequalities at the time. Baldwin does go on to say that he was indifferent because he had a job, and that was to record the life and times of the 1960s. He attempted to remain as impartial as possible when recording such events. He did speak out to crowds about his experiences and his opinions on racial relationships on occasion, but he even says himself that he did not invoke his audiences to take a stance; he informed them of both sides.

What I think Baldwin was trying to say was that no matter who you are, what you what race, ethnicity, age, religion, we are all deserving of human decency. It is counter-productive to be mad about the past; what we need to do is focus on changing the future. I believe Baldwin’s message emphasizes that we should not hold each other responsible for the wrongful actions of the men and women before us. Instead, we all have the opportunity to be the change we want to see. Lingering in the past only hinders the chance to develop as a society going forward.

Conclusion

Every film is build using different aspects of artistic techniques and styles. The development of the drama film, I am not Your Negro, entails the use of characterization, connections, among others as the foundation of providing arguments on African Americans’ struggle. The film concludes with the persistent question postured: Why do whites need niggers? Baldwin, through a pretty strong statement, suggests that America’s future is the black’s future in America. He also insists that America will never realize a prospect until they do right by their history. This should be made possible by facing and taking responsibility for an individual’s actions. As the nation continues to suffer from violent hate crimes, de facto segregation, and seemingly endless racism, we are in need of reform. The beliefs of our society can only change by engraving concepts regarding James Baldwin’s and civil rights activists’ ideals into our education and media. Overall I thought the film provided a different, inside point of view of one of the most groundbreaking times in our nation’s legacy. The incorporation of police brutality images, race riots videos, and other boiling points of racial tension throughout time left an astounding revelation of how badly we need to improve as a society. James Baldwin was stressing it in the 1960s, and the same truths that he spoke about then still stand true today.