Dan Sinykin: The Apocalyptic Baldwin | Dissent Magazine

12.9.17

The Apocalyptic Baldwin | Dissent Magazine: In the 1970s, James Baldwin offered the same answer. Raoul Peck’s Academy Award–nominated documentary I Am Not Your Negro sheds light on what prompted him to abandon his earlier hope for racial harmony. We might also ask why this refusal so resonates today. I Am Not Your Negro and Get Out come five years after the death of Trayvon Martin and the subsequent acquittal of his killer, a period during which movements like Black Lives Matter have propelled racism to the forefront of American public discourse. It is against this backdrop that Baldwin has increasingly become the subject of renewed interest—and it is his later, more radical critiques of racism that offer the most insight into contemporary struggles.
Peck composed the script for I Am Not Your Negro entirely from Baldwin’s words, drawn mainly from three 1970s projects: No Name in the Street (1972); The Devil Finds Work (1976), an essay on Hollywood; and an unfinished manuscript that Baldwin began late in his career, in 1979, Remember This House. The script is read by Samuel L. Jackson and paired on screen with images from the civil rights movement, clips from popular films, and footage of Baldwin himself speaking in various settings.