Why you need to see “I Am Not Your Negro.”
The short version
Raoul Peck’s stirring documentary about the late James Baldwin, I Am Not Your Negro, opens nationwide in theaters tomorrow. Every person in the United States needs to go see this movie. We need to understand. We need to know. This may very well be the most important film you see all year.
A little background
James Baldwin was a profound and sometimes incendiary writer, poet, and speaker. His words struck a nerve not only within the black community of the 1960s, but among white people who were afraid of the civil rights movement. Baldwin’s words were strong and resonant because they were accurate and true, whether anyone wanted to believe him or not.
Baldwin’s story comes to life in ways never before seen in Raoul Peck’s documentary, I Am Not Your Negro. Peck was given access to the FBI’s extensive file on Baldwin and using that information, along with miles of film footage that hasn’t been seen since the 60s, he brings Baldwin back to life juxtaposed against the Black Lives Matter movement and the groundswell of white nationalism currently taking place across the US.
Here’s the trailer for the movie:
Watch the trailer for James Baldwin’s #IAmNotYourNegro, the film critics are calling “essential viewing for all Americans.” In theaters 2/3. pic.twitter.com/fHETX60JPw
— I Am Not Your Negro (@IAmNotYourNegro) January 5, 2017
In light of the unforgivable gaffes the president made in yesterday’s statement on Black History Month (where he praised the work Frederick Douglass is doing) and his stated intention to declassify white supremacy groups as violent extremists, we need this movie now. I worry that far too many white people are going to dismiss it as “a black thing.” This is not “a black thing.” This is an us thing. You and me. Regardless of our skin color. This is about who we are and who we have always been as a nation.
Because I’m reasonably sure 98% of those reading this have never seen a James Baldwin poem, I’m giving you one now. It’s long. Read the whole thing. Consider what he’s saying. The words may have been written before some of you were born, but they are still just as applicable now as they were 50 years ago.
Staggerlee wonders
I always wonder
what they think the niggers are doing
while they, the pink and alabaster pragmatists,
are containing
Russia
and defining and re-defining and re-aligning
China,
nobly restraining themselves, meanwhile,
from blowing up that earth
which they have already
blasphemed into dung:
the gentle, wide-eyed, cheerful
ladies, and their men,
nostalgic for the noble cause of Vietnam,
nostalgic for noble causes,
aching, nobly, to wade through the blood of savages—
ah—!
Uncas shall never leave the reservation,
except to purchase whisky at the State Liquor Store.
The Panama Canal shall remain forever locked:
there is a way around every treaty.
We will turn the tides of the restless
Caribbean,
the sun will rise, and set
on our hotel balconies as we see fit.
The natives will have nothing to complain about,
indeed, they will begin to be grateful,
will be better off than ever before.
They will learn to defer gratification
and save up for things, like we do.
Oh, yes. They will.
We have only to make an offer
they cannot refuse.
This flag has been planted on the moon:
it will be interesting to see
what steps the moon will take to be revenged
for this quite breathtaking presumption.
This people
masturbate in winding sheets.
They have hacked their children to pieces.
They have never honoured a single treaty
made with anyone, anywhere.
The walls of their cities
are as foul as their children.
No wonder their children come at them with knives.
Mad Charlie man’s son was one of their children,
had got his shit together
by the time he left kindergarten,
and, as for Patty, heiress of all the ages,
she had the greatest vacation
of any heiress, anywhere:
Golly-gee, whillikens, Mom, real guns!
and they come with a real big, black funky stud, too:
oh, Ma! he’s making eyes at me!
Oh, noble Duke Wayne,
be careful in them happy hunting grounds.
They say the only good Indian
is a dead Indian,
by what I say is,
you can’t be too careful, you hear?
Oh, towering Ronnie Reagan,
wise and resigned lover of redwoods,
deeply beloved, winning man-child of the yearning Republic
from diaper to football field to Warner Brothers sound-stages,
be thou our grinning, gently phallic, Big Boy of all the ages!
Salt peanuts, salt peanuts,
for dear hearts and gentle people,
and cheerful, shining, simple Uncle Sam!
Nigger, read this and run!
Now, if you can’t read,
run anyhow!
From Manifest Destiny
(Cortez, and all his men
silent upon a peak in Darien)
to A Decent Interval,
and the chopper rises above Saigon,
abandoning the noble cause
and the people we have made ignoble
and whom we leave there, now, to die,
one moves, With All Deliberate Speed,
to the South China Sea, and beyond,
where millions of new niggers
await glad tidings!
No, said the Great Man’s Lady,
I’m against abortion,
I always feel that’s killing somebody.
Well, what about capital punishment?
I think the death penalty helps.
That’s right.
Up to our ass in niggers
on Death Row.
Oh, Susanna,
don’t you cry for me!
2
Well, I guess what the niggers
is supposed to be doing
is putting themselves in the path
of that old sweet chariot
and have it swing down and carry us home.
That would help, as they say,
and they got ways
of sort of nudging the chariot.
They still got influence
with Wind and Water,
though they in for some surprises
with Cloud and Fire.
My days are not their days.
My ways are not their ways.
I would not think of them,
one way or the other,
did not they so grotesquely
block the view
between me and my brother.
And, so, I always wonder:
can blindness be desired?
Then, what must the blinded eyes have seen
to wish to see no more!
For, I have seen,
in the eyes regarding me,
or regarding my brother,
have seen, deep in the farthest valley
of the eye, have seen
a flame leap up, then flicker and go out,
have seen a veil come down,
leaving myself, and the other,
alone in that cave
which every soul remembers, and
out of which, desperately afraid,
I turn, turn, stagger, stumble out,
into the healing air,
fall flat on the healing ground,
singing praises, counselling
my heart, my soul, to praise.
What is it that this people
cannot forget?
Surely, they cannot be deluded
as to imagine that their crimes
are original?
There is nothing in the least original
about the fiery tongs to the eyeballs,
the sex torn from the socket,
the infant ripped from the womb,
the brains dashed out against rock,
nothing original about Judas,
or Peter, or you or me: nothing:
we are liars and cowards all,
or nearly all, or nearly all the time:
for we also ride the lightning,
answer the thunder, penetrate whirlwinds,
curl up on the floor of the sun,
and pick our teeth with thunderbolts.
Then, perhaps they imagine
that their crimes are not crimes?
Perhaps.
Perhaps that is why they cannot repent,
why there is no possibility of repentance.
Manifest Destiny is a hymn to madness,
feeding on itself, ending
(when it ends) in madness:
the action is blindness and pain,
pain bringing a torpor so deep
that every act is willed,
is desperately forced,
is willed to be a blow:
the hand becomes a fist,
the prick becomes a club,
the womb a dangerous swamp,
the hope, and fear, of love
is acid in the marrow of the bone.
No, their fire is not quenched,
nor can be: the oil feeding the flames
being the unadmitted terror of the wrath of God.
Yes. But let us put it in another,
less theological way:
though theology has absolutely nothing to do
with what I am trying to say.
But the moment God is mentioned
theology is summoned
to buttress or demolish belief:
an exercise which renders belief irrelevant
and adds to the despair of Fifth Avenue
on any afternoon,
the people moving, homeless, through the city,
praying to find sanctuary before the sky
and the towers come tumbling down,
before the earth opens, as it does in Superman.
They know that no one will appear
to turn back time,
they know it, just as they know
that the earth has opened before
and will open again, just as they know
that their empire is falling, is doomed,
nothing can hold it up, nothing.
We are not talking about belief.
3
I wonder how they think
the niggers made, make it,
how come the niggers are still here.
But, then, again, I don’t think they dare
to think of that: no:
I’m fairly certain they don’t think of that at all.
Lord,
I with the alabaster lady of the house,
with Beulah.
Beulah about sixty, built in four-square,
biceps like Mohammed Ali,
she at the stove, fixing biscuits,
scrambling eggs and bacon, fixing coffee,
pouring juice, and the lady of the house,
she say, she don’t know how
she’d get along without Beulah
and Beulah just silently grunts,
I reckon you don’t,
and keeps on keeping on
and the lady of the house say
She’s just like one of the family,
and Beulah turns, gives me a look,
sucks her teeth and rolls her eyes
in the direction of the lady’s back, and
keeps on keeping on.
While they are containing
Russia
and entering onto the quicksand of
China
and patronizing
Africa,
and calculating
the Caribbean plunder, and
the South China Sea booty,
the niggers are aware that no one has discussed
anything at all with the niggers.
Well. Niggers don’t own nothing,
got no flag, even our names
are hand-me-downs
and you don’t change that
by calling yourself X:
sometimes that just makes it worse,
like obliterating the path that leads back
to whence you came, and
to where you can begin.
And, anyway, none of this changes the reality,
which is, for example, that I do not want my son
to die in Guantanamo,
or anywhere else, for that matter,
serving the Stars and Stripes.
(I’ve seen some stars.
I got some stripes.)
Neither (incidentally)
has anyone discussed the Bomb with the niggers:
the incoherent feeling is, the less
the nigger knows about the Bomb, the better:
the lady of the house
smiles nervously in your direction
as though she had just been overheard
discussing family, or sexual secrets,
and changes the subject to Education,
or Full Employment, or the Welfare rolls,
the smile saying, Don’t be dismayed.
We know how you feel. You can trust us.
Yeah. I would like to believe you.
But we are not talking about belief.
4
The sons of greed, the heirs of plunder,
are approaching the end of their journey:
it is amazing that they approach without wonder,
as though they have, themselves, become
that scorched and blasphemed earth,
the stricken buffalo, the slaughtered tribes,
the endless, virgin, bloodsoaked plain,
the famine, the silence, the children’s eyes,
murder masquerading as salvation, seducing
every democratic eye,
the mouths of truth and anguish choked with cotton,
rape delirious with the fragrance of magnolia,
the hacking of the fruit of their loins to pieces,
hey! the tar-baby sons and nephews, the high-yaller
nieces,
and Tom’s black prick hacked off
to rustle in crinoline,
to hang, heaviest of heirlooms,
between the pink and alabaster breasts
of the Great Man’s Lady,
or worked into the sash at the waist
of the high-yaller Creole bitch, or niece,
a chunk of shining brown-black satin,
staring, staring, like the single eye of God:
creation yearns to re-create a time
when we were able to recognize a crime.
Alas,
my stricken kinsmen,
the party is over:
there have never been any white people,
anywhere: the trick was accomplished with mirrors—
look: where is your image now?
where your inheritance,
on what rock stands this pride?
Oh,
I counsel you,
leave History alone.
She is exhausted,
sitting, staring into her dressing-room mirror,
and wondering what rabbit, now,
to pull out of what hat,
and seriously considering retirement,
even though she knows her public
dare not let her go.
She must change.
Yes. History must change.
A slow, syncopated
relentless music begins
suggesting her re-entry,
transformed, virginal as she was,
in the Beginning, untouched,
as the Word was spoken,
before the rape which debased her
to be the whore of multitudes, or,
as one might say, before she became the Star,
whose name, above our title,
carries the Show, making History the patsy,
responsible for every flubbed line,
every missed cue, responsible for the life
and death, of all bright illusions
and dark delusions,
Lord, History is weary
of her unspeakable liaison with Time,
for Time and History
have never seen eye to eye:
Time laughs at History
and time and time and time again
Time traps History in a lie.
But we always, somehow, managed
to roar History back onstage
to take another bow,
to justify, to sanctify
the journey until now.
Time warned us to ask for our money back,
and disagreed with History
as concerns colours white and black.
Not only do we come from further back,
but the light of the Sun
marries all colours as one.
Kinsmen,
I have seen you betray your Saviour
(it is you who call Him Saviour)
so many times, and
I have spoken to Him about you,
behind your back.
Quite a lot has been going on
behind your back, and,
if your phone has not yet been disconnected,
it will soon begin to ring:
informing you, for example, that a whole generation,
in Africa, is about to die,
and a new generation is about to rise,
and will not need your bribes,
or your persuasions, any more:
not your morality. No plundered gold—
Ah! Kinsmen, if I could make you see
the crime is not what you have done to me!
It is you who are blind,
you, bowed down with chains,
you, whose children mock you, and seek another
master,
you, who cannot look man or woman or child in the
eye,
whose sleep is blank with terror,
for whom love died long ago,
somewhere between the airport and the safe-deposit
box,
the buying and selling of rising or falling stocks,
you, who miss Zanzibar and Madagascar and Kilimanjaro
and lions and tigers and elephants and zebras
and flying fish and crocodiles and alligators and
leopards
and crashing waterfalls and endless rivers,
flowers fresher than Eden, silence sweeter than the
grace of God,
passion at every turning, throbbing in the bush,
thicker, oh, than honey in the hive,
dripping
dripping
opening, welcoming, aching from toe to bottom
to spine,
sweet heaven on the line
to last forever, yes,
but, now,
rejoicing ends, man, a price remains to pay,
your innocence costs too much
and we can’t carry you on our books
or our backs, any longer: baby,
find another Eden, another apple tree,
somewhere, if you can,
and find some other natives, somewhere else,
to listen to you bellow
till you come, just like a man,
but we don’t need you,
are sick of being a fantasy to feed you,
and of being the principal accomplice to your
crime:
for, it is your crime, now, the cross to which you
cling,
your Alpha and Omega for everything.
Well (others have told you)
your clown’s grown weary, the puppet master
is bored speechless with this monotonous disaster,
and is long gone, does not belong to you,
any more than my woman, or my child,
ever belonged to you.
During this long travail
our ancestors spoke to us, and we listened,
and we tried to make you hear life in our song
but now it matters not at all to me
whether you know what I am talking about—or not:
I know why we are not blinded
by your brightness, are able to see you,
who cannot see us. I know
why we are still here.
Godspeed.
The niggers are calculating,
from day to day, life everlasting,
and wish you well:
but decline to imitate the Son of the Morning,
and rule in Hell.
Death Of Liberty
In the defiance of checks and balances, we lose every freedom we once claimed
A drastic situation
What we take for granted is easily taken away.
We have long assumed that the freedoms for which men and women have fought and died, once secured, would remain our forever. We would fight any invading force. We would stand in the face of tyranny, rise up together as a mighty throng, and turn back the forces of oppression, bigotry, and injustice. We would not let anyone invade out shores, occupy our hallowed halls, or threaten the precious democracy we hold dear.
And we’ve done that. There have been no invaders. No one has sent their troops to our shores. No one snuck into our country in the dead of night. No bullets were fired. No bombs exploded. They didn’t need to.
Instead, we elected tyranny for ourselves. In thinking that we needed to fight against the status quo we opened the door to an unholy regime of panderers, white supremacists, elitists, and power mongers whose ideals and philosophies are worse than any external foe we could ever face. By choosing a billionaire whose inherited fortunes are buoyed through deception and unethical practices, we did not choose one who would “drain the swamp,” but rather a swamp rat who delights in the mud and the muck and the filth.
In two very short but eventful weeks, we have moved from being a flawed democracy to one that it on the brink of utter collapse and, interestingly enough, there remain millions of people standing by and cheering. They somehow think that by giving up all pretense of freedom that they, themselves, will obtain more power. The foolhardy believe that in the destruction of liberty for all that they will somehow retain liberty for the few. There is no such hope, however, for when liberty is erased for some, it is destroyed for all. There is no such thing as a partial implementation of liberty.
Our country is in grave peril. The lives of many might actually be at stake. We not only need to remove the cancer infecting us, but as with any oncology surgery, we must remove the supporting tissue around it as well. We currently exist in a precarious state of hospice where our very next breath could be our last.
Everyone Sees It But Us
Edel Rodriguez, a Cuban immigrant who came to the US in 1980 to escape the tyranny of his home country, created an interesting cover for the German magazine, Der Spiegel. The image depicts a faceless image of the 45th US president holding a knife in one hand and the bloodied decapitated head of Lady Liberty in the other. Toward the bottom of the image are the words, “America First.”
The cover is alarming and, for many, disconcerting. Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, vice president of the European Parliament, described the cover as “tasteless.”
Cover of Der Speigel for 4 February 2017
The artist told the Washington Post: “It’s a beheading of democracy, a heading of a sacred symbol.”
Like it or not, this is how most people see the United States now. The president has been widely mocked, often with no small amount of hilarity. Leaders of other countries, including our closest allies, have rebuked his actions.
Yet, it is the Der Spiegel cover that may resonate the most. Germans, and Cubans, understand from experience what it is like to voluntarily put their freedoms into the hands of a tyrant. Both countries have had the sad experience of having done so. Both countries understand what it is like to suffer from their actions. Now, they see the United States heading down the exact same path. They are yelling and screaming at us in an attempt to warn us away from the inevitable outcome of our intentionally ignorant actions.
We are not listening.
Instead, the president and his team of autocrats push all the harder toward absolute authoritarian control and bluster loudly at any attempt to reign them in. Just yesterday, in response to a federal judge blocking the illegal travel ban created by presidential order, the president took to the lowest form of communication possible, Twitter, in an attempt to vilify the judge:
While the tactic the president is using is not a new one, his attitude shows tremendous disdain and a lack of respect for the balance of powers, the checks and balances that make a democracy possible. Remove those checks and balances, remove the judiciary that enforces the letter of the law, and we do not have a democracy. Our liberty is dead. Our freedoms are gone. In their place, we have a totalitarian regime where personal rights and freedoms are non-existent.
A Litany of Wounds
Without considering anything that occurred prior to the president’s January 20 inauguration, the new administration has attacked Lady Liberty repeatedly with actions, orders, and embarrassments that each act like another stab wound to our freedoms. We don’t even have to add the aforementioned immigration ban to the list to be concerned. Here are a few misdeeds, in no particular order.
Reasonable use of time and space prevent me from continuing the list. Over half of the executive orders signed in the past two weeks infringe in some way on the individual freedoms of some or all Americans.
Accessories to murder
To the point we stand by and allow this systematic rape of Liberty while we do not take every conceivable action to stop it, we become accessories to the murder of our freedoms. Some go their willingly. The silence of members of Congress on both sides of the aisle make them complicit in the activities of the president and his administration. The cheering of those who voted the administration into power dooms them for eternity.
But what about those who oppose what is happening to our freedoms? How do we fare in this endless nightmare?
Compare your actions to the person who is sitting in the room as another injects themselves with a lethal dose of heroin. What do you do? Do you call 911? Do you attempt to wrangle the needle from your friend? Or do you just sit there uncomfortably and watch?
My fear is that far too many are willing to sit there and watch. They make no noise that matters. They might say in far too calm a voice, “Hey, don’t do that,” but no one hears them. No one pays any attention because there are no actions behind the words.
If Liberty is going to be saved, if our freedoms are going to be preserved, we have to, at the very least, make sure our voice is heard. Repeatedly. Calling your members of Congress, as we have advocated so frequently the past two weeks, is like making that 911 call. While there’s no guarantee that call will be sufficient to stop the death that seems inevitable, at last you will have made some attempt at preventing the disaster.
More importantly, though, Liberty needs people who are willing to physically take part in the fight, to make deliberate moves to wrestle away the syringe that threatens our very existence. Marches and protests are a start, but we may need to go even further, filing lawsuits and engaging in whatever means of resistance necessary in order to stop the actions of a regime that cares only about their own power and profit.
We have the power. It doesn’t matter that 63 million people voted for this travesty. More than 75 million specifically voted against this president and his administration. The majority of Americans did not ask for this. Yet, the will of that majority is being blatantly and intentionally ignored with malice.
Americans find themselves on the precipice of a decision whether to act against this government more strongly than has ever been necessary or to sit by and let Liberty slip into death. One could get very messy and may ultimately involve uncertain days of turmoil. The other destroys us all and crushes the very foundation upon which the United States of America was founded.
Only you can decide what you’re going to do. You need to make that decision now.
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