Scan barcode
A review by komet2020
I Am Not Your Negro: A Companion Edition to the Documentary Film Directed by Raoul Peck by James Baldwin, Raoul Peck
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO is derived from an unfinished work James Baldwin had intended, at the time of his death in 1987, to be a book in which he reflected upon the friendships he had with 3 pivotal U.S. public leaders/activists of his time: Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. - all of whom had been assassinated during the 1960s.
What is more: I Am Not Your Negro is also rich with Baldwin's own musings and reflections of America, its treatment of its African American citizens, the plight of African Americans, White America's reluctance to be honest about its long held fears and animus towards its African American brothers and sisters, and the ongoing and maddening conundrum that is racism in America. The following remarks from Baldwin illustrate fully the truths that he makes bare in this book:
"I sometimes feel it to be an absolute miracle
that the entire black population of the United States
of America has not long ago
succumbed to raging paranoia.
People finally say to you,
in an attempt to dismiss the social reality,
'But you're so bitter!'
Well, I may or may not be bitter,
but if I were, I would have good reasons for it:
chief among them that American blindness,
or cowardice, which allows us to pretend
that life presents no reasons for being bitter."
Read I Am Not Your Negro and be enlightened and perhaps inspired to help make a better world where people will truly be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.
What is more: I Am Not Your Negro is also rich with Baldwin's own musings and reflections of America, its treatment of its African American citizens, the plight of African Americans, White America's reluctance to be honest about its long held fears and animus towards its African American brothers and sisters, and the ongoing and maddening conundrum that is racism in America. The following remarks from Baldwin illustrate fully the truths that he makes bare in this book:
"I sometimes feel it to be an absolute miracle
that the entire black population of the United States
of America has not long ago
succumbed to raging paranoia.
People finally say to you,
in an attempt to dismiss the social reality,
'But you're so bitter!'
Well, I may or may not be bitter,
but if I were, I would have good reasons for it:
chief among them that American blindness,
or cowardice, which allows us to pretend
that life presents no reasons for being bitter."
Read I Am Not Your Negro and be enlightened and perhaps inspired to help make a better world where people will truly be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.