As a way to inoculate or at least attempt to protect yourself against President Trump’s abominable choice to make MLK weekend all about his undeniable racism and denigration of people from predominantly black countries, might I suggest watching a 2016 documentary about James Baldwin titled I Am Not Your Negro. Scripted around his final piece of writing, the film blends voiceover, archival footage, and contemporary video to capture the complexity and continued relevance of Baldwin’s observations on race in America. For anyone (including me) who isn’t familiar with his writing or TV appearances, the film resurrects Baldwin as a prophet-like figure who worked to elucidate the stark and foundational realities of racism. Whether reflecting on his relationships with civil rights activist Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King, Jr., or eviscerating a professor on the Dick Cavett Show who wonders why Baldwin insists on talking about racial issues, Baldwin’s intellect and compassion are a glorious thing to behold. He is like a man who has seen the truth of the world, and labors daily under its burden: in this, you might consider Baldwin to be an anti-Trump.
Baldwin places the causes of racial strife squarely in the laps of white folk, and he hints at a moral vacuum at the center of white American and even Western culture as part of the answer. In the film’s perhaps most striking sequence, he tells an audience frankly that “I'm not your nigger,” but rather just another man; Baldwin then turns this into perhaps the most basic question underlying this country’s racial hatred: why does America need “niggers”? I understand his question to mean, Why does America need to continue to create a demonized other on which it projects a thousand dark fears and fantasies, and what purposes might be served by institutionalizing racial hatred? Today, not only African-Americans but Latinos and Muslims as well have been drawn into this web of racist targeting, signaling that the roots of this moral rot are not only alive, but insatiable as well. Why is it still so hard for so many people to dare to answer Baldwin's question?
