I Am Not Your Negro

The film opens with a 1968 interview on The Dick Cavett Show. Cavett notes that Baldwin is often asked a stubborn question: "Why aren't the Negroes optimistic?" He says that many people believe the situation to be improving considerably, with Black people now holding positions of influence across society: as mayors, professional athletes, politicians and TV actors. Cavett asks Baldwin, "Is it at once getting much better and still hopeless?"[https://www.tvo.org/transcript/131095X/i-am-not-your-negro Transcript: I Am Not Your Negro | Jun 27, 2020|TVO.or]

In response, Baldwin says, "I don't think there's much hope for it, as long as people are using this peculiar language. It's not a question of what happens to the Negro here, [though] that is a very vivid question for me. The real question is what's going to happen to this country? I have to repeat that." Baldwin continues to assert throughout the film that the fate of the United States is directly linked to how effectively it addresses the plight of Black Americans. The prospects for the entire country and the prospects for Black Americans are inextricably tied together such that the truth and reckoning for one becomes the same for the other.

The film is divided into five chapters across which Baldwin weaves the assassinations of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr.

The first chapter, "Paying My Dues," portrays the school integration era of the civil rights movement and the fierce resistance to it displayed by many white Americans in an attempt to maintain segregation and the status quo of white supremacy.

The second chapter, "Heroes," highlights how white film protagonists are near-universally portrayed through a romantic, heroic lens when pursuing and protecting their interests, even and especially through the use of violence and rape. This is contrasted with the media portrayal of Black Americans who do not even need to be pursuing their interests to be suspected of crimes or deviant behavior and to face the barbaric consequences of those unfounded suspicions.

In May 1963, Baldwin calls a meeting with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. With playwright Lorraine Hansberry in attendance, the meeting devolves into a tense standoff and does not conclude amicably. It does, however, contribute to Kennedy's awakening to the significance and urgency of racial issues across the country.

The third chapter, "Purity," discusses many of the socially constructed dividing lines which have separated black and white America, as well as the imbalance in expectations for deference, racial purity, social capital, spending power, the achievement ceiling, and so on.

In 1965, at a Cambridge University debate with conservative commentator William F. Buckley Jr., Baldwin expounds on a recent remark from ex-AG Kennedy: "It's conceivable that in 40 years in America, we might have a Negro president."[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wT3s78LMHk James Baldwin on a black US President (1965)] He makes clear the absurdity and bitterness with which many Black Americans received the remark: "Black people have been here all along, for the entire 400 years since European colonization began. They were kidnapped, brought to America against their will, and subjugated into subhuman, slave-laborer conditions. And yet they must wait 40 more years to even have a remote chance of being permitted into the highest office in the land?"

The fourth chapter, "Selling the Negro," tracks the history of exploitation of Black people, from an economy of forced labor at the outset to an economy of imprisonment today. A perennial tension in American life is emphasized, brought about by the historic and continued oppression of Black Americans versus an unyielding effort among many white Americans to convince themselves that any racial problem that may have existed in the past has since been resolved.

The fifth and final chapter, "I Am Not A Nigger," elucidates the modern-day condition of Black America by tying the strands of the previous four chapters together. In the closing scene, Baldwin asserts that "I can't be a pessimist because I'm alive, so I'm forced to be an optimist. But the future of the Negro in this country is precisely as bright or as dark as the future of the country. It is entirely up to the American people whether or not they are going to face and deal with and embrace this stranger whom they maligned so long. What white people have to do is try to find out in their own hearts why it was necessary to have a 'nigger' in the first place. Because I am not a nigger, I am a man! But if you think I'm a nigger, it means you need him. And the question the white population of this country has got to ask itself—North and South, because it's one country, and for a Negro there is no difference between the North and the South. It's just a difference in the way they castrate you, but the fact of the castration is the American fact—If I am not the nigger here, and you the white people invented him, then you've got to find out why. And the future of the country depends on that, whether or not it's able to ask [itself] that question."

{{Cast listing|

• Leander Perez as himself
• Dorothy Counts as herself
• Joan Crawford in Dance, Fools, Dance
• Doris Day
• Stepin Fetchit
• Willie Best
• Mantan Moreland
• Clinton Rosemond
• J. Edgar Hoover as himself, archival footage
• Kenneth B. Clark as himself, talk show host
• Harry Belafonte as himself, archival footage
• David Schoenbrun
• Paul WeissThe Dick Cavett Show, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzH5IDnLaBA James Baldwin and Paul Weiss Debate Discrimination In America]
• Billy Dee Williams
• Samuel L. Jackson as the narrator

}}

The film premiered at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival, where it won the Toronto International Film Festival People's Choice Award: Documentaries.{{cite web|last=Knight |first=Chris |date=September 18, 2016 |url=http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/movies/la-la-land-wins-the-peoples-choice-award-at-the-2016-toronto-international-film-festival |title=La La Land wins the People's Choice Award at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival |work=National Post |publisher=Postmedia Network|access-date=June 14, 2018}} Shortly after, Magnolia Pictures and Amazon Studios acquired distribution rights to the film.{{cite web|last=Lodderhose |first=Diana |date=September 15, 2016|url=https://deadline.com/2016/09/magnolia-toronto-raoul-peck-i-am-not-your-negro-1201820141/ |title=Magnolia Picks Up Raoul Peck's 'I Am Not Your Negro' — Toronto |work=Deadline Hollywood |publisher=Penske Business Media|access-date=June 14, 2018}}{{cite web|url=https://variety.com/2017/film/awards/i-am-not-your-negro-trailer-james-baldwin-1201953158/|title='I Am Not Your Negro' Trailer: James Baldwin Describes Race Relations in America (Watch)|website=Variety|publisher=Penske Business Media|first=Dave|last=McNary|date=January 5, 2017|access-date=February 4, 2017}} It was released for an Oscar-qualifying run on December 9, 2016, before re-opening on February 3, 2017.{{cite web|url=https://deadline.com/2016/11/i-am-not-your-negro-release-date-screenings-oscars-1201858565/|title='I Am Not Your Negro' Early Run Set In Awards-Season Ramp-Up|website=Deadline Hollywood|publisher=Penske Business Media|first=Patrick|last=Hipes|date=November 22, 2016|access-date=February 4, 2017}}

I Am Not Your Negro grossed $7,123,919 in the United States and $1,221,379 internationally. The film industry website IndieWire attributed, in part, the financial success of the movie to the release shortly before the announcement of Academy Award nominees, opening in an unusually high number of cities, and in non-traditional movie theaters that would generate a word of mouth following.{{cite news|url=https://www.indiewire.com/2017/04/i-am-not-your-negro-magnolia-smash-hit-box-office-1201802797/|title='I Am Not Your Negro': How Magnolia Pictures Launched a Smash Hit at the Box Office|date=April 7, 2017|work=IndieWire|publisher=Penske Business Media|last1=Winfrey|first1=Graham|access-date=April 10, 2017|archive-url=https://archive.today/20170410141735/http://www.indiewire.com/2017/04/i-am-not-your-negro-magnolia-smash-hit-box-office-1201802797/|archive-date=April 10, 2017|url-status=dead}}

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 99% based on 206 reviews, with an average rating of 8.90/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "I Am Not Your Negro offers an incendiary snapshot of James Baldwin's crucial observations on American race relations—and a sobering reminder of how far we've yet to go."{{cite web|url=https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/i_am_not_your_negro/|title=I Am Not Your Negro (2017)|website=Rotten Tomatoes|publisher=Fandango Media|access-date=May 12, 2020}} On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 95 out of 100, based on 36 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".{{cite web|url=https://www.metacritic.com/movie/i-am-not-your-negro|title=I Am Not Your Negro|website=Metacritic|publisher=CBS Interactive|access-date=February 18, 2018}} The film received low user-generated ratings upon its release on IMDb and Metacritic, leading to accusations of vote brigading.{{cite web|last1=Flock|first1=Elizabeth|title=Is 'I Am Not Your Negro' the latest victim of online 'vote brigading'?|url=https://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/not-negro-latest-victim-online-vote-brigading/|website=PBS NewsHour|publisher=PBS|access-date=July 30, 2017|date=February 7, 2017}}

Joe Morgenstern from The Wall Street Journal said, "the film is unsparing as history and enthralling as biography. It's an evocation of a passionate soul in a tumultuous era, a film that uses Baldwin's spoken words, and his notes for an unfinished book, to illuminate the struggle for civil rights."{{cite web|url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/i-am-not-your-negro-review-brilliant-notes-on-a-native-son-1486068192|title='I Am Not Your Negro' Review: Brilliant Notes on a Native Son|website=The Wall Street Journal|publisher=Dow Jones & Company|access-date=March 5, 2017|first=Joe|last=Morgenstern|date=February 2, 2017}}

Time Magazine placed the documentary on the 100 Best Movies of the Past Decades[https://time.com/collection/100-best-movies/ The 100 Best Movies of the Past 10 Decades|TIME] stating that[https://time.com/collection/100-best-movies/6296118/i-am-not-your-negro-2016/ I Am Not Your Negro (2016): 100 Best Movies of the Past 10 Decades|TIME]

The result is an extraordinary and multifaceted reflection on Black racial identity in America, and a work dedicated to keeping Baldwin's ideas alive in the world.

I Am Not Your Negro was nominated for numerous international awards and won over a dozen, including the following:

• Hate crime
• Human rights
• Post-civil rights era in African-American history
• Civil rights movement in popular culture
• List of black films of the 2010s
• Black Lives Matter
• If Beale Street Could Talk - both the novel and 2018 Oscar-winning adaptation directed by Barry Jenkins

{{Reflist}}

• {{IMDb title|5804038}}
• {{Rotten Tomatoes|m/i_am_not_your_negro}}
• [http://www.iamnotyournegrofilm.com Official site]

{{James Baldwin}}

{{Raoul Peck}}

{{Navboxes

|title = Awards for I Am Not Your Negro

|list =

{{AARP Movies for Grownups Award for Best Documentary}}

{{BAFTA Award for Best Documentary}}

{{César Award for Best Documentary Film}}

{{Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Documentary Film}}

{{San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle Award for Best Documentary Film}}

{{TIFF People's Choice Documentaries}}

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