Medgar, Malcolm, Martin



When author James Baldwin died in 1987, he was only 30 pages into a writing project that intended to use the murders of Medgar Evers (1963 -- when I was five weeks old), Malcom X (1965), and Martin Luther King Jr. (April 4, 1968) as a lens through which to understand the American story more broadly. His premise was that the history of the country is the history of the Negro (the term he uses consistently) within the country.

In I Am Not Your Negro, director Raoul Peck brilliantly brings Baldwin's fragments of work forward four decades, weaving together Baldwin's writings (as read by Samuel L. Jackson); video of Baldwin in various debates, lectures, and talk shows; and dozens of well-chosen clips from television and film spanning nearly a century.

The film thoroughly dispels the notion that slavery and its aftermath are something that people could "get over" if only they tried a bit harder. This film is rich food for thought.

Lagniappe

The morning after I posted this, I found Jason Satler's essay on well-mannered white supremacy, which argues that overt racism is rejected by many of the politicians who benefit most from systemic racism in various forms.

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