34 pages • 1 hour read
James BaldwinI Am Not Your Negro
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Social Construction of Race
An underpinning of I Am Not Your Negro is the understanding that race is socially constructed. This is a common idea in academic fields that deal with race. The text does not state this assumption outright, but it leans on it heavily in sections discussing the creation of dehumanized Black figures in fiction and in real society. When Baldwin says that Whiteness can be understood as a “metaphor for power,” he is acknowledging that Whiteness is not biologically-based (106). Race is not inherent—rather, it is socially constructed, generally in order to benefit White supremacy. This theme also appears when Baldwin criticizes the assumption that Whiteness is natural or naturally good. When Baldwin says that “the world is not White,” he is nodding to this concept (106).
The idea that race is a social construction is a way of understanding how power is distributed and maintained in America. The basic idea is that race is determined socially by people rather than biologically. There are minor genetic differences between all people, but White society chooses to use certain features, including skin color, as indicators of difference. Because these markers of difference are socially chosen, racial groups are flexible, and may change based on mutable social factors. For example, when Irish people began emigrating to America, they were not considered White. Their racial status as non-White meant they could be denigrated and exploited by White profiteers, who both saw the Irish as culturally “other,” and as convenient sources of cheap labor. The Irish only became acknowledged as White when their Whiteness was socially, politically, and economically advantageous to other White people. Similar trajectories affected Finnish Americans, Armenian Americans, Italian Americans, and others. At the same time, these examples and the changing nature of Whiteness does not mitigate the unique and specific oppression of Black people in America.
White Monstrousness
Baldwin uses the word “monster” and “monstrous” repeatedly to describe the moral state of White Americans. This is in contrast to his conviction that White people are not devils and his desire to discourage this sentiment in other Black people. The primary difference here is that Baldwin does not believe White monstrousness is inherent. Instead, he thinks that it is the result of a social, political, and legal environment that makes anti-Black racism work in favor of White people.
This does not mean, however, that Baldwin is suggesting that White people are not perpetrators of horrific racist violence or guilty of deep moral cowardice. He believes that Malcolm X’s position is justified because it emerges from and corroborates the lived experiences of Black Americans. Baldwin says that by agreeing to live in a way that separates people by race, White people also agree to see Black people as sub-human. This is the scenario that makes White people into, as Baldwin says, “moral monsters.”
Cinema
Movies figure heavily into I Am Not Your Negro. This is partially because Peck’s editing, as a filmmaker, favors inclusion of video excerpts; and partially because Baldwin heavily references films to illustrate his points. For Baldwin, cinema is meaningful because it helps to control the public’s perception of society. Instead of reflecting reality, or inciting political action, cinema tends to show an idealized version of the world that glosses over true violence and inequity. Even if racism or White supremacy is portrayed onscreen, it is resolved in time for a happy ending that leaves the viewer feeling content and pacified, as in The Heat of the Night.
Baldwin’s ideas about cinema may remind some readers of the writing of Theodor Adorno. In the 1947 book Dialectic of Enlightenment, Adorno and his coauthor Max Horkheimer explore how popular culture (including film, radio, and text) all work to pacify audiences through entertainment. Adorno argues that entertainment dealing with political themes only gives the masses a false feeling of catharsis, which prevents them from seeking actual revolution. Baldwin explores a similar idea here but narrows his focus more specifically to how cinema represents Black people and their relationships to White people. Baldwin argues that, by falsely reflecting a world where racist injustices can be ignored through a cinematic happy ending, cinema pacifies audiences and deadens them to the more insidious and violent realities of racism.
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