White Immorality and Insecurity
By Marina Cepeda
James Baldwin articulates how the subjugation and oppression of Black people requires the moral apathy and cognitive dissonance of white Americans. In I Am Not Your Negro, the film juxtaposes archival and current footage, subverts interpretations through audio, and features a narration with repetitive themes of immorality and white insecurity to illustrate the identity conflict of white Americans that is necessary to dehumanize their fellow brothers and sisters. The film switches between footage of protests of the civil rights era and today to narrate the struggle against police brutality, meanwhile overlaying romanticized audio to convey the ignorance of white Americans. Samuel L. Jackson’s narration of Baldwin solidifies the identity conflict of white people in its critique of past films, and also the alienation of Baldwin as he navigates being a “witness or actor.”
I Am Not Your Negro parallels the protests of police brutality today to those of the 1960s. The texturization of current footage, such as the Ferguson protests and Obama’s election, help the clips smoothly transition in between archived footage. The film implements the Kuleshov effect to contextualize earlier videos, such as the back to back shots of Mars and the protests of Birmingham, which convey how white people saw the unrest as extraordinary. The combination of Baldwin’s insistence of moral awakening with footage of the KKK and Black Lives Matter protests challenges the audience to reflect on their virtues and question why white people have created a need for the “negro.” The documentary expertly critiques early interracial films to uncover the insecurities of white people and support Baldwin’s claim that movies were designed to reassure white people of their morality. The film further emphasizes the identity conflict and cognitive dissonance of white people through superimposing images of Black death and white happiness, with a romanticized music score.
The unusual auditory and visual combination of Black suffering and white happiness is done through cross dissolving images of white women laughing with images of lynchings. The romanticized music on top of graphic imagery, such as the beating of Rodney King, subverts audience interpretations and forces them to watch through the lens of ignorant “moral monsters.” Music is also used as evidence of racism and resistance in entertainment. On one hand, comical music exaggerates the absurdity of “mammie” advertisements and on the other, heightens the emotions of protests through sounds of gunshots and violence.
Baldwin’s speeches of moral apathy, white insecurity, and Black alienation speak to the identity conflict of both himself and the larger white population. There is a repetitive theme of Black death and white insecurity, which the film drives home through interviews of Baldwin redefining the “Negro problem” as an “American problem,” and questioning why white people even created the “Negro problem” in the first place. Baldwin insists that if “Americans were not so terrified of their private selves” they wouldn’t have created the “Negro problem.” The identity conflict that allows white people to kill their Black brothers and sisters is derived from an internal struggle, which the film illustrates through contrasting archived and current footage, subversive audio, and themes of immorality and insecurity.
