I Am Not Your Negro Read online

  that virtually no American appears able to achieve

  any viable, organic connection

  between his public stance and his private life.

  This failure of the private life

  has always had the most devastating effect

  on American public conduct,

  and on black-white relations.

  If Americans were not so terrified

  of their private selves,

  they would never have become so dependent

  on what they call “the Negro problem.”

  Credit 16

  NO WAY OUT - 1950 -

  RICHARD WIDMARK: They said it wasn’t nice to say nigger. Nigger! Nigger! Nigger! Poor little nigger kids, love the little nigger kids. Who loved me? Who loved me?

  This problem, which they invented

  in order to safeguard their purity,

  has made of them criminals and monsters,

  and it is destroying them.

  And this, not from anything blacks

  may or may not be doing

  but because of the role of a guilty

  and constricted white imagination

  as assigned to the blacks.

  THE DEFIANT ONES - 1958 -

  TONY CURTIS: Look, man, don’t give me that look. You should have got what was coming to you after spitting in that guy’s face….(Sidney slaps the cigarette from Tony Curtis’s mouth.) Why you…(The two men fight.)

  SIDNEY POITIER: That time is now.

  SIDNEY POITIER: Run! Come on!

  TONY CURTIS: I can’t make it, I can’t make it!

  It is impossible to accept the premise of the story,

  a premise based on the profound

  American misunderstanding

  of the nature of the hatred between black and white.

  The root of the black man’s hatred is rage,

  and he does not so much hate white men

  as simply wants them out of his way,

  and, more than that,

  out of his children’s way.

  The root of the white man’s hatred is terror,

  a bottomless and nameless terror,

  which focuses on this dread figure,

  an entity which lives only in his mind.

  Credit 17

  When Sidney jumps off the train,

  the white liberal people downtown

  were much relieved and joyful.

  But when black people saw him jump off the train,

  they yelled, “Get back on the train, you fool.”

  The black man jumps off the train

  in order to reassure white people,

  to make them know that they are not hated;

  that, though they have made human errors,

  they’ve done nothing for which to be hated.

  Credit 18

  CHIQUITA BANANA ADVERTISEMENT

  I’m Chiquita Banana, and I’m here to say

  I am the top banana…

  In spite of the fabulous myths proliferating in this

  country concerning the sexuality of black people,

  black men are still used,

  in the popular culture,

  as though they had no sexual equipment at all.

  Sidney Poitier,

  as a black artist, and a man, is also up against

  the infantile, furtive sexuality of this country.

  Both he and Harry Belafonte, for example,

  are sex symbols, though no one dares admit that,

  still less to use them as any of

  the Hollywood he-men are used.

  Credit 19

  Black people have been robbed

  of everything in this country,

  and they don’t want to be robbed of their artists.

  Black people particularly disliked

  Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

  because they felt that Sidney was,

  in effect, being used against them.

  Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner may prove,

  in some bizarre way, to be a milestone,

  because it is really quite impossible to go

  any further in that particular direction.

  The next time,

  the kissing will have to start.

  IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT - 1967 -

  ROD STEIGER: Well, you’ve got your ticket? Here you are. Thank you….

  ROD STEIGER: Virgil! You take care, you hear?

  SIDNEY POITIER: Yeah.

  I am aware that men do not kiss

  each other in American films,

  nor for the most part, in America, nor do the black

  detective and the white sheriff kiss here.

  But the obligatory fade-out kiss,

  in the classic American film,

  did not speak of love, and, still less, of sex:

  it spoke of reconciliation,

  of all things now becoming possible.

  Credit 20, 21

  I knew a blond girl in the Village a long time ago,

  and, eventually, we never walked

  out of the house together.

  She was far safer walking the streets alone

  than when walking with me—

  a brutal and humiliating fact which thoroughly

  destroyed whatever relationship this girl and

  I might have been able to achieve.

  This happens all the time in America,

  but Americans have yet to realize what a sinister fact

  this is, and what it says about them.

  When we walked out in the evening, then,

  she would leave ahead of me, alone.

  I would give her about five minutes,

  and then I would walk out alone, taking another

  route, and meet her on the subway platform.

  We would not acknowledge each other.

  We would get into the subway car,

  sitting at opposite ends of it,

  and walk, separately, through the streets

  of the free and the brave,

  to wherever we were going—

  a friend’s house, or the movies.

  Credit 22

  THE SECRET OF SELLING THE NEGRO - 1954 -

  All over the country, families such as this one are enjoying new prosperity. They have new interests, new standards of living, a buying power they’ve never enjoyed before. They are good prospects for practically all types of goods and services. All too often, though, they are overlooked prospects. Since 1940 in San Francisco alone, the Negro market has increased by 89 percent. Here are millions of customers for what you have to sell. Customers with 15 billion dollars to spend.

  Credit 23

  Someone once said to me that the people in general

  cannot bear very much reality.

  He meant by this that they prefer fantasy

  to a truthful re-creation of their experience.

  The people have quite enough reality to bear

  by simply getting through their lives,

  raising their children,

  dealing with the eternal conundrums

  of birth, taxes, and death.

  ROBERT KENNEDY: Negroes are continuously making progress here in this country. The progress in many areas is not as fast as it should be, but they are making progress, and we will continue to make progress. There is no reason that in the near and the foreseeable future that a Negro could not also be president of the United States.

  CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY DEBATE - 1965 -

  JAMES BALDWIN: I remember, for example, when the ex–Attorney General, Mr. Robert Kennedy, said that it was conceivable that in forty years in America we might have a Negro president. And that sounded like a very emancipated statement, I suppose, to white people. They were not in Harlem when this statement was first heard. They did not hear (and possibly will never hear) the laughter and the bitterness and the scorn with which this statement was greeted. From the point of view of the man in the Harlem barbershop, Bobby Kennedy only got here y
esterday and now he’s already on his way to the presidency. We’ve been here for four hundred years and now he tells us that maybe in forty years, if you’re good, we may let you become president.

  Credit 24

  SELLING THE NEGRO

  CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY DEBATE - 1965 -

  JAMES BALDWIN: Let me put it this way: that from a very literal point of view, the harbors and the ports and the railroads of the country; the economy, especially of the Southern states, could not conceivably be what it has become if they had not had, and do not still have, indeed, and for so long—so many generations—cheap labor.

  It is a terrible thing for an entire people to surrender to the notion that one-ninth of its population is beneath them. And until that moment, until the moment comes when we the Americans, we the American people, are able to accept the fact that I have to accept, for example, that my ancestors are both white and black, that on that continent we are trying to forge a new identity for which we need each other, and that I am not a ward of America, I am not an object of missionary charity, I am one of the people who built the country. Until this moment, there is scarcely any hope for the American dream, because people who are denied participation in it, by their very presence, will wreck it. And if that happens, it is a very grave moment for the West. Thank you.

  HOLLYWOOD ROUNDTABLE - 1963 -

  DAVID SCHOENBURN: We’re here in the studio today with seven men who have two things in common: they are entertainers and artists; and they’ve all come to Washington. They are seven out of some two hundred thousand American citizens who came to the capital to march for freedom and for jobs. Will this tremendous outburst now lead to a course of action, Mr. Belafonte?

  HARRY BELAFONTE: The now that is being spoken about is the fact that in a hundred years, finally, through whatever the causes have been in history—and most of them have been because of oppression—the Negro people have strongly and fully taken the bit in their teeth and are asking for absolutely no quarter from anyone. But I do say that the bulk of the interpretation of whether this thing is going to end successfully and joyously or is going to end disastrously lays very heavily with the white community, it lays very heavily with the profiteers, it lays very heavily with the vested interests, it lays very heavily with a great middle stream in this country of people who have refused to commit themselves or even have the slightest knowledge that these things have been going on.

  I am speaking as a member of a certain democracy

  in a very complex country which insists

  on being very narrow-minded.

  Simplicity is taken to be a great American virtue

  along with sincerity.

  APOLOGY SEQUENCE

  I’m sorry. [Richard Nixon]

  I’m deeply sorry. [Larry Craig]

  And I’m sorry. [Rahm Emanuel]

  I’m deeply sorry about that. [Arnold Schwarzenegger]

  There are no excuses. [John Rowland]

  I am sorry…[Bill Clinton]

  We have made plenty of mistakes. [Ronald Reagan]

  For that I apologize. [Todd Akin]

  I am very sorry. [Hillary Clinton]

  I am sorry I did this to you, but you have to get used to it.

  It’s one of those little problems in life. [Donald Trump]

  I take full responsibility. [John Ensign]

  I am here today to again apologize. [Anthony Weiner]

  I apologize for the fact…to her…[Robert Bentley]

  For any mistakes I’ve made, I take full responsibility. It’s an honor to serve the city of Ferguson and the people who live there. [Thomas Jackson]

  One of the results of this is that

  immaturity is taken to be a virtue, too.

  So that someone like that, let’s say John Wayne

  who spent most of his time

  on screen admonishing Indians,

  was in no necessity to grow up.

  Credit 25

  I had been in London on this particular night.

  We were free and we decided to treat ourselves

  to a really fancy, friendly dinner.

  The headwaiter came, and said

  there was a phone call for me,

  and my sister Gloria rose to take it.

  She was very strange when she came back—

  she didn’t say anything,

  and I began to be afraid to ask her anything.

  Then, nibbling at something she obviously

  wasn’t tasting, she said,

  “Well, I’ve got to tell you because the press is on its

  way over here. They have just killed Malcolm.”

  THE DICK CAVETT SHOW - 1968 -

  JAMES BALDWIN: There is nothing in the evidence offered by the book of the American republic which allows me really to argue with the cat who says to me: “They needed us to pick the cotton and now they don’t need us anymore. Now they don’t need us, they’re going to kill us all off. Just like they did the Indians.” And I can’t say it’s a Christian nation, that your brothers will never do that to you, because the record is too long and too bloody. That’s all we have done. All your buried corpses now begin to speak.

  H. RAP BROWN (1967): I say violence is necessary, violence is a part of American culture. It is as American as cherry pie. Black power, brothers.

  THE DICK CAVETT SHOW - 1968 -

  JAMES BALDWIN: If we were white, if we were Irish, if we were Jewish, if we were Poles, if we had, in fact, in your mind a frame of reference our heroes would be your heroes, too. Nat Turner would be a hero for you instead of a threat. Malcolm X might still be alive. Everyone is very proud of brave little Israel—against which I have nothing; I don’t want to be misinterpreted, I am not an anti-Semite. But, you know, when the Israelis pick up guns, or the Poles, or the Irish, or any white man in the world says “give me liberty, or give me death,” the entire white world applauds. When a black man says exactly the same thing, word for word, he is judged a criminal and treated like one and everything possible is done to make an example of this bad nigger, so there won’t be any more like him.

  THE LAND WE LOVE - U.S. GOVERNMENT FILM, 1960 -

  Look out across this land we love. Look about you, wherever you are. There’s unending scenic beauty and there’s freedom. It’s an inherent American right meaning many different things to every single citizen.

  It’s a leisurely afternoon of golf along a pleasant course. It’s an amusement park, a roller coaster ride. A day at the county fair. A day of excitement, unrestricted travel across all our fifty states, unlimited enjoyment of all these jewels in the continent’s crown. For all of us, there’s all of America, all of its scenic beauty, all of its heritage of history, all of its limitless opportunity….

  MARTIN LUTHER KING (speaking at a rally): We’ve dropped too many bombs on Vietnam now. Let us save our national honor. Stop the bombing! And stop the war!

  What I’m trying to say to this country,

  to us,

  is that we must know this…

  …we must realize this,

  that no other country in the world has been

  so fat and so sleek, and so safe, and so happy,

  and so irresponsible, and so dead.

  No other country can afford to dream of a Plymouth

  and a wife and a house with a fence and the children

  growing up safely to go to college and

  to become executives, and then to marry and

  have the Plymouth and the house and so forth.

  A great many people do not live this way

  and cannot imagine it, and do not know

  that when we talk about “democracy,”

  this is what we mean.

  Credit 26

  The industry is compelled, given the way

  it is built, to present to the American people

  a self-perpetuating fantasy of American life.

  Their concept of entertainment is difficult

  to distinguish from the use of
narcotics.

  THE TRISHA GODDARD SHOW

  TRISHA GODDARD: What worries you about [your daughters] having black partners? Do you think people are going to look down on them? Or judge them?

  MOTHER: Yes, I think people look down on them.

  To watch the TV screen for any length of time

  is to learn some really frightening things

  about the American sense of reality.

  We are cruelly trapped between

  what we would like to be and what we actually are.

  And we cannot possibly become

  what we would like to be until we are willing

  to ask ourselves just why the lives we lead

  on this continent are mainly so empty, so tame,

  and so ugly.

  These images are designed not to trouble,

  but to reassure.

  They also weaken our ability to deal

  with the world as it is, ourselves as we are.

  THE DICK CAVETT SHOW - 1968 -

  DICK CAVETT: I would like to add someone to our group here, Professor Paul Weiss, the Sterling Professor of Philosophy at Yale. (Weiss enters.) Were you able to listen to the show backstage?

  PAUL WEISS: I heard a good deal of it, but then I was behind the (inaudible), so I heard only some of it.

  DICK CAVETT: Did you hear anything that you disagreed with?