Rent I Am Not Your Negro (2016)

A moving and shocking documentary of american racism - I Am Not Your Negro review by Peter B

Well made documentary based on an unfinished book by James Baldwin who subsequently died of stomach cancer. Gives a good account of the similarities and different viewpoints of the leading black activists of the 1960's and 1970's, most of whom were murdered by white supremacists. Baldwin moved to Paris, as a black homosexual activist he would have been particularly vulnerable. My visit to the USA 2 years ago suggest they still have a long way to go but attitudes are slowly changing, I believe a recent poll showed 80% of americans are now supportive of inter-racial marriage. As a teenager some american friends tried to show me a Klu Klux Klan meeting. Each junction on the country roads had a man with a shotgun. By the time we found the meeting, there was only a burning cross remaining.

Shocking footage of the hate that some white people had for black americans. Bobby Kennedy appears weak-willed and short of compassion.

Very US-focused documentary on race in the USA based on James Baldwin's notes. - I Am Not Your Negro review by PV

First, this is about the USA. The UK has NEVER EVER had race laws. Slavery was banned in England in 11th Century AD and died out by mid 13th century. Then the UK banned slavery and spread and enforced that ban around the world, freeing over 100,000 African slaves from ships, and founding Sierra Leone for freed slaves from Canada. African states and kings and Arabs all opposed the end of slavery which was and is still now (with 40 million slaves in the world in 2024) a huge soruce of income and part of their culture. I am SO SICK of people assuming the UK is the USA, and hate the way BLM and US race politics has seeped into the UK, causing division.

Second, this is sadly a film which attempts to link events of 1960s and 50s and before with the 21st century and Black Lives Matter, and deaths of black people now (mostly killed/shot by black people it has to be said). Full facts of each case need to be examined, the assumption any shooting of a black person is a racist killing is wrong and yes, racist. There was and is huge racism FROM people of colour in the USA who wanted and want segregation, black only areas, radio stations, films, businesses, media, TV, schools universities (Browns is black and female only! How diverse - not!)

SO a mixed bag - the way the odious racist Malcolm X is eulogised is silly. WHY is it that the black converts to Islam like him and Mo Ali never seem to know about the Arab slave trade which was slaving in Africa 1000 years before white Europeans? Why no knowledge of African on African slave trading, or Asian trade, or the 2.5 million white European slaves stolen by Arabs and traded on. There were white slaves in the southern African kingdom of Mali in the 14th century.

BUT I enjoyed bits of it, and like Baldwin as a writer MORE than as a speaker. I'd have liked to know more about his time in Paris really and his gay identity. This is based on the notes Baldwin made in the late 1970s but he abandoned the book - he did not die until 1987 in France where he lived from 1970 and before that from 1948 to 1957. Many black artists and musicians like Nina Simone too were attracted to France, a romanticism maybe, as certainly the racism there is stronger than in Britain, esp in rural areas.

My favourite parts were clips of old films from 1930s and 40s, some of which our perpetually triggered woke media would NEVER broadcast now.

So more relevant to the USA and NOTHING to do with the UK (which in 1939 had just 6000 black people out of a population of 44 million).

3 stars. Could have been SO much better.

A must watch documentary - I Am Not Your Negro review by RM

The documentary portrays life in America up to 1987, when James Baldwin died. But as events in 2020 and 2021 show, not that much has improved for the black people whose ancestors were smuggled into the US to be enslaved, brutalised and murdered almost at will.

Racism is alive and well in the US, and lends support to all those people in other countries who think nothing of maltreating black people or other minorities. Such behaviour instead of creating a great civilisation is actually destroying it, whether the citizens are able to understand it or not. What a waste.

How can the world ever be a happy or wholesome place when one group takes pleasure in dehumanising another?