Learning to be Anti-Racist

 

As I watched the film “I Am Not Your Negro”, I initially thought that it would begin at the civil rights movement of the 1950-60’s and move further towards the “present”. Instead, I was treated to a hybrid of a read-aloud of James Baldwin’s unfinished book “Remember This House” that was mixed with various other forms of media like newspaper headlines, movie clips, and interviews that Baldwin gave.

This film made me stop to examine my own worldview in society, or one that I once held to be more precise. Around halfway into the film Yale Professor, Paul Weiss, is invited onto to be a guest speaker in the sameinterview as Baldwin. Weiss argues that “all this emphasis upon black man and white, does emphasize something which is here, but it emphasizes, or perhaps exaggerates it, and therefore makes us put people together into groups which they ought not to be in. […] So why must we always concentrate on color, or religion, or this?” [1:11:33-1:12:01]. I, too, thought the same as Weiss. That by placing so much emphasis on skin color, we just arbitrarily put ourselves into identity groups that tell us to look at our difference first and foremost. By doing as Weiss says, we can move into a “post-race” world. That, as Baldwin argues, is something that should be avoided.

Baldwin responds to Weiss, saying, “You want me to make an act of faith, risking myself, my wife, my woman, my sister, my children, on some idealism which you assure me exists in America, which I have never seen” [1:13:43-1:13:54]. As I reflected on this exchange between the two of them it became clear that myself, like Weiss, was able to believe in this blind idealism because of privilege afforded to us by our white skin. The implications this has for ELA teachers are the same implications raised in “Gangstas, Wankstas, and Ridas”: “low-income children of color, are the group most likely to change the world” (625). The people who are most alienated form society will be the ones to change it in any meaningful way because they are not attached to said society. However, students can only recognize this power for change by becoming aware of the oppression in their society. This can be achieved through culturally diverse readings from minorities outside of the traditional literary canon.