Skip to main content
Back to Show
Independent Lens

I Am Not Your Negro - "The Future of the Negro" - Clip

In this excerpt from the Independent Lens film I Am Not Your Negro, writer James Baldwin speaks on 1963's “The Negro and The American Promise” about the "the future of the Negro in this country," which is "precisely as bright or as dark as the future of the country." The central question he asks is aimed at American white people, asking them to address why they created the idea of "the nigger."

Support Provided By
Season
Our Community
Unlock with PBS Passport
1:16:37
Unravel the complexities of the Electoral College through four 2020 presidential electors.
If Dreams Were Lightning: Rural Healthcare Crisis
Unlock with PBS Passport
25:43
With rural hospitals closing, meet the people trying to get help in healthcare deserts.
Local Story
The Tuba Thieves
Unlock with PBS Passport
1:25:17
The central mystery of this unconventional documentary is the nature of sound itself.
Women's Stories
Unlock with PBS Passport
1:24:52
NASA psychologists prepare astronauts for the extreme isolation of a Mars mission.
Climate and Environment
Unlock with PBS Passport
1:18:04
For Native Alaskans living on a tiny Bering Sea island, if you don’t hunt, you die.
Matter of Mind: My Parkinson’s
Unlock with PBS Passport
54:41
Three people navigate their lives with determination in the face of Parkinson’s disease.
A Thousand Pines
Unlock with PBS Passport
55:37
A crew of 12 Mexican tree planters travel the United States regrowing America’s forests.
Greener Pastures
Unlock with PBS Passport
1:24:54
Midwestern families deal with unseen mental health issues affecting farmers in America.
Breaking The News
Unlock with PBS Passport
1:24:13
Women and LGBTQ+ journalists launch startup The 19th* to buck a broken news media system.
Sister Úna Lived a Good Death
Unlock with PBS Passport
55:23
A nun with stage IV cancer teaches others that death doesn’t have to be the end.
Razing Liberty Square
Unlock with PBS Passport
1:23:30
A public housing community in Miami becomes ground zero for climate gentrification.
Racist Trees
Unlock with PBS Passport
1:23:49
In Palm Springs, a Black neighborhood fights to remove a divisive wall of trees.
Active loading indicator