The two passages from James Baldwin in the film are shocking, excerpted below.
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.'
I can't be a pessimist because I'm alive. To be a pessimist means that you have agreed that human life is an academic matter, so I'm forced to be an optimist. I'm forced to believe that we can survive whatever we must survive. … But the Negro in this country … The future of the Negro in this country is precisely as bright or as dark as the future of the country. It is entirely up to the American people whether or not they are going to face and deal with and embrace the stranger who they have maligned so long. What white people have to do, is try and find out in their own hearts why it was necessary to have a nigger in the first place. Because I'm not a nigger. I'm a man. . . . If I'm not a nigger here and you invented him — you, the white people, invented him — then you've got to find out why. And the future of the country depends on that.Whether or not it's able to ask that question.
Looking at the reality, there is no solution to the racial issue in the United States in the short term.
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