Kaylah Jones Blog #6

Trevor Noah’s Clip in which he focused on the topics of George Floyd, the Minneapolis protest, Ahmaud Aubrey, and Amy Cooper he brings up the overall idea of a Social Contract. Noah describes a social contract to be common rules that, as human beings, we all agree upon. He then goes on to say that the contract will only hold if the people that abide by it, do. Unfortunately, this same contract is being broken by the ones who made it, white people, and they’re doing it by killing, being racist toward, and treating people of color differently. And yet they don’t / rarely ever receive any consequences for their actions. We can then assume that this is a one way contract and it is to actually protect white people, the ‘full citizen’ in society. Because we can assume that it is a one way contract that means we, people of color, still have a societal hold over us. James Baldwin’s project film ‘I Am Not Your Negro’  touches on this topic as well, hence the name. Baldwin focuses on the lives and deaths of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Medgar Evers; three famous civil rights activist. I believe he chose these three men to focus on because they all had different ideas on how to tackle racism. Martin believed in peace making and talking out differences and problems. Malcom believed in violence in order to take our rights back. Medgar wanted to bring us to equality from the inside out through voting and economic boycotts. Though they had different ways of going about achieving equality the important thing is that in the end all of their focuses where to bring equality overall. I think this is why Baldwin chose to focus on these three men, to emphasize that all though they had differences they found a common ground. All in all I believe that this was a powerful and insightful film. but it also made me angry because it feels as if history is just constantly repeating and it simply isn’t fair.

One thought on “Kaylah Jones Blog #6

  1. I like that you went into depth about all three Civil Right activists and their distinct approaches to defeating racism in America. But I completely agree, I’m filled with anguish when I see history repeat itself in this sense, and it hurts to see the countless barriers and hindrances put in place to stop Blacks from achieving equality and justice pile up.

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