Summary

This chapter is only a few pages, including the concluding section of the film. Baldwin reminds us, “History is not the past. It is the present... We are our history.” (107). Baldwin reminds us, as readers of the guide and viewers of the film, that the events and images shown in these pages and on these screens are not so distant from us, and that we carry these truths wherever we go. Baldwin refuses to claim that the past is over; instead, he draws attention to the ways in which the past continues to shape and inform the present.

Baldwin also, in this chapter, further contests the idea of whiteness as the default in America, as its majority, and even as a concept in itself. He writes, “White is a metaphor for power” (107). The central feature of whiteness, as Baldwin...