The first course that I taught at the University level was a Modern Black American lit class. We read texts from the Harlem Renaissance, the civil rights era, and then ended the course examining neo-slave narratives. The final text that we read was Edward P Jones’s The Known World. At the end of this class—and now all of my classes—I ask students what worked, what did not work, and what they learned in the course. At the end of this first course, what surprised the primarily white students of the class was the fact that there is consistent criticism of white liberalism in the African American texts that we read. In this class, and many more since, white students are taken aback when they discover that black American writers are equally as critical of white liberalism as they are of white supremacy. One student in that first class, stated that one thing he learned, and what really stood out for him, was this criticism of white liberalism in African American texts.
In our class—Bloody Conflict in America and Ireland: 1968-69—we have come across some of this criticism. In King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” he criticizes liberal white America. He writes:
I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
I emphasize the last sentence in the excerpt from King’s text to draw attention to the reason why white liberalism, or the white moderate as King references, is so disconcerting for many black Americans. Hearing someone say, I believe you are right but I do not agree with the way in which you are attempting to achieve your goals, is frustrating. For many black Americans, the vehemently non-racist white American who individually says, I judge each person as they are, but does very little to dismantle the structural system that allows racism in America to persist, is as problematic or “more bewildering than” the openly racist white person. To this “go slow” approach, King said in an address on 4 April 1967, “We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now.” 53 years later, while much progress has been made in dismantling systematic racism, the events that have occurred this year shows that a sense of urgency is still needed as Americans struggle to tackle structural oppression.
In the film Uptight, the frustration that structural change has not been achieved for black America is demonstrated through the performances of each of the characters. The black characters in the film are poor, hungry, angry, and completely disenfranchised. The new generation has decided to take up arms in hopes that a violent revolt will finally make white America see that black Americans are worthy of civil liberties. The white character in the film Teddy says, “You can’t do it alone. Without me you cannot win.” He is proven right. When he tries calling to warn the group about the police coming to get Johnny they hang up on him. They reject his help. Johnny is killed. This is an addition to the Dassin/Mayfield/Dee production of The Informer. I have to wonder why they added this detail to their version. Are the artists commenting on white and black cooperation in dismantling structural racism?
Made at the time of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, with a primarily black cast, Uptight (1968) attempts to capture the feeling of desolation and hopelessness that plagued Afro-America by the late 1960s. While Uptight is a remake of John Ford’s 1935 film The Informer, director Jules Dassin and cowriters Ruby Dee and Julian Mayfield use both Liam O’Flaherty’s novel The Informer and the Ford film to create Uptight. O’Flaherty’s The Informer reflects his frustration with his newly forming country. Ford’s version concentrates on the Irish struggle for independence from the United Kingdom. Dassin, Dee, and Mayfield take these two representations of Irish conflict and repackage them into an Afro-American context. The film focuses on both black insurgency and the “civil war” brewing between members of the civil rights movement (which soon after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. would split into warring factions).
When Uptight premiered December 1968, some of the reviews were not favorable and specifically these reviewers were annoyed that The Informer had been remade with a black cast. Famed film critic Roger Ebert wrote 19 February 1969, that Uptight was a good but less than perfect film. He writes: “Dassin made a strategic error at the very beginning, when he chose ‘Up Tight’ as a remake of ‘The Informer,’ Liam O’Flaherty’s novel (and John Ford’s film) about the Irish revolution. The transplant doesn’t work. The Irish and black revolutions have little in common, either in methods or in style.” One unnamed critic berated Dassin for basing his film on The Informer and thereby “setting up an implicit comparison between the noble history of the Irish struggle for independence and such a paltry thing as black insurgency in America’s inner cities.”
Not only does Ebert fail to realize that the book The Informer and the film The Informer are not concerned with the same moments in Irish history, he and the unknown critic both miss specific nuances of Irish history in their criticism of how the referenced Uptight relates to the Irish/Irish American projects. It is not that the Irish and Afro-American experience is the same; there are many differences between Ireland and Afro-America. Further, I do not think Mayfield, Dee, and Dassin are suggesting that the Afro-American and Irish experiences mirror each other. Rather, the artists are suggesting that there were intriguing similarities between the two situations and that perhaps those involved in the struggle can learn from each other. Perhaps, the makers of Uptight use the Irish situation to make a statement on commonalities between black Americans and their fellow white citizens. Rather than focus on what differentiates “the noble history of the Irish struggle for independence and such a paltry thing as black insurgency in America’s inner cities” perhaps being united in the fact that the struggle for liberty can unite people across boundaries is the underlining message of Uptight.
With the addition of Teddy as a character, the makers of Uptight suggest that while the frustration with white liberalism is valid, black Americans still need white Americans’s help to dismantle white supremacy.
For me, it is not about what separates us. My work is focused on what connects us. From my perspective, the differences between two groups or literatures makes the discovered similarities that much more exciting. Most importantly, in the the contrast, I focus on what can be learned by examining those connections.