The Force of Black and White: James Baldwin’s Reflections in/on his Early Experience of Film

This article scrutinizes James Baldwin’s reflections on film and film-going, mainly as set out in the relatively late essays-cum-memoir entitled The Devil Finds Work. The paper considers Baldwin’s experiences and reflections with an idea to how black and white are felt and described as asymmetrically oppositional forces, on the one hand, that nonetheless are subject to occasional and startling crossovers, especially in his early viewing of films, white, mixed-race, and all-black cast. Baldwin argues against an ontology of race, even as he feels the full force of discrimination based on the putative absolutes of black and white.