By Alex Zamalin.
BlacKkKlansman, directed by Spike Lee, 2018
BlacKkKlansman, the cinematic dramatization of the real-life story of Ron Stallworth, a Black detective who infiltrates the Colorado Springs chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in the early 1970s, is director Spike Lee’s meditation on white supremacy during the early years of Donald Trump’s presidency, when white nationalism was on the rise and was exemplified by the bloody 2017 “Unite the Right” march in Charlottesville, Virginia, which left one person dead. Lee goes back in time to make sense of the contemporary moment, to explain why white racism has never been dead in America, why it has always been lurking beneath the shadows. The first five minutes of the film subject the viewer to a diatribe by a fictional white supremacist, Dr. Kennebrew Beauregard (played by Alec Baldwin) who, looks directly at the camera and shows us clips from D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915) in order to sing the praises of the Klan during Reconstruction (1865-1877) and dehumanize Black citizens who emancipated themselves from slavery at the conclusion of the Civil War.
The first five minutes bring us into the world of the archetypal white supremacist — the one who basks in eugenics, the one who is filled with rage, the one who spews hate with a ferocity that is only matched by a perverse delight. But by minute 6, the scene shifts to a different figure, the ordinary racist, in a place where racism isn’t dressed in white robes, where it subtly, but no less insidiously, finds its way into institutions — like the police — that are deemed respectable by white Americans.
The question of how one ought to respond to the racist is a recurring one throughout the film. Minute 9 is when Ron Stallworth (played by John David Washington) begins to act on a recognition that finally becomes clear to him and also to us: one cannot easily reason with the racist. After multiple white officers in the CSPD (Colorado Springs Police Department) refer to Black men as “toads,” as they ask Stallworth to find records in the office, Stallworth — for this first time in the film — powerfully resists his dehumanization. “There are no toads here, only human beings,” he says. Racism relies on bad faith, which is to say that, the racist asserts something they know is patently false. Deep down, the racist knows Black citizens are human, but they nonetheless take great pleasure in describing them in subhuman ways, precisely because it forces the Black citizen to “prove” their humanity — which is, of course, humiliating.
This vicious cycle frames the possibilities for antiracist action. For this reason, the nineteenth-century Black abolitionist Frederick Douglass, at the height of US slavery in the 1852, argued in “What to a Slave is the Fourth of July” (1852) that in order to confront the racist, rational argument is insufficient, or even useful. What is necessary in the response is irony, fire and brimstone. “At a time like this,” Douglass says in his lecture, “scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.”
This theoretical insight cannot be overstated. To confront racism, one needs to put the racist on the defensive — lay bare their bad faith. That’s why Stallworth looks the cop straight in the eye and simply declares what is obvious to everyone — “there are no toads here.” Notice how Stallworth doesn’t defend his — or Black people’s — humanity. Instead, he draws attention to what the white cop knows but refuses to admit, as his colleague, a Black officer stands directly before him.
Black people are not toads.
There are no toads here.
See the first Minute 9 here. This series is curated by Nicholas Rombes.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alex Zamalin is a professor of Africana Studies and Political Science at Rutgers University. He is the author of six books, including Against Civility: The Hidden Racism in Our Obsession with Civility (Beacon Press, 2021) and Black Utopia: The History of an Idea from Black Nationalism to Afrofuturism (Columbia University Press, 2019), and Antiracism: An Introduction (New York University Press, 2019).
