What is the importance of television in the film, I Am Not Your Negro?

The television, as Baldwin elucidates, was and is its own battleground. Television programs and movies, in their ostensible representation of reality, reveal the perceptions (and in many cases, create them) of a society about itself. Because the media in the United States was largely controlled by white Americans, the representation of African Americans in the media was accordingly distorted. Baldwin explains how this power over the media industry resulted in a warped perception that white people were the heroes of the story, and that white people had done nothing to feel guilty for. As Baldwin explains, "we've made a legend out of a massacre." (22).