But two months later, when it started screening in movie theaters across America, black writers saw it as another trite example of the country’s insatiable appetite for white-savior narratives.

The initial positive buzz set such a strong tone that its best-picture win at the Academy Awards seemed a foregone conclusion . But that didn’t stop the white filmmakers from going after black reviewers like K. Austin Collins of Vanity Fair who found it problematic.

“What the makers of this movie are missing is just that many black critics didn’t get to see this movie until it came out,” during Oscar season, well after early screenings for critics, Mr. Collins said during a panel at the Sundance Film Festival.

“When black critics do finally get to see this movie, it is seen as disrupting the Oscar campaign,” Mr. Collins said. “I don’t think any of us really care about that. We car e ab out representation.”

The example of “Green Book” shows how uncritical affection for superficially benevolent stories can actually reinforce the racial hierarchies this country is built on. We need culture writers who see and think from places of difference and who are willing to take unpopular positions so that ideas can evolve or die.

“Culture embodies these complicated layers of feeling and affect that shape everybody in ways we’re partially aware of but absolutely driven by,” says the culture writer Margo Jefferson, who, along with writers like Paul Chaat Smith, Greg Tate and Coco Fusco, has explicitly and diligently paved the way for younger critics. “T he role of the cri tic of color is to unveil and unearth the structures that lie behind and underneath and propel these narratives which always star the same figures .”