The Fire Next Time

In 1963, The Dial Press published a small volume, two previous published essays, paired in a book titled, The Fire Next Time. The essays were written by James Baldwin, whose novels and plays had already awakened the country to his enormous ability to articulate with stark honesty the brewing racial tension in the United States. It is a favored book of mine, and at the time that I was twelve years old, it influenced my decision that when I grew up I would become an essayist.

A few days ago, I pulled a copy of The Fire Next Time from a stack of newly acquired books to be put online. This book has been referred to as the "Civil Rights manifesto," and it surely is that. In both essays, Baldwin is both exciting and enlightening regarding race matters; his eloquence bestows a noble bearing on his discourse, but he is not playing, as is clear in the incendiary prophecy of social unrest to come if his words are not heeded, effectively positioned at the end of the book:

God gave Noah

the rainbow sign;

No more water--

the fire next time!

In the first essay titled, “My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the 100th Anniversary of Emancipation," Baldwin was attempting to explain what his nephew and other Black male youths were up against--to forewarn them about the nearly all encompassing stranglehold that racism had already laid upon their futures before they were even born. His analysis dissects the enduring racial tension among Blacks and Whites in America up to the period of the Fifties.

Like Blacks, Baldwin said, white people are also in bondage because of the distorted view of their identity based on a false sense of superiority, and until Whites released themselves from their views, neither they nor Blacks would be completely free.

Speaking about White people, Baldwin told his nephew:

"They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it. They have had to believe for many years, and for innumerable reasons, that black men are inferior to white men. Many of them, indeed, know better, but, as you will discover, people find it very difficult to act on what they know."

What Baldwin wrote about White folks in the passage quoted above, and the one more fully quoted below, describes the behavior that many White folks exhibit today, more than 40 years after The Fire Next Time was published.

Baldwin’s description fits to a tee the contemporary boisterous and emotional cohort of whites, especially those of the conservative faction, those who have co-opted the conservative group, loosely associating themselves under a federation of so-called tea party patriotism. Many of them do know better, but find it "difficult to act on what they know."

What they therefore react to is what they see, and that is an African man elected to the highest office in the land and living in the White House.

Those “birthers,” and health care reform-town hall rowdies of the summer of 2009, and gun-strapping rally protesters, and Hitler and Socialist-calling defamers, and obstructionist Congresspersons are challenged to reconcile their attitude of superiority with the evidence that one of their own race is no longer the elected leader of the nation, to say nothing of the leader of the free world.

As Baldwin says, in the quote below, “it is out of the order of nature” for many White folks to comprehend. The only way to hold onto who they believe themselves to be--superior--is to deny President Barack Obama any cooperation in governing, and viciously and relentlessly at every opportunity to call him out of his name.

Baldwin's words 40 years ago are prescriptive today:

"Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure, does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity and fear. Please try to be clear, dear James, through the storm which rages about your youthful head today, about the reality which lies behind the words acceptance and integration. There is no reason for you to try to become like white people and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent assumption that they must accept you. The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them. And I mean that very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love. For these innocent people have no other hope. They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it. They have had to believe for many years, and for innumerable reasons, that black men are inferior to white men. Many of them, indeed, know better, but, as you will discover, people find it very difficult to act on what they know. To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger. In this case, the danger, in the minds of most white Americans, is the loss of their identity. Try to imagine how you would feel if you woke up one morning to find the sun shining and all the stars aflame. You would be frightened because it is out of the order of nature. Any upheaval in the universe is terrifying because it so profoundly attacks one's sense of one's own reality. Well, the black man has functioned in the white man's world as a fixed star, as an immovable pillar: and as he moves out of his place, heaven and earth are shaken to their foundations."

Baldwin was correct in his analysis about the destabilizing impact that Black advancement wreaks within the White community. His instinct to spell it out for young people was genuine and life preserving. We would do well to write our own letter, or to share James Baldwin's letter, with our young people today.