The Fire Next Time

The Fire Next Time

James Baldwin

James Baldwin’s A Fire Next Time, is a short non-fiction book composed of two letters; and although written nearly half a century ago it’s message is still very much relevant today.

The first letter ‘My Dungeon Shook’ written to his fourteen year old nephew on the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation urges him to love his white countrymen; despite the fact that they will treat him as less than. He puts this down to the reality that despite the fact they know better, these countrymen are trapped in history which shapes their identity and if questioned is an attack on their concept of reality.

‘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 it 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.’

The second letter ‘Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region in My Mind’. In this letter he speaks briefly about his experiences with religion, joining the church as a safe-house as a means of avoiding the temptation of the “Avenue”, and the power and politics of Christianity. He recounts his meeting the Elijah Muhammad of the Nation of Islam, of which he had taken notice not due to the charismatic messages of the leader (which he said there had been variations of) but due to the power the NOI held. And finally the relationship between the American Negro and the white man; stating that the cruelty and suffering faced by the black man makes him unshakable and less likely to constrained by fear. He concludes by saying that the only way for America to truly become a nation is for the identity maturation of its people.

‘White Americans find it as difficult as white people elsewhere to do to divest themselves of the notion that they are in possession of some intrinsic value that black people need, or want. And this assumption- which, for example, makes the solution to the Negro problem depend on the speed with which Negros accept and adopt white standards- is revealed in all kinds of striking ways.... It is the Negro, of course, who is presumed to have to become equal...Alas, there is certainly little enough in the white man’s public or private life that one should desire or imitate. ...Therefore, a vast amount of the energy that goes into what we call the Negro problem is produced by the white man’s profound desire not to be judged by those who are not white, not to be seen as he is, and at the same time a vast amount if the white anguish is rooted in the white man’s equally profound need to be seen as he is, to be released from the tyranny on his mirror...It is for this reason that love is so desperately sought and so cunningly avoided. Love takes off the mask that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace-not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.’

‘.. The price of liberation of the white people is the liberation of the blacks-the tidal liberation, in the cities, in the towns, before the law, and in the mind.’