Theme Of Racism In The Fire Next Time By James Baldwin

For hundreds of years, the people of the United States have struggled with conflict over the color line. From slavery and segregation, to job inequalities and racial profiling, the racial barrier between citizens has seemed relentless. There has been no consensus over how the large issue of racism originated, due to the never ending high tensions between black and white citizens. What has made one group of people feel infinitely superior to their peers? James Baldwin and Ta-Nehisi Coates are not afraid to address the beginnings of the color line, and how, despite many improvements throughout the past few decades, systemic racism is something all citizens should be aware of. Although written nearly 60 years apart, both The Fire Next Time and

James Baldwin is very explicit in his novel about the conditions of racism in the United States, and where he believes they stem from. Baldwin seems to think it is an internal, and individualized mindset that causes African Americans to fall into their ‘expected’ roles. He tells his nephew, “You can only be destroyed by believing you really are what the white world calls a nigger” (Baldwin 4). Through this quote, Baldwin is appealing to the readers pathos and making them think more deeply about how one finds their own self identity. Is much of modern racism influenced by others opinions on ourselves and on each other? Baldwin goes on to further explain how other people can be so influential in your own degradation, “these innocent and well-meaning people, your countrymen, have caused you to be born under [these] conditions” (Baldwin 6). Whether intentional or not, African Americans were

He describes the dog-eat-dog world he grew up in, with the constant need to travel in a posse to attempt to avoid the unavoidable violence and how he knew that was a fear most white children did not have to deal with. From a young age, he was aware of the challenges he would have to face due to the hue of his skin, and this is something he aims to teach his son as well. He tells of the assemblies his school would sit through every year, teaching the children about nonviolence particularity during the civil rights era. Coates finds himself asking why some Americans continue their racist views and violence despite the great improvements that came from the civil rights movement. What he realizes, is that “very few Americans will directly proclaimed that they are in favor of black people being left to the streets. But a very large number of Americans will do all they can to preserve the Dream” (Coates 33). He believes that it is not necessarily all intentional, just whites being stuck in the mindset of how they think America needs to operate, which unfortunately does not always take black rights into consideration. By launching into anecdotes about his own discovery of the brutally honest Malcolm X, the readers are able to better understand where his ideas of human selfishness exacerbate the issue of