Racism In The Fire Next Time

What does it mean to be a Negro in America? Why did racial disorder unfold in urban cities throughout the United States during the height of the Civil Rights Movement? What are the push and pull factors prompting African-Americans to fight for political equality and civil rights amid rising racial tensions in 1963? James Baldwin’s searing prose in The Fire Next Time (1963) offers critical insight into the state of white racism and the height of black unrest in 1960s America. In The My Dungeon Shook chapter, James Baldwin poignantly writes to his nephew, James, about how racism, poverty, and urban uprisings subjugated African-Americans to second-class citizenship in Harlem, New York. As Baldwin later writes, “this innocent country set you down

race-relations through the lens of the Negro problem. According to Baldwin, "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. I said it was intended that you should perish, in the ghetto, perish by never being allowed to go beyond and behind the white man's definition" (Baldwin 18). In turn, James Baldwin argues how white Americans viewed Black Americans’ “inferiority” and upheld the ideas of white supremacy in mid-20th century America. Nevertheless, he implicitly suggests that a white man’s identity is inextricably bound to his own internalized idea of superiority (Baldwin 21). During the height of the Civil Rights Movement, white Americans perceived African-Americans’ political enfranchisement as a dire threat to the embedded racial hierarchy and social order of the Unites States (Baldwin 22). For example, Civil rights organizations and Black Power activists, such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Nation of Islam, began to assert their rights—political rights safeguarded and federally protected by the government through the Civil Rights Act (1964) and Voting Rights Act (1965). Alas, white Americans perceived the state of social ferment as a potential threat to their livelihoods (Baldwin 73). As Baldwin later

(D-IL), documented how civil unrest and lawlessness manifested in American cities by launching a two-week investigation into racial disorder in Newark, New Jersey and Detroit, Michigan beginning on July 28th, 1967 (Kerner 3). The Commission endeavored to understand the causes of the race riots during the summer of 1967. Moreover, the comprehensive details presented by Governor Kerner and other government officials echo James Baldwin’s foreboding words. For instance, Governor Kerner explicitly argued that “our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal. Reaction to last summer's disorders has quickened the movement and deepened the division” (Kerner 1). To that end, the report states that “segregation and poverty have created in the racial ghetto a destructive environment totally unknown to most white Americans…. white institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it” (Kerner 2). Simply put, this report reaffirms Baldwin’s observations; thus, it sheds light on the illusion of racial equality peddled by civil rights activists. In his letter, James Baldwin urged his nephew to be wary about “the reality which lies behind the words acceptance and integration” (Kerner 17). Similar to James Baldwin’s analysis, the Kerner Commission offers cautionary insight into the state of racial progress and social equality during the Civil Rights