The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

I was inspired to begin to seek out James Baldwin's writing after seeing I Am Not Your Negro.

The Fire Next Time is made up of two letters, one of which is to his nephew and namesake James but really both are to all people, black and white, written on the 100th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. Baldwin writes from his personal observations and experiences growing up in Harlem and his words are often sharp and biting, but they need to be as he is calling on people to see the root of racism and rip it out once and for all.

The Fire Next Time is as relevant and needed today in 2017 as it was when it was first published in 1963 during the heart of the Civil Rights Movement. Until we can stop listing the names of young Black men and women killed for the color of their skin Baldwin will have something to teach us; his words instructions and warnings rather than a window into a bygone era.

One stark example he gives (remember now that this wasn't so far in the past for him when written in 1963) is how Black military members were treated during WWII. He says that German prisoners were treated with human dignity by their American captors than Black GIs were treated by their fellow men in uniform. It was for many at the time an eye opening revelation, it was proof of how little had changed since people stopped owning other people. And yet at the same time though American Black men were freer in Europe than they were at home in the United States.

Baldwin writes that it isn't wickedness in people that allows this demoralizing of part of the population based solely on skin color but it is spinelessness. The unwillingness of those who don't harbor the delusion that Black men and women are less than White men and women need to but more often than not don't speak out and intervene, work towards change. He gives an example of a time he and a couple of other Black men in their upper 30's he was traveling with ordered a drink at the bar in O'Hare and were refused service because they looked too young. The exchange was loud enough for those around them to hear. The manager made the excuse for his bartender that he was new and had not yet learned to tell by looking between a Black "boy" in his 20's and a Black "boy" nearing 40. Not one person in the bar spoke up for them.

I say to you, without knowing the color of your skin because it is irrelevant to my saying this, you should get your hands on a copy of this and more of Baldwin's writing. It needs to be read.

(Finished July 30, 2017)

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