THE SUNDAY REVIEW | THE FIRE NEXT TIME – JAMES BALDWIN

This book is tiny. Standing at just 89 pages, it can easily be read in a single day – if not a single sitting. But don’t let that fool you. This is likely going to be one of the most impactful, important books you’ve ever read in your life.

I, much to my shame, have never finished a Baldwin book before this one. I decided to start with the book that has sparked work by the likes of Jesmyn Ward and Ta-Nehisi Coates, because not only is it a classic work of writing, but a classic work of social and racial commentary. It is, therefore, an excellent starting point – whether you’re looking for a way into Baldwin, or a way into this area of conversation and learning.

I ended up listening to this as an audiobook, but then kicking myself for doing so because it meant I couldn’t highlight passages as I read. I then pulled out my physical copy and immediately began re-reading to find those passages that had made me stop what I was doing, play it back and listen again. Here are some of the passages that most affected me:

Talking about his brother:

But no one’s hand can wipe away those tears he sheds invisibly today, which one hears in his laughter and in his speech and in his songs. I know what the world has done to my brother and how narrowly he has survived it. And I know, which is much worse, and this is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen, and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it. […] But it is not permissable that the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime. – p. 14

This passage struck a chord with me. One of the things I have struggled with in my own understanding of race and my place in it is that in the end it does not matter that I am not personally responsible for the origins of racism or history of slavery. It doesn’t matter because, whether I would have chosen it or not, I benefit from the racial inheritance of my skin colour and the privilege it has afforded me every day of my life, often in ways of which I am unaware. So I bear responsibility for racism because, whether I like it or not, I am complicit in it. Professing my innocence as if that negates my racial privilege is to say that the opposite holds true for Black people – that they are in some way personally responsible for their racial inheritance, the oppression that comes with it, and the erroneous assumptions that are made because of it. Therefore it seems to me that doing so is an insult and a sign of deep disrespect and ignorance.

On relating to White people:

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. […] And if the word integration means anything, this is what it means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it. – pg. 17

I think this passage encapsulates the kneejerk anger often experienced by White people who are being confronted about their privilege. That self-righteous proclamation: “Well I’m not a racist, I have Black friends, so there’s no need to explain this to me” tone and the closing of productive channels of communication on the issue that accompanies it. It’s hard to feel that you are a good person, and yet you are being told that you are part of an oppressive system, and you are part of the group doing the oppressing. It causes an immediate crisis of identity, and it is scary. But it’s important to inspect this anger and subsequent emotional crisis, because underneath it is the realization and recognition of an uncomfortable truth: that yes, we are part of this oppression. And the effort to sit in that discomfort, to interrogate it and begin to assimilate it into our perception of ourselves and learn to see how it has played out on the stage of our lives is such a vital step in beginning to see how racism exists all around us. It doesn’t make us bad people. But it does mean that we all need to at the very least start to see the world as it is, not as we are comfortable perceiving it.

On living under White oppression:

And there seemed to be no way whatever to remove this cloud that stood between them and the sun, between them and love and life and power, between them and whatever it was that they wanted. One did not have to be very bright to realize how little one could do to change one’s situation; one did not have to be abnormally sensitive to be worn down to a cutting edge by the incessant and gratuitous humiliation and danger one encountered every working day, all day long. – pg. 26

I find it amazing that so many Black people learn to live with the limits racist systems have placed on their lives without becoming angry through and through. I don’t think I could see people who looked like me oppressed, insulted, belittled, beaten and systemically excluded day after day simply because they looked like me and not become a very angry person. Anger is, in my opinion, justified. It’s not necessarily productive, but it is justified. The line “worn down to a cutting edge” is what really struck me about this passage. The imagery of that. The knife point of a person who has been so worn down by the system they must inhabit, and the danger that represents for all involved.

These are only a few of the passages that affected me – there are many, many more. Nearly every page in this book presents something important that requires attentive and careful consideration. For such a short book, it manages to provide more food for thought than many much longer books. There’s a reason it is a classic work of social commentary, and a reason why, in today’s world, we need to return to it. The world hasn’t changed anywhere near as much as we like to think. In some ways it has gotten even worse. The struggles presented here are the struggles being lived by Black people throughout the world, and particularly in North America. It is, therefore, a necessary book to read now, or to re-read if you’ve already read it. I cannot overstate its importance or its impact.

A national bestseller when it first appeared in 1963, The Fire Next Time galvanized the nation and gave passionate voice to the emerging civil rights movement. At once a powerful evocation of James Baldwin’s early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice, the book is an intensely personal and provocative document. It consists of two “letters,” written on the occasion of the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, that exhort Americans, both black and white, to attack the terrible legacy of racism. The Fire Next Time stands as a classic of our literature. – Goodreads

Book Title: The Fire Next Time
Author: James Baldwin
Series: No
Edition: Paperback/Audiobook
Published By: Penguin Classics/Audible
Released: January 25, 1990 (first published January 31, 1963)
Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir, Social Commentary, Race, Classic
Pages: 89
Date Read: August 5, 2020
Rating: 10/10
Average Goodreads Rating: 4.50/5 (54,938 ratings)