The Fire Next Time, By James Baldwin

Words: 499
Pages: 2

Title
In the passage taken from The Fire Next Time, author James Baldwin wrote a plea that urged all Americans to reconsider the current state of their country in order to end the racial nightmare that plagued the United States. Within the text, Baldwin calls attention to the social and racial injustices he witnesses on a daily basis within the United States of America. Baldwin brings into light the harsh reality that black people may in fact know more about white people than white people know about themselves, and that over time, white Americans have become victims to their own brainwashing. I will argue the points that Baldwin makes within his novel using similar instances from an episode of the well-known television series, “The Twilight Zone”, in which a former SS captain returns to the concentration camp he once ruled, only to find himself put on trial by those who died at his command.
…show more content…
The author mentions that many white Americans are afraid of losing their dominance, and subsequently are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives, all while using their feelings of authority to prevent themselves from facing the consequences of their own wrongdoing. This is demonstrated in the episode of The Twilight Zone when the ill-boding former captain hopes that “sanity would be restored over time”, as he does not understand why people are unwilling to forget the “little” mistakes of time. Baldwin argues that only once whites face the truth and learn about themselves, both races gain