The Fire Next Time

After reading the rest of The Fire Next Time, it was clear to me that a lot of the points we have brought up in class discussion before were brought up in this book. Before I get into that, I want to mention that this, for me, was a very hard book to read. It made me uncomfortable, but uncomfortable in the way that it made me step back and look at my life. I am white and I am a Christian. So reading this made me really examine and ask questions about my faith. Which for me, coming from a pretty religious upbringing, was difficult to do. Reading about Baldwin's experiences with the Christian church and the morally wrong things they did was a big eye-opener for me. Baldwin explains, "I don't refer to the glaring fact that the minister eventually acquires houses and Cadillacs while the faithful continue to scrub floors and drop their dimes and quarters and dollars into the plate. I really mean that there was no love in the church. It was a mask for hatred and self-hatred and despair" (pg. 39). These few lines were especially hard to digest because it goes against everything I was taught in my upbringing. Moving on from that, it is clear that Coates was influenced by Baldwin while writing Between the Wold and Me.  Baldwin talks about how he saw boys and girls from his area being "lost to the streets" and this relates to when Coates talks about kids being lost to the streets because of drugs, alcohol, etc. Baldwin also talks about how African American hold no power or respect in relationship to whites and I believe that is what Coates means when he says that African Americans don't have "control of their bodies". Lastly, Baldwin says, "It was another fear, a fear that the child, in challenging the white world's assumptions, was putting himself in the path of destruction" (pg. 27). Coates and Baldwin both talk about the fear of trying to protect children from the prejudices and injustices of the world. These children are still young and might not understand it yet, but they try and warn them so they know how to protect themselves when the time comes.

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