The Fire Next Time

James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time explores the struggle of Baldwin - and many black youths, for that matter - to grapple with his identity and the predetermination of it. He writes at several points about the “fate” laid out for black people - that they are awarded no choice or true free will within their lives but instead must play out a predestined fantasy, in which the black body is cursed and doomed to fit into certain submissive, broken roles. He clarifies that “this had nothing to do with anything” that he “was, or contained, or could become” but rather a matter that had been sealed long ago. Baldwin laments the Christian church’s role in upholding this assumption of destiny. Falling into the role of a Christian black man feels just as much like a “gimmick” to Baldwin as falling into the role of drug-dealer or thug or pimp; there is no agency in his path.He expresses his disappointment in being brought up to believe that God is white and therefore caters to a white audience; in a world that makes “no room” for African Americans, even divine love seems to be conditional and discriminatory. This idea of “no room” comes up more than once; as Baldwin is talking with Elijah Muhammed, he agrees with his point that “the American Negro” is the only one left “who remains trapped, disinherited, and despised.” African Americans are a “people from whom everything has been taken away, including, most crucially, their sense of their own worth.” To be so disenfranchised and disillusioned in a world of white hypocrisy is to “have nothing to lose” - a thought both daunting and empowering, and one that lives at the heart of the Nation of Islam. Though Baldwin admits that the Christian church excites him, the Anglo-saturation of the institution deeply distresses him, especially when explicitly compared to the black-empowering nature of the Nation of Islam.