Avoiding the Fire Next Time

That is the conclusion of James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, published in 1963, which you will note is not only nearly 60 years ago, but before I and many (most?) of the readers of these ruminations were born. There are two things which are immediately striking when reading James Baldwin. First, he was an incredible prose stylist; it is impossible to read him and not be impressed with the way the words seem so viscerally alive. The second thing which is immediately striking is that the world is a lot different than it was in 1963. It is hard to see how anyone could read Baldwin and think that nothing has changed.

The disturbing part of this particular essay shows up when you step back and ask whether we have avoided the fire next time. Consider this passage, quoted at length because, well, it is a bit troublesome that Baldwin was so prophetic.

In any case, during a recent Muslim rally, George Lincoln Rockwell, the chief of the American Nazi party, made a point of contributing about twenty dollars to the cause, and he and Malcolm X decided that, racially speaking, anyway, they were in complete agreement. The glorification of one race and the consequent debasement of another—or others—always has been and always will be a recipe for murder. There is no way around this. If one is permitted to treat any group of people with special disfavor because of their race or the color of their skin, there is no limit to what one will force them to endure, and, since the entire race has been mysteriously indicted, no reason not to attempt to destroy it root and branch. This is precisely what the Nazis attempted. Their only originality lay in the means they used. It is scarcely worthwhile to attempt remembering how many times the sun has looked down on the slaughter of the innocents. I am very much concerned that American Negroes achieve their freedom here in the United States. But I am also concerned for their dignity, for the health of their souls, and must oppose any attempt that Negroes may make to do to others what has been done to them. I think I know—we see it around us every day—the spiritual wasteland to which that road leads. It is so simple a fact and one that is so hard, apparently, to grasp: Whoever debases others is debasing himself.

Can we all agree about that? Is there anything controversial in that statement? Does it make any difference which group is debasing another group? Can we agree that it is wrong to “treat any group of people with special disfavor because of their race or the color of their skin” no matter which racial group we select? Is it OK to agree with Baldwin that George Lincoln Rockwell and Malcolm X are both wrong?

How do we avoid the fire next time? Baldwin points the way to the solution as he explains why he left the Christian church in which he was raised:

But I had been in the pulpit too long and I had seen too many monstrous things. I don’t refer merely 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. The transfiguring power of the Holy Ghost ended when the service ended, and salvation stopped at the church door. When we were told to love everybody, I had thought that that meant everybody. But no. It applied only to those who believed as we did, and it did not apply to white people at all. I was told by a minister, for example, that I should never, on any public conveyance, under any circumstances, rise and give my seat to a white woman. White men never rose for Negro women. Well, that was true enough, in the main—I saw his point. But what was the point, the purpose, of my salvation if it did not permit me to behave with love toward others, no matter how they behaved toward me? What others did was their responsibility, for which they would answer when the judgment trumpet sounded. But what I did was my responsibility, and I would have to answer, too…

It no longer sounds sophisticated to say this in elite society; it is a quick means of getting yourself labeled as an ignorant rube (or worse); it will not be viewed as a positive contribution to the discussion, but, even still, isn’t the real solution to our societal ills, isn’t the thing we want every child to learn, isn’t the message which we should be proclaiming a every opportunity simply this:

Love your neighbor as yourself

If people did that, if people faltering and incompletely, but genuinely and earnestly, did that, if people set out in every interaction to show love, exactly which problems remain? If you see an injustice and your first response was simply to note that the person committing the injustice is not showing love to the person who is being treated unjustly, if whether we are showing love is the first question we ask about ourselves, if that is the bedrock principle on which we build, what else would we need?

Baldwin hits the nail right on the head in the middle of his “A Talk to Teachers”:

My ancestors and I were very well trained. We understood very clearly that this was not a Christian nation. It didn’t matter what you said or how often you went to church. My father and my mother and my grandfather and my grandmother knew that Christians didn’t act this way. It was as simple as that.

Indeed, it is as simple as that.

In our collective rush to throw more fuel onto the fire next time, perhaps it is worth pausing and asking: are we showing love right now? Or even better: Am I showing love right now? “But what was the point, the purpose, of my salvation if it did not permit me to behave with love toward others, no matter how they behaved toward me? What others did was their responsibility, for which they would answer when the judgment trumpet sounded. But what I did was my responsibility, and I would have to answer, too…”

That’s it. Nothing more to be said. That’s the blog post. That’s the admonition. Love your neighbor as yourself.