From the story “The Fire Next Time” Baldwin explains his ideology on the fact that white people are basically crazy in a sense. This book is a story by James Baldwin, in the reading is two stories. Together these two stories begin to digest inequality in America and religion, and the way different races think. Baldwin had many views that were specifically toward white people and how they have been raised privileged and thinking life has always been “sunshine and rainbows”.
Baldwin thoroughly explains how white Americans think the lineage they come from was full of “good” and “wholesome” people, when in fact it wasn’t. He says that while white people thought this black people never had that idea, considering we know our ancestors lived through slavery. He explains to the reader how white people seem to think they know so much about black people and understand our life and the hardships that come with being black when of course they don’t. He compares their knowledge of this to a parent that thinks they know so much about their child, when in fact most parents don’t know the half of it. The thought, to my understanding is that white people understand black peoples struggle (to their knowledge) yet they still pity them. These white people look down on black people and make themselves feel better by doing so. They don’t do this on purpose, they think they understand, but they don’t. One would never understand how it feels to be a different race unless they became that race. Baldwin goes on to call white people “slightly mad victims of their own brainwashing”. This is a cycle that white people go on to tell their kids because they believe it, and the cycle just never ends. Baldwin only feels this way on white people’s behalf, but he also thinks that for black people to gain power that will last, they must learn to accept and “love” white people. Baldwin gets into the limitations of narrow-minded thinking when he discusses the lies and “myths” that white people have been believing about their ancestors. This doesn’t help them as a race it only makes them seem ignorant to other races.
The ideas have also made it hard for white and black people to co-exist in a way that’s helps both races grow and work together. The “negro problem” will forever be a problem, unless each race works together for that one common good, to rid of it.