How James Baldwin Explains Individual Consciousness That Leads to Social Change

In “The Fire Next Time,” The great Civil Right’s speaker, James Baldwin espouses consciousness as a form of true self knowledge and acceptance that can become a vehicle for social change as it spreads from the individual, into the larger spheres of family, city and state.  James Miller explains, in his article” Integration, Transformation and Redemption of America: ‘The Fire Next Time’ and ‘A Letter from Birmingham Jail,'” that “love” signifies “a form of recognition … a state of grace… which describes how the individual is transformed by the presence of God”.  Miller then goes on to explain Baldwin’s extension of that idea to his definition of consciousness;  “In this case consciousness stands for God: love acts like God to enact such a transformation” (258-9).  Baldwin posits that, before social change can occur, individuals must first achieve consciousness by removing “the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within” (95).

Further, he argues that these masks prevent recognition of individual responsibility.  An individual must reach “fruitful communion with the depths of his own being” (Baldwin 97), before he can reach out to others.  In order to change the social construct that allows racism, “we” must all, black and white, dare to change our responses to our fears and longings.  According to Baldwin, the healing of black America requires that the black community reach out and help white America achieve healing from its past.  Black America can only free itself from oppression through forgiveness, healing and acceptance of white America’s past repression and violence.  Then together healed blacks and whites, working together, can affect change that heals America. 

After confronting their own fears and confusion, “relatively conscious whites and relatively conscious blacks … must like lovers, insist on, or create, the consciousness of others” (105), thereby moving America closer to one shared American history capable of rising above differences and changing the history of the world.

Works  Cited

Baldwin, James. The Fire Next Time. First Vintage International ed. New York: Random House, 1993.

Miller, James. “Integration, Transformation and the Redemption of America: The Fire Next Time and A Letter from Birmingham Jail. European Journal of American Culture 28.3 (2009): 245-62. Academic Search Complete. EBSCOhost. U. of Mary Washington Lib., Fredericksburg, VA. Web. 11 Mar. 2010. <http://search.epnet.com>