FREE ESSAY ON THE FIRE NEXT TIME

THE FIRE NEXT TIME

Breading
Hate
Opher Yunger
Enc 1102
...turning to that man on his right, he began to speak of the white devils...What had
they made him (me) feel?...Elijah went on about the crimes of white people, to this
endless chorus of 'Yes, that's right.'
The so-called American Negro is the only reason Allah has permitted the United States to
endure so long; the white man's time was up in 1913, but it is the will of Allah that
this lost black nation...be redeemed from their white masters and returned to the true
faith, which is Islam. (Baldwin 65-6)
This is a quote from James Baldwins' The Fire Next Time written in 1962, twenty years
after Hitlers Third Reich reigned over much of modern day Europe. In the late 1930's Many
of Hitlers speeches sounded very close to this one, and most of Europe blindly followed
after him. The world may never be the same since the Holocaust, but it is things like
this that make me wonder. Did the world really learn from the past?
Baldwin's The Fire Next Time discusses progress. Did the human race really make progress
after World War Two? In the pre World War Two era, Germany was one of the most advanced
nations in the modern world, yet they also led Europe in the horrible murder of twelve
million men, women and children. How could a man like Elijah Mohammed, who was considered
a very spiritual man, take aim at the white people and call them devils saying that the
black man needs to reclaim the world. Did he not see how twenty years before hand the
reckless words of hatred from a single man condemned twelve million men, women and
children to death? 
"I began to see that Elijah's power came from his single-mindedness" (Baldwin 66). Elijah
Mohammed thought, in the 1960's, exactly like Hitler. He thought that the black race was
better than any other race in the world. This is an understandable thought, his nation
was being oppressed and put down because of the color of their skin. Who is to say that
if anyone else was in that situation, he or she would not also want to destroy the people
who were oppressing them. But Elijah Mohammed was hiding behind g-d saying that this is
what the Koran says. It happens way too many times, that g-d is brought into the picture.
Does g-d really want people of a certain race to rule the world?
Today in the twentieth century people are still murdering innocent people and standing
behind g-d. Almost weekly we hear about a terrorist attack in the middle east, many of
which are funded by religious extremists. It is easy for a leader to use g-d when they
are speaking to many people who feel they are oppressed and have no where else to turn. A
person who feels he has nothing to lose will do almost anything he is told. 
If the African American people had followed Elijah Mohammed who knows what could have
happened. The American people could have repeated a Holocaust right in their own country.
Many people say a Holocaust could never happen again. It's things like this that can make
people think twice.
Bibliography
Baldwin, James. The Fire Next Time.
New York: Vintage, 1993.