Anti–Black racism in James Baldwin's The fire next time (1963) and Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the world and me (2015)

Abstract

The present paper examines James Baldwin's The fire next time and Ta- Nehisi Coates' Between the world and me in the contexts of the Civil Right Movement and Black Lives Matters to glean insight into how racial ideologies and racism in America shifted from a "traditional" to a "new" form that is more implicit. In fact, unlike the 60s, the post-civil right era witnesses a less tangible and a more covert form of racism sustained by ideologies of denial. Within this framework, this study looks into the racial context and the political, economic, and social conditions that followed the civil right movement by relying on Colour-blind Ideology. The analysis of Baldwin's The Fire Next Time and Coates' Between the World and Me reveals that both essayists perceive that contemporary anti-black violence African Americans suffers from is structural and institutionalized in the service of perpetuating white power and privilege