What Is Baldwin's Injustice In 'Down At The Cross'?

James Baldwin’s focus in A Fire Next Time is the condition of black life in America upon the approach of the centennial of emancipation. Social justice is the central concern of these letters as Baldwin presents the injustices plaguing black communities and the consequences of this injustice. Baldwin addresses the reality of national strife threatening the entirety of America, the result of the nightmare life for black Americans. In “Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region in my Mind,” Baldwin offers a thoughtful meditation on the consequences and horrors of racial injustice as a warning to the country to mend this national strife and prevent the impending storm of fire that while encompass all of America unless both the blacks and whites

accept the reality that they are reliant on one another as Americans.
Baldwin begins his letter dwelling on the shocking living conditions of the black Americans.

The blacks lived under the constant oppression from “the white man,” leading a life surrounded with incessant racism and humiliation (Baldwin 19). The extent of the pain endured by American blacks was so extreme that Baldwin states “there is almost no language” with which to describe their experiences (69). Such a life, such unsolicited brutality at the hands of white men enkindled in the hearts of blacks a profound hatred for the whites that was only intensified by the teaching of Elijah Muhammed. Baldwin acknowledges these common sentiments among the black communities of America, those searching to create a solely black country separate from white America, as a potential route and future for the American country, a widely-accepted solution among the blacks to the social injustices posed by rampant racism

(71).
The solution posed by Elijah Muhammed is one that Baldwin admits holds appeal, but ultimately is one that Baldwin views as a fanciful wish rather than a realistic solution. In the conclusion of A Fire Next Time, Baldwin poses the only legitimate and realistic solution to social injustice, stating that the “American future is precisely as bright or as dark” as the future of black Americans (Baldwin 94). The key to America’s future is in the blacks; the only way in which America’s current state will be positively transformed rests in the “unconditional freedom of the Negro” (94). Acceptance of reality is the only method that Baldwin foresees in accomplishing this seemingly impossible feat. Baldwin states the tyranny of whites is created by their need to believe that they are superior to blacks, and their cruelty is so incessant as to quell this truth (95). Baldwin encourages blacks to realize that Elijah Muhammed’s path is impossible and to take the first step towards harmony by loving the whites, as he informs his fellow blacks that “the black and white, deeply need each other here if we are really to become a nation-if we are really, that is, to achieve our identity” (97). Baldwin believes that blacks are the key to curing America’ national strife and he urges the blacks to be the first to accept reality in order that they may open the eyes of the whites to the truth.
Baldwin’s focus on the role of accepting reality is important and interesting.

The whites were living blinded by their anxiety and unwilling to accept the horrors of their racism, causing them to only heap more abuse and brutality upon the blacks in order to convince themselves of their own superiority. The blacks were so oppressed by the whites, so lost in the world in which they faced constant harsh treatment from those that held the power in America that they lost sight of their importance and contribution to America and simply fell into a life of “sharing a jug of wine or a bottle of whiskey, talking, cursing, fighting,” a life devoid of recognizing that America needed them and all black Americans. By drawing the issue of social injustice to this inability to accept reality out of fear, Baldwin places the continuance of racial injustice and the subsequent consequences on all those that refuse to accept that “everything now, we must assume, is in our hands,” those who fail to accept their social responsibility (Baldwin

105).