“No one is more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe that they are free” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay The history of the United States from the point of view of the "American Negro," to use the now outdated literary term, is both dark and cruel. A country of intolerance and racial hostility is, in the literary notions of James Baldwin, unhealthy for both the oppressor and the oppressed. In his nonfiction argument The Fire Next Time, among other works, Baldwin, enraged by the current racial impasse in the mid-20th century United States, explores the psychological impact of institutionalized racism and segregation in relation to American identity. “The Problem” was as much an identity crisis for America as it was an entirely American problem, forcing the nation to reflect not only on its history as a slave economy, but also on its founding principles of equality and freedom. In The Fire Next Time, Baldwin argues that the dominant American norm, which had dictated the country for hundreds of years, was in need of desperate reformation of character, morality, and justice if the country was to be preserved. national order and stability throughout racial integration: "I am far from convinced that it was worth being freed from the African sorcerer if I am now...expected to become dependent on the American psychiatrist." .. White people cannot... be taken as models of life. On the contrary, the white man himself is in dire need of new norms, which will free him from his confusion and place him…in fruitful communion with the depths of his own being” (sections 95-96). The predominant American standard of the time was threatened by a people who, for several hundred years, were disenfranchised and enslaved for no other reason than the color of their skin. America was facing an identity crisis, as Baldwin alludes to, as American norms themselves were under attack by black power and black people's desire for freedom, forcing white Americans to question not only themselves and on their own conditions, but also on those they inflicted on black Americans. and the universal human suffering endured by every race. Furthermore, Baldwin attributes America's identity crisis to its reluctance to view itself as a "mixed" and incredibly diverse nation. “…White Americans assumed that “Europe” and “civilization” were synonyms – which they are not – and distrusted other norms and other sources of vitality, especially those produced in America itself, and tried to behave in all areas as if what was to the East for Europe was also to the East” (articles 92-93). America, Baldwin argues, aspired to Eurocentric norms; unable to both realize and accept their own cultural and racial diversity. However, as the various civil rights and Black Power movements gained strength, Baldwin recognized the rapid transformation of the identity of the United States as black people became increasingly integrated into the cultural sphere, political and economic of Central America, which was moving further and further away from that of Western Europe. homogeneous racial plateau, stating that "what happens is that if we, who can hardly be considered a white nation, persist in regarding ourselves as one, we condemn ourselves, along with truly white nations, to sterility and to decadence” (section 93). Overall, as black Americans became more active.