This Is the Fire: What I Say to My Friends About Racism

In This Is the Fire, cancel culture refers to situations in which a company removes a creative work from circulation because it, or the views of its creators, is no longer acceptable by today’s social standards. For example, HBO briefly removed Gone with the Wind from its streaming platform because it glamorizes the antebellum South and features stereotypes of happy Black slaves. Lemon thinks that a more effective approach is to provide context to now-problematic works of American culture rather than to pretend that the issues they illustrate never existed. Conservative media likes to highlight the dangers of cancel culture for American values. Cancel culture can also refer to people who suffer financial or reputation loss because of their comments on social media.

COVID-19 is the shortened term for coronavirus strain SARS CoV 2, which scientists first identified in China’s Wuhan province in 2019 before it escalated into a global pandemic in 2020. In most people, the respiratory disease triggers flu-like symptoms, confusion, and loss of taste and smell. However, some experience severe breathing issues that lead to long-term health problems or death. The novel (meaning new), untreatable disease led to hospital overflows, so most countries enforced lockdowns that restricted travel and placed restrictions on businesses. Many citizens were required to work from home, avoid public gatherings, and wear masks in public spaces. The US COVID death rate surpassed 600,000 by June 2021, but the true death toll could be higher due to inconsistent reporting methods (Neuman, Scott. “The U.S. Has Hit 600,000 COVID Deaths, More Than Any Other Country.” NPR, 15 June 2021,  https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/06/15/1006186695/the-u-s-has-hit-600-000-covid-deaths-more-than-any-other-country. Accessed 23 July 2021).

As scientific knowledge of the virus advances each day, Lemon focuses instead on the political ramifications. People of color suffered disproportionately from the virus since many have low-wage essential jobs that they cannot do from home and have poor medical benefits. Despite Bob Woodward’s interview with Trump that proved he understood the severity of the virus, Trump downplayed its dangers to protect the economy and feuded with Democratic governors over restrictions.

A popular rallying cry during the 2020 protests, “Defund the Police” is based on a belief that police departments are so resistant to reform—and have so many legal protections against accountability—that a better solution is to redirect funding to other social services or abolish the police altogether. Lemon notes that police departments originated in slave patrols and discriminatory groups and that the phrase “law and order” often means enforcing the status quo. He agrees that cities should reallocate bloated budgets toward specialized units because modern police departments have too many responsibilities, which overburden their officers. However, he warns that the phrase oversimplifies a complex problem and, moreover, invites opponents to paint police reform as dangerous, as in Trump’s 911 campaign ad.

A formative voice for the Civil Rights Movement, James Baldwin (1924-1987) was a pioneer in African American and LBGTQ literature. Through his essays, plays, short stories, and novels, Baldwin spoke of the struggle of growing up Black in a White society. Lemon, a winner of the Native Son Award for LGBTQ people of color, notes that “it was shocking how well” the author knew him (20). This Is the Fire alludes—both directly and in structure—to Baldwin’s seminal essay collection The Fire Next Time (1963). Both begin with a personal letter to the author’s nephew on an historic occasion: Baldwin during the centennial of emancipation and Lemon after the murder of George Floyd. Lemon interprets 2020’s challenges as either the fire that could move America toward racial healing or a missed opportunity that will lead to a greater backlash. Like Baldwin, Lemon believes in the possibility of conciliation and positions his work to connect with a multiracial audience (“James Baldwin Biography.” American Masters, 29 November 2006, https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/james-baldwin-about-the-author/59/. Accessed 23 July 2021).

The German Coast Uprising of 1811 was the largest slave uprising in American history. Inspired by revolutions in France and Haiti, Charles Deslondes established a secret communications network to coordinate enslaved people across multiple plantations to establish an autonomous society near New Orleans. With his allies Kook and Quamana, Deslondes built a force in the hundreds that burned several plantation buildings and killed two White people. However, local militias crushed the uprising, mutilated and burned Deslondes alive, and placed as many as 100 decapitated heads on pikes as a warning. Lemon explains how idealized stories of the antebellum South mask the barbarity required to enforce slavery.

This 1939 film is an adaptation of a romance novel set in the antebellum South. Starring Clark Gable, the film was directed by Victor Fleming and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The story centers on the daughter of a cotton plantation owner who struggles between a childhood crush she cannot marry and a bold Confederate soldier. Meanwhile, the plantation falls to ruin in the wake of family tragedies, the Civil War’s destruction, and Reconstruction-era taxation. Although it is one of the most acclaimed movies of all time, it is also one that, alongside The Birth of a Nation, condones slavery and perpetuates the Lost Cause myth of the American South. The controversy re-ignited in recent years when HBO decided to include a new prologue that explores the historical injustices of both the movie and the filmmaking process.

This term refers to an interpretation of American history that frames the Civil War as a states’ rights matter rather than the South’s desire to maintain and expand slavery. In addition, this perspective downplays the cruel treatment of enslaved peoples and often depicts them as happy and content. Society advances the Lost Cause mythology not only through classrooms but also through statues of Confederate leaders; stories that directly uphold its perspective, like The Birth of the Nation and Gone with the Wind; and iconography that venerates its rebel spirit, like The Dukes of Hazzard’s General Lee.

This is a rallying cry for Black Lives Matter protests in which activists shout the name of the victims of police violence while marching. The purpose is to emphasize that the victim is not a statistic or a criminal but a person with a family and a life. During a difficult interview, the brother of a victim asks Lemon to say his brother’s name, which Lemon does not because he feels the brother is acting out as part of the grieving process. Lemon believes that it’s important for loved ones to share what a victim was like in life because celebrating who a person was in life draws more empathy and attention than just focusing on the manner of their death.

Redlining refers to real estate practices that discriminate against Black Americans by denying them loans and forcing them into low-quality, poor neighborhoods. Its name derives from how real estate agents would use red ink to separate these lands. The summer community of Azurest, the majority of which is Black, formed when a Black woman, Maude Terry, acquired unwanted beachside land and built a mortgage system to circumvent establishment systems.

This term is slang for riding alone in the back seat of a car, as if in a police car after an arrest. Lemon’s family used the term jokingly since before Lemon was old enough to understand it, and Lemon notes that Leisa’s passing left him riding alone in the back seat. In addition, the term exemplifies how the threat of imprisonment is normalized in Black life.

Systemic racism refers to an understanding that racism is present not only in obvious forms like the Ku Klux Klan but also within every aspect of society. Examples include housing policies that force people of color into poor neighborhoods, schools that place limitations on Black achievement, and aggressive policing that is quick to kill Black men in knee-jerk situations but arrest White mass shooters without incident. The story of the White woman who falsely calls the police on a Black man for telling her to put her dog on a leash exemplifies this dynamic: The White woman claims that she isn’t racist, but she knows that the police will likely believe her over her accuser.