James Baldwin's influence remains strong on intellectuals today. In particular, the journalist and author Ta-Nehisi Coates has taken direct influence from Baldwin's The Fire Next Time. Coates began his career as a writer for The Atlantic, where he focused on cultural and political issues, particularly those affecting African Americans. His first book was The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood. This memoir represented his first foray into writing about his own experience as a black man in America. However, it was his second book, Between the World and Me (released in 2015) that won him great acclaim. He went on to win a "genius grant" from the MacArthur Foundation and has since written the "Black Panther" series for Marvel Comics. Today, Ta-Nehisi Coates is lauded as a prominent black intellectual, and writers as acclaimed as Toni Morrison have spoken of him as an intellectual successor to James Baldwin. Coates acknowledges the parallels between himself and Baldwin, whom he admires. In fact, the title Between the World and Me is drawn from a quote in Baldwin's second essay, "Down at the Cross," in which he describes the feeling of a wall existing between himself and the white world around him.
There are obvious structural similarities between Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time and Coates’ Between the World and Me. First of all, they are both written as letters to young black boys. Coates’ book is much longer, however, and is addressed to his son as opposed to a nephew. Like Baldwin’s letter, it addresses the question of how this young boy should approach his life in a country that regards him as inferior to white people. It also laments the limitations placed on black people in America, and the ways in which white people fail to see their complicity in this oppressive system. However, despite these similarities between Baldwin and Coates' two texts, it is important to note the main difference in their central messages. Coates' Between the World and Me does not emphasize the importance of using love to triumph over racial hatred, in the way that Baldwin's letter to his nephew does. Instead, Coates' central argument is a warning that white supremacy is a reality African Americans must learn to face and struggle against. Where Baldwin is optimistic and believes in a brighter and more loving future, Coates does not believe that the reality of structural oppression is likely to change. Reviews of Coates’ work have noted that there is a significant difference in the two authors’ styles. While Baldwin “exults in luxurious, labyrinthine punctuation,” Coates’ “lines are cleaner, simpler, gliding on the speed of graceful modifiers and sublime analogies” (Dyson). Coates has, of course, adapted Baldwin’s subject for our modern time. Whereas Baldwin discusses the Christian church, the Nation of Islam Movement, and crime in Harlem, Coates talks about police brutality, schooling districts, and more subtle forms of racism that remain pervasive today.
Comparisons between Coates and Baldwin have raised some controversy. Some people have claimed that Coates should not be compared to Baldwin because he is not an activist, in the way that Baldwin was. Others argue that this is unfair, as Baldwin was also critiqued in his time for not being enough of an activist in his political moment. It is true, however, that Baldwin does approach his subject matter differently. He explores themes of individual responsibility, and focuses on the ways in which racism is not only destructive for African Americans, but is also a dehumanizing force for America as a whole. Coates, on the other hand, focuses more on the systematic nature of racism today. He explores how so much of white superiority has been institutionalized in ways that we are not even aware of anymore. For example, police brutality has been so systematized that all black people know to expect it, but few white people understand it as an urgent issue.
Some critics have argued that the differences between Coates and Baldwin are deep enough that they do not justify any meaningful comparison between the two authors. In an article for New York Magazine, Vinson Cunningham refers to Coates as the “rapper” and Baldwin as the “preacher.” By this, he means that Baldwin constructs his sentences very carefully, with an almost legalistic bent to the ways in which he ties his clauses together, but also infuses his writing with deep passion and appeals to his audience’s emotions. Notably, Coates is an atheist, who does not employ the same preacher-like tone in his writing. He writes more poetically, almost as though he is constructing song lyrics. Cunningham notes that one of Coates’ important influences was the Black Arts movement of the 1960s and ‘70s, which explains this difference in his style. While Baldwin is argumentative and persuasive, Coates is more lyrical. For some critics, Coates is problematically negative in his approach to the topic. They argue that his bleak outlook does not do justice to Baldwin’s more optimistic legacy.
Undeniably, Baldwin has provided an important foundation for current writing about race and racism in America. His optimism and fervent belief in the power of love to change the world for the better continues to provide a positive platform from which to approach dialogues about race today. Crucially, he discusses democracy as something that must be worked toward, as opposed to a given, and must be built through a mutual understanding of how race and religion can have political consequences, as well. He emphasizes the evolving nature of democracy, which continues to give readers a framework for understanding how change can be effected in the country today.
