In the book, The Fire Next Time James Baldwin, the author and narrator of the book, writes about his childhood growing up in Harlem and what he witnessed and learned as he grew up. When Baldwin was fourteen he saw Harlem in a completely different way. He saw that the terrible influence of the streets was slowly trying to creep in and overwhelm him. The people around him helped him with these influences, like his father who told him that he was following that path too, just like his friends. The only people who blocked these influences were the good people who went to church and the girls who saw the influence of the streets and wanted to be God's bait by saving the souls of boys through marriage. The influence of the streets is one of the ways it could have shaped Baldwin's identity. It could have made the situation worse if he had completely succumbed to it. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay James Baldwin wants to discover whether shaping and defending our identities is more real to us than realizing our humanity. James Baldwin's idea of ​​humanity was that it was necessary to accept others and truly love them as individuals. Our identities are one of the most important things a human being can have and relate to in some aspects. It gives us a position in the world we live in and helps us in our social life. You can immediately relate to a person who has the same identity as you, for example if they are the same race as you, this gives you a certain sense of understanding of the person and you can guess what they have experienced in life. Our identities mostly tell us who we are as people in relation to others, but the only problem is that our identities are sometimes shaped not by us but by other people. James Baldwin describes in the book how African Americans' identities were shaped not by them but by whites or "white liberals" in the United States. The most obvious way that whites shaped the identity of African Americans is when they took their surname and gave them their surname instead, for example Baldwin was probably the slave owner surname for James Baldwin's ancestors. For most African Americans, their last name does not say who they are or where they come from. It only tells them that during a dark time among their ancestors they were possessed like an object and not treated like human beings. From this understanding of African American identity I can understand why Elijah Muhammad changed his last name and founded the Nation of Islam. movement. Elijah wanted to return to the roots of his ancestors and not become Christian because the Africans believed in Islam before being captured and taken to the colonies. Elijah Muhammad wanted to shape his own identity instead of maintaining the one given to him by white men. Unfortunately for Elijah, this new identity made him lose part of his humanity. The new ideology he has for the Nation of Islam leaves no room for any love for white men because they can only surrender to them. “But the cops were doing nothing now. Obviously, this was not because they had become more human, but because they obeyed orders and were afraid. And indeed they were, and I was happy to see it. There they stood, in twos and threes and fours, in their Cub Scout uniforms and with their Cub Scout faces, totally unprepared, as is typical of American men, for anything that couldn't be solved with a club or a fist or a gun. I might have pitied them if I had not found myself so often in their hands and had not discovered, through a bad experience, what they were like whenthey held the power and what they were like when you held the power. The behavior of the crowd, its quiet intensity, was the other thing that forced me to reevaluate the speakers and their message. “The police in this quote are trying to keep the ideals and demands of the Nation of Islam at bay instead of forcibly forcing the Nation of Islam to give up their ideals. The police or authorities do not do this because they might accept the demands and ideals of the Nation of Islam, but they keep them at bay because they are afraid of what would happen if they retaliated by doing what they did to all the other black movements of the time. Nation of Islam movement is different from the others because it is not trying to find a peaceful solution to the problem, but instead asks white men to give them land to live in their own community and become primarily self-governed. So this ideology that Elijah has for The Nation of Islams does not give space for white men to accept African Americans but only fears them. This is why Elijah has lost his humanity because he cannot accept white men. When James Baldwin was growing up in Harlem he was a Christian like his father and everyone else in the neighborhood. Baldwin didn't ask to be a Christian or care to be a Christian, he was a Christian only because his family and everyone around him chose Christianity for him. He was never exposed to other religions at a young age, so he was never in an environment where he could choose or find the right religion for him. Christianity was part of Baldwin's identity, whether he liked it or not. “One Saturday afternoon he took me to his church. There were no services that day and the church was empty except for a few women cleaning and other women praying. My friend took me into the back room to meet his pastor, a woman. There she sat, in her robes, smiling, an extremely proud and beautiful woman, with Africa, Europe and Native America mixed in her face. She was perhaps forty-five or fifty years old at the time, and in our world she was a much celebrated woman. My friend was about to introduce me when she looked at me, smiled and said, “Whose kid are you?” Now, this, incredibly, was the very phrase used by the Avenue pimps and racketeers when they suggested, both jokingly and poignantly, that I "go out" with them. Perhaps part of the terror they made me feel stemmed from the fact that I unquestionably wanted to be someone's child. I was so scared, and at the mercy of so many puzzles, that inevitably, that summer, someone would get the upper hand on me; in Harlem you don't stay on any auction block for long. “Baldwin was perceived as a Christian and belonged to someone else's church just because he was a black man living in Harlem. The way the pastor said who you are little boy sparked Baldwin's thoughts on how pimps and racketeers would tell someone. This made Baldwin feel as if the churches owned him just because he was a Christian. Identity as a Christian made Baldwin feel like he was a slave. Baldwin believes that if he hadn't been a Christian someone else would have taken him over anyway because when you're in Harlem you don't stay at any auction for long. “But there was nothing malicious or condemning about it. I had the suffocating feeling that they knew I belonged with them but knew that I didn't know yet, that I wasn't ready, and that they were simply waiting, patiently and confidently, for me to discover the truth on my own. Because where else, after all, could I go? I was black, and therefore part of Islam, and I would be saved”.