Baldwin inverted ‘the Negro problem’ to blame white people

Evidence

By the publication of The Fire Next Time, Baldwin had turned this question on its head. The problem wasn’t black people or simply reconciling our practices with our creed. The problem was white people. For Baldwin, there was no such thing as “the Negro problem.” — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again, 330

Categorization

• SEED: Seed for an essay piece: the radical inversion behind Baldwin’s late work — that the post-1968 ‘bitterness’ was actually an assignment of blame to the country rather than to black people.
• ADDENDUM: Directly supports the reader’s thesis that late Baldwin is essential — the inversion is the intellectual engine of the dismissed later essays.
• XREF: connects to: Baldwin defined racism as the white problem, not the black problem — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White…, 671