Baldwin argues that white Americans' belief in Black inferiority is a defense against their own terror and emptiness: the oppressor needs the oppressed to occupy a fixed, degraded position in order to know who he himself is. Liberation of the Black person therefore threatens the white person's entire sense of reality and identity, which is why it is resisted as if it were annihilation.
Baldwin frames innocence as a willed ignorance that is itself a crime: white Americans who do not know the history and daily conditions they benefit from are not neutral but are actively destroying lives through their refusal to see. Insisting on one's own innocence is thus a mechanism for perpetuating harm while feeling blameless.
At fourteen Baldwin underwent a sudden religious crisis and became a boy preacher in a Harlem Pentecostal church, drawn in partly as protection against the sexual and criminal dangers of the ghetto street. He later concluded the church ran on the same fear and need for safety that the streets did, and that its promise of love masked a gratifying power over congregations, so he left it.
Baldwin was invited to Elijah Muhammad's Chicago home and dined with the Nation of Islam leader, feeling the pull of its disciplined dignity while refusing its doctrine that all white people are devils. Asked by Muhammad what he was, Baldwin answered that he had many white friends he would not abandon to a theology of separation, and quietly declined the movement's embrace.
Baldwin contends that the Black American, having survived without the illusions of safety that whites cling to, is positioned to see reality more clearly and could, through this hard-won acceptance, help free white Americans from their fear. He warns that if this conscious minority of both races fails to end the racial nightmare, the consequence will be catastrophic violence, the fire next time.