# Quote — James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

> I do not know many Negroes who are eager to be "accepted" by white people, still less to be loved by them; they, the blacks, simply don't wish to be beaten over the head by the whites every instant of our brief passage on this planet. White people will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other, and when they have achieved this — which will not be tomorrow and may very well be never — the Negro problem will no longer exist, for it will no longer be needed.

- Author: [James Baldwin](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-baldwin.md)
- Book: [The Fire Next Time](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-baldwin/the-fire-next-time.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Baldwin#%22Letter_from_a_Region_of_My_Mind%22) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-baldwin/the-fire-next-time/i-do-not

## More from this book

> Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-baldwin/the-fire-next-time/perhaps-the-whole.md)

> Christianity has operated with an unmitigated arrogance and cruelty — necessarily, since a religion ordinarily imposes on those who have discovered the true faith the spiritual duty of liberating the infidels.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-baldwin/the-fire-next-time/christianity-has-operated.md)

> Whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-baldwin/the-fire-next-time/whatever-white-people.md)