What Baldwin understood is that to be black in America is to have the demand for dignity be at absolute odds with the national anthem."
-- Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah (The Weight paragraph 16)

Importance: This quote is one of many that indicates a running theme throughout The Fire This Time. The experience of black people in the United States runs in direct conflict with what the United States professes to value. The national anthem calls the United States “the land of the free.” However, black Americans have not been free since the country’s inception. The song in many ways does not apply to them. This contradiction has fueled protests for decades. Many black Americans want access to the same privileges and rights as other Americans.

Slavery is violent, grotesque, vulgar, and we are all implicated in how it denigrates humanity."
-- Wendy S. Walters (Lonely in America paragraph 27)

Importance: This quote makes three major claims. First, it declares the brutal, inhuman nature of slavery. Second, it argues...