Kathleen’s Reviews > The Fire Next Time > Status Update

“The affluent populations, which should have been their help, didn’t, as far as could be discovered, read, either—they merely bought books and devoured them, but not in order to learn: in order to learn new attitudes.”

Applies to the trend of white ppl buying books about anti black racism in the wake of the most recent BLM movement but not reading them, or reading for status, while the violence continues.

“the realization that a civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless....

A few years ago, I would have hated these people with all my heart. Now I pitied them, pitied them in order not to despise them.”

Published in 1963, no less true today.

“White people in this country 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.”