Coming through the Fire: Surviving Race and Place in America [Hardcover]

C. Eric Lincoln (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 12, 1996

In Coming through the Fire, prominent scholar and writer C. Eric Lincoln addresses the most important issue of our time with insights forged by a lifetime of confronting racial oppression in America. Born in a small rural town in northern Alabama, raised by his grandparents, Lincoln portrays in rich detail the nuances of racial conflict and control that characterized the community of Athens, personal experiences which would lead him to dedicate his life to illuminating issues of race and social identity. The contradictions and calamities of being black and poor in the United States become a purifying fire for his searing analyses of the contemporary meanings of race and color.
Coming through the Fire, with its fiercely intelligent, passionate, and clear-eyed view of race and class conflict, makes a major contribution to understanding—and thereby healing—the terrible rift that has opened up in the heart of America. Lincoln explores the nature of biracial relationships, the issue of transracial adoption, violence—particularly black-on-black violence—the “endangered” black male, racism as power, the relationship between Blacks and Jews, our multicultural melting pot, and Minister Louis Farrakhan.Without sidestepping painful issues, or sacrificing a righteous anger, the author argues for “no-fault reconciliation,” for mutual recognition of the human endowment we share regardless of race, preparing us as a nation for the true multiculture tomorrow will demand.
Readers familiar with Lincoln’s earlier groundbreaking work on the Black Muslims and on the black church will be eagerly awaiting the publication of Coming through the Fire. Others will simply find C. Eric Lincoln’s personal story and his exploration of survival and race in America to be absorbing and compelling reading.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In this small but eloquent work, Duke University professor of religion and culture C. Eric Lincoln calls for a "no-fault reconciliation" between the races. For 50 years, he recorded his thoughts and observations on the subject of race in a series of notebooks. Those notebooks and most of his personal possessions were destroyed in a fire. From the ashes of that blaze emerges Coming Through Fire, a distillation of a lifetime of thoughtful examination of this country's most perplexing problem, which he calls "the hydra-headed monster which stifles our most beautiful dreams before they are fairly dreamt."

From Publishers Weekly

Noted scholar Lincoln (The Black Church in the African-American Experience) mixes reminiscence with commentary in a textured, wise meditation on race. He learned lifelong lessons in Jim Crow Alabama, beaten at 13 by a white cotton gin owner. He reflects on his stimulating high school education, thanks to Yankee schoolmarms and how W. J. Cash's famous The Mind of the South insultingly left out black folk. He attempts to untangle the tensions between blacks and Jews and muses on the evolution of the black church and group identity. Lincoln warns that black violence is part of historical American violence; only a reclamation of values and a recognition of Americans' joint future will solve our racial dilemmas. Some of his prescription may be vague, but he also includes savvy advice, suggesting that transracial adoption offers the chance to "start undoing the racial mischief at its source."
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 168 pages
• Publisher: Duke University Press Books (March 12, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822317362
• ISBN-13: 978-0822317364
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #367,952 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Points out both the history and difficulties of racism, but, July 28, 2000

By 

Allan M. Gathercoal "fdoamerica" (Norcross, GA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Coming through the Fire: Surviving Race and Place in America (Hardcover)

Eric Lincoln's text is a critical evaluation of racism in America, how began and what it is today. Lincoln takes us into his world; the world of the African American.

The journey begins in the early part of this century; in Alabama, and focuses us in the tiny town of Athens; not a bad place to grow-up, unless you're Black. Lincoln's writing illuminates the ugly prejudice behavior of whites towards (and, as Lincoln notes, the prejudice of Blacks towards "white trash") Blacks that was predominated the South during the first half of this century. He reports his sobering findings that America was and still is split into two societies:white and Black, separate and unequal. After driving this point home, Eric takes you through the changes, notes improvements, but proclaims that America remains caught in racism and class conflict.

In an unusual twist regarding blacks and Jews, C. Eric Lincoln does a admirable job showing a symbiotic relationship between the two maligned groups. To Eric the Jews were distant cousins in the fight against racism; cousins with deep financial pockets, legal expertise and limited participation that undergirded the Civil Rights Crusades. He sees the relationship as two minorities trying to gain parity in an intolerant closed-minded society.

Lincoln's call for blacks to reaffirm, (or even regain), their identity as Africans displaced in America strikes me as a rewarming of Malcom X's ideology. Though Lincoln stays short of Malcom X's call for a return to Africa, I feel that Lincoln has failed to realize that blacks in America are American and a vital part of it pluralism.

C. Eric Lincoln ends his text in a diatribe of statements, that he fails to back up with either facts or incidences of the massive injustice he reports. For example, he states that the "national focus is on the wanton elimination of the African America Male from meaningful participation in the common ventures of American Life".

The national focus? Lincoln goes on a tirade against the incarceration of "black men" at a "unconscionable rate" as if they have not broken laws, caused injury or done the crime. He makes no comment on the victims of the lawless; black or white; he just waves the flag of injustice and racism. The destructiveness of self-interest that he writes about is also found in the arena of black-interest.

Lincoln insists that America remembers that the African minority have had their lives disrupted, their national integrity as African impugned, their culture degraded, their politics corrupted and their freedoms commandeered, taken away or sold off by the white establishment. He goes on to say that too little is being asked, said or done to allay the journey from the "harsh, inflexible conventions" of the past. He states that America, especially white America, is "still in the business of niger making." He then closes with a "No-Fault Reconciliation", whereby we must get on with the task of building the dream, the dream that makes us all American. We must prepare for a new world, a new society that allows us to trust and support each other. We are all in need of God and each other. Lincoln reaches the end of his manuscript and says, "Hey, I am a Professor at Duke University and I've got to end this book on a hopeful text, not the ranting, radical diatribe that I started with, so he comes up with his "no-fault reconciliation".

Lincoln has done extremely well pointing out both the history and problems of racism in America. His insight into the difficulties then and now for a Black person to cross "the color line" is extremely useful.

However, he fails to come up with any solutions to how we can work collectively to bring change into our system and culture. He lacks answers for the pressing problems.

To say the answer is no-fault reconciliation leaves me flat. I also found him critical and short changing the black and white church. For Lincoln religion, (IE Christianity for the most part), was more of the problem that the solution. He felt that the Black church and Black preacher kept the system in place and tended to support the oppression (pg67). I wondered where he would have put the Black minister in his triad of "Good, Bad, and Smart Nigers".

I felt that the few paragraphs that he gave to Christianity were inadequate, considering the role that the Black and White church played in abolishing slavery and in the civil rights movement.

5.0 out of 5 stars Socrates Reincarnated, April 5, 2011

By 

TaoRich - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Coming through the Fire: Surviving Race and Place in America (Hardcover)

Many will be challenged by C. Eric Lincoln's vast vocabulary and elaborate prose, but there is no denying the power of the reward for those who stick with it. His personal account of a time and general attitude in America when racial oppression was nakedly what it is, brings to life the reality of the damage done and our present struggle to heal. The chapter "Polyps of Prejudice" is some of the best writing on race I believe I've ever encountered.