It’s Not All Black and White

This article posits that some of the decisions made by the Dutch translators of The Fire Next Time negatively impact the way Black people are portrayed, while some of their translation choices mitigate or erase the accountability of white people for what has been and is being done to Black communities. It seeks to uncover this potential impact by conducting a case study of the two Dutch translations of The Fire Next Time . The article discusses the relative lack of self-awareness regarding racism in Dutch society up until fairly recently and the debate triggered by the 2018 translation, which highlights the issue of white innocence, before presenting a number of examples from the 1963 and 2018 translations, comparing them to Baldwin’s original.