One lesson to be learned from the tragic story of Malcolm X's 12-year-old grandson setting fire to his grandmother's apartment is that violence unleashed against one generation will continue to play itself out in succeeding generations. Survivors must deal with the consequences, or risk being consumed by "the fire next time." PNS commentator Mae Jackson is a New York-based poet and director of "Children Without Walls," a program teaching art to the children of women in prison.

NEW YORK -- There are some things for which an apology will not suffice.

Malcolm X knew that. Imagine Malcolm -- never one to yield the moral high ground -- asking Bill Clinton to apologize for slavery!

Now Malcolm's grandson brings another lesson, one that I as a black woman find hard to get an emotional handle on. Last week, 12-year-old Malcolm Shabazz pled guilty to setting his grandmother's apartment on fire. On June 23, she died from the burns inflicted by the fire.

Some sixty years earlier, when Malcolm X was growing up, Ku Klux Klansmen torched his father's house. Then, in 1965, black men firebombed Malcolm X's apartment in Queens a week before he was assassinated, also at black hands.

Why so much fire?

In the 1960s the great black novelist James Baldwin repeated the warning: "And God gave Noah the rainbow sign. The water now, the fire next time." The intent of the torturer is to destroy not just the victim but his or her entire lineage. The violent act plays out from one generation to the next. The challenge for the survivors has less to do with what the oppressor does than with how we deal with the consequences, whether we can transcend history before history consumes us.

I was in my late teens when Malcolm X was killed. At the time I had energy and guts and no one could stop me -- I would be free, my people would be free, I made a vow.

These days, I find myself wishing I were living back in the days when we were colored and we did not kill our leaders, our grandmothers. I wonder if my mother's generation ever felt this way.

This spring, Johnnie Cochran, the lead lawyer for O.J. Simpson, visited a senior citizen's center in my New York neighborhood. Over 300 elders greeted him with a banner reading, "You showed America we can do more than play basketball." One threw rose petals at him. He was embarrassed, but I understood.

I knew they were thinking of a time in history when they couldn't look a white person in the face. Johnnie had represented them, their sons and daughters. They'd survived to see a black man not only look a white man in the face but stand up and challenge him. To them that was a victory.

What can I claim for my generation? We did not have the type of revolution we'd hoped for. We set fire to inner cities, but we didn't use those fires to purify ourselves. And maybe it's because we didn't want to hear Malcolm after all. We didn't want to take that next step that an oppressed people must take if they are to ever be free. We wanted a little bit of change and were willing to settle for white people liking us enough to stop killing us.

My mother and her generation did the best they could. They taught us about our survival strength. We knew we could do this and do it well. But freedom was something else, its responsibilities too frightening. How do free people live? How and what do they think?

Last week the criminal justice system bent over backwards to save Malcolm X's grandson. Imagine a judge sweet-talking the son of a poor black family charged with a similar offense in the same way! But pointing out the hypocrisy of the system doesn't absolve us of the crime.

When Baldwin wrote "The Fire Next Time," he was saying to us, survival is not enough. My generation needed to ask ourselves, survival at what cost? We refused to answer this question and that's why we're being consumed by fire.

Yes, this is a living hell. No place is hotter than this.