Stranger in the Village

“It did not occur to me—possibly because I am an American—that there could be people anywhere who had never seen a Negro.”

Baldwin introduces the notion that the US is a mixed-racial place, which is a key part of his thesis. The contrast with naïve Swiss villagers allows Baldwin to demonstrate that white Americans can no longer claim innocence due to unfamiliarity. Baldwin’s contention in the text is that the world is not white, and white people must come to terms with the implications of this fact.

“In so far as I reacted at all, I reacted by trying to be pleasant—it being a great part of the American Negro’s education (long before he goes to school) that he must make people ‘like’ him. This smile-and-the-world-smiles-with-you routine worked about as well in this situation as it had in the situation for which it was designed, which is to say that it did not work at all.”

Baldwin employs humor to make a point about how Black Americans are taught to survive in the allegedly white world (which Baldwin will go on to contest). He reacts to being called “Neger” in the Swiss village—even though it resonates uncomfortably with being called the n-word in the US—by putting on a smile. It does not do anything but make the chanters feel more comfortable. Baldwin is identifying an ineffectual survival strategy that he will supplant later in the essay.

“The white man takes the astonishment [of the Africans] as tribute, for he arrives to conquer and to convert the natives, whose inferiority in relation to himself is not even to be questioned; whereas I, without a thought of conquest, find myself among a people whose culture controls me, has even, in a sense, created me, people who have cost me more in anguish and rage than they will ever know, who yet do not even know of my existence.”

Baldwin contrasts his mind with that of “the white man,” who strives “to conquer and to convert” those he encounters. By contrast, Baldwin finds himself not desiring conquest or conversion but on the obverse side of the equation, as the conquered and converted person.