Baldwin expresses the importance and impact of the inheritance of ignorance and

dehumanization in racial issues rooted in Western countries, but he also mostly confronts

America to Europe to show that although the situation seems similar, the black-white

relationship is much more complex there than it is anywhere else in the world. This is shown

when Baldwin shows that the perception of things can be inherited through language and

culture after starting to go more in depth about dehumanization and ignorance that drives white

people’s behavior. This is also shown through the parallel and differentiation he draws between

America and Europe in terms of racial issues. This creates a sense of responsibility from

America unlike other countries.

Firstly, the essayist mentions multiple times the dehumanization (which is a recurring

topic here) that black men face in their day-to-day life. Baldwin starts the beginning of this

extract with the following sentence:”The black man insists, by whatever means he finds at his

disposal, that the white man cease to regard him as an exotic rarity and recognize him as a human

being.”. The term ”Exotic rarity”, is an expression usually used to talk about animals or objects

that are foreign and rare. It thus, not appropriate to make usage of this expression to talk about

a human being and seems degrading. Baldwin uses this to put forward the idea that black

people aren’t seen and treated like human beings but more like unusual creatures living among

white people and eventually also seen as entertaining creatures. Creatures that “the West has

been "buying" African natives for centuries” says Baldwin to reinforce this aspect. He then proceeds

to compare, through a metaphor, his skin and face to a mask in the following paragraph:

“beneath the black mask, a human being begins to make himself felt one cannot escape a certain awful

wonder as to what kind of human being it is.”. He highlights with this sentence that even this

degrading perception put aside, white people still try to make a difference between them and

black people, they are not considered the same kind of human. This perception is deeply rooted

in the white culture since they -even unconsciously like the people of the European village
Leukerbad- “keep the black man at a certain human remove” as they question his features when

they wonder about his hair for instance : “they wonder less about the texture of my hair” or they call

him slurs like “Neger/Nigger”. Although the meaning is different to Baldwin, the fact that both in

Europe and America he is reduced to this word expresses that it is really present in the white

culture to dehumanize black people.

Secondly, Baldwin shows the perspective that the white man inherited and dehumanized

black people which might result from white people's imagination which they use to make up their

own version of black people in order to act ignorant towards them. The white man’s ignorance,

or “naiveté” so to speak, is described as “a great deal of will power”. This gives a sense of

responsible ignorance to white people since according to Baldwin they are aware of the

situation but act naive in order to avoid facing the racial problem. He even says that “ [They are]

inescapably aware[...] that [they are] in a better position in the world than black men are”, thus once

again showing that if anything, white people are not really ignorant of their actions since they

are not only aware but “inescapably” aware of their situation meaning that they are probably

“history is trapped in them” as says Baldwin earlier in his essay. They have no choice but to

know since it’s part of their history. They way of seeing the black man is in fact inherited from

generation to generation as they repeat their actions to avoid facing what their "forefathers"

have done to black people (for instance, slavery). This idea is backed up by the aphorism “Every

legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the

universe by describing it.” which displays that they are for sure influenced as a result of concepts

brought through languages and time. They just use their naiveté to reconcile themselves with

the fact that what they do isn’t bad but only natural.

To go further, James Baldwin introduces the fact that the concept of naiveté is only

issued from the way white people imagine their own version of black people. The white man

“imagines” the black man, through his “paranoiac malevolence”, as a threat to his pride and power.
For instance, when the villagers accuse Baldwin behind his back of stealing wood, they

demonstrate the insecurity they feel around him though they disguise it whenever they talk to

him. The diction of abstract emphasizes this idea as Baldwin uses words like “imagination”,

“legend” or “idea” to talk about the white man’s perspective: they only live in their made-up

reality. The essayist also talks about the way white people are trapped in their imagination since

language shapes their perception of the world. When the white man finds himself “enmeshed” in

his fantasies about black men, he is also influenced by the concepts his native language

brought to the light. Here, Baldwin says “the white man finds himself enmeshed [...] in his own

language which describes hell [...] as black as night.” where he compares hell to night as an allusion

to black people.The allusion is important to show that connotations attached to words we learn

in our native language participate in our manner of seeing the world. Black being connoted as

negative, thus black people are seen as negative by white people and it will keep going as long

they do not try to face their actions.

Thirdly, Baldwin puts a parallel between America and Europe to show that not all white

people share the same blackwhite experience although they inherited from the same past and

have the same culture rooted in them. As he approaches both Europe and America by making a

generality of the "West", Baldwin establishes that white people all have the same culture.

However, Baldwin quickly explains that there is a huge gap between racial issues in America

and Europe, he accuses America of being fully responsible of their racist acts as the word

"Nigger" takes a whole new meaning to him compared to "Neger". Although both mean the

same thing, the first one is meant to harm whereas the second one is only used in a carefree

way. The only fact that Baldwin can be considered "a Stranger" in Europe is in itself a privilege

since the black-white relationship is not as deeply rooted in their culture as in America. Baldwin

even speaks about an "American experience" to describe life in the USA. Using the world

experience simply is there to show that life there is singular and different from the rest of the
world. The essayist even talks about a "dreadful abyss" between the village and USA to

distinguish them from each other.

In Conclusion, this extract of Baldwin text revolves around the fact that the white man creates

for himself a version of the black man which causes him to be somewhat ignorant however

America is not considered ignorant at all and is considered fully responsible.