The Interference of History on African-American Identity
in James Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son

The history of colonialism, slavery, segregation, and racism have constantly interfered with the development of a solid Black identity in America. Baldwin self-imposes an exile to Europe to find an identity outside of his colour. In the chapters “Equal in Paris” and “Stranger in the Village,” he details his journey of introspection and reflection during his time in Europe as an African-American. This paper discusses three significant motifs in these two chapters. Firstly, the alienation and isolation he feels due to both his Blackness and his American identity. Secondly, the influence history has on the treatment of Black people in Europe and America, and how that complicates his understanding of Black identity. Lastly, the realisation that because of complex historical circumstances in the formation of cultural identities, the creation of a new hybrid identity and world order is possible. This essay will also engage an analysis by Lloyd Kramer about the African-American expatriate experience. This paper argues that Baldwin unravels the intricacy and complexity of African-American identity through reflecting and realising, in moments of anxiety, the historical influences that have shaped Black and White relations within the Western world. 

During his time in Europe, Baldwin feels a level of isolation and alienation that is beyond what he has experienced in America. After his arrest in Paris under suspicion of stealing a sheet from a hotel, he considered that he “did not know what they saw” when they looked at him, which at least he could gauge with Americans (Baldwin 145). Because of this, he could not predict “what techniques their cruelty took” (145). There is an innate assumption within him, due to his discriminatory experience in America, that he will face some ‘cruelty,’ but what form that cruelty may take is unknown to him and creates a sense of fear and isolation that is unknown to him. Similarly, he noticed that “no black man had ever set foot in this tiny Swiss village” and that he was told he would be a “sight” to them (159). He was expected to be identified for his differences, but how his treatment will take place because of it is unclear. Whether or not he understood his identity, based on his outer appearance he knew what to expect from people when in America. The inability for him to gauge his level of danger and how threatened the Europeans feel at his presence creates a sense of heightened anxiety and isolation that he did not experience before. Because, if one knows what to expect, one can defend themself, but not if they are defenceless and vulnerable. However, it is within these moments of anxiety, when he is in prison and when he is faced with unwanted attention in the village, that he is able to reflect. He states that when in the French prison, the question “from the bottom of my mind was not what I was, but who” (146). It was a significant moment where he realised that there is a difference between ‘what’ and ‘who’ when it came to human interaction. He was accustomed to dehumanisation, being used and abused like a possession. Here, he is recognised as a person, but he is still a victim of prejudice which is worse because he receives malice as an ‘equal’ human rather than an object. This reflection allows him to understand a vital difference between European and American understanding of race relations, the influence of history. 

Baldwin parallels colonial histories to highlight the uncontested legacy of white supremacy and how it has unfolded differently in America and Europe. As Kramer writes, Baldwin became more aware of the African diasporic legacy when he encountered Europeans “who knew nothing about his own cultural history” (Kramer 37). The way he describes the Swiss village is almost primitive and undeveloped, like how a coloniser would describe a potential colony that was in need of improvement. The main difference though is that the Swiss people’s authority and superiority on a racial level are never questioned (Baldwin 160). In Paris, he was known as an American, but in the village they were not convinced because “black men come from Africa” (161). His identity is complicated and untrusted even within two different countries in Europe. Assumptions of his identity are imposed on him in America and Europe. In this village, there is “the charm of genuine wonder” but there was “no suggestion that I was human: I was simply a living wonder” (162). He is treated as inhuman in both America and Switzerland, but with different levels of malice and prejudice. In America he is abused, in Switzerland, he is an exhibition. Prejudice and racial tensions, Baldwin realises, can present differently and it affects how he views himself. He asserts that “people are trapped in history and history is trapped in them” (163). A black man and a white man, no matter in Europe or America, carry a history of colonialism and racism that influence their actions towards each other. For example, in a highly provocative and tense moment, the derogatory ‘N’ slur is chanted by the Swiss children with innocent curiosity, but it carries a history of unprecedented violence for Baldwin due to the history of his birthplace, America (168). The same word is used to describe him by both populations, but with starkly different intentions, both confusing his identity. However, they both embody white superiority and draw prejudice and discrimination in their attitudes towards him. 

Additionally, he highlights the subtle differences between being Black in America versus in Europe and attributes it to how differently African history has unfolded in both places. America and Europe share historical roots because America is an European settler colony, but they have evolved differently. As an African-American in Europe, he reflects on how at that moment, he is both experiencing, and is a culmination of the complex development of race in both regions. He realises that the Black slave and their descendants in Europe “remains related to his past” and is able to “maintain his identity” (169). However, in America, the “past was taken from him” forcibly (169). In order to put together an idea of his lineage and ancestry, he has to connect to his history, but that chance is taken away from him the moment Americans bought his ancestor. Kramer writes that “history had separated African-Americans from Africans; history had left Baldwin feeling as alien to Africa as he felt to America” (Kramer 38). Because of his American identity, he is denied the possibility to explore his African identity. There is no traceability of lineage that white people or even Black people of Europe have the liberty to do. He compares that “Europe’s black possessions remained and do remain - in Europe’s colonies, at which remove they represented no threat whatever to European identity” (Baldwin 170).  In America, his blackness is seen as a threat, but not in Europe. His difference and strangeness may be seen as a threat and inferior, but not his Blackness because it is recognised that Africans have their own cultural identity and culture, and white Europeans their own. But because African identity is severed and fragmented in America, and Africans are forced to become Americans out of force, white American identity feels threatened at their presence. There is no separation of African from American anymore. So, a White man’s identity “was the protection of his identity; the black man was motivated by the need to establish an identity” (173). Only in America are Black and White relations so closely tied together and dependent on each other. African history in America is reduced to receipts and bills due to the threat White masters felt, and so, “this experience of ‘cultural liminality’ and ‘cultural difference’ marked African-Americans as outsiders” to a much greater degree in comparison to Europeans (Kramer 34). 

Baldwin ultimately realises the creation of a new hybrid identity and world order that denies White people the authority to claim the world as theirs. The search for self-identity emboldened Baldwin to realise that he is the embodiment of a new identity, one that is not restricted or interfered with by the contradictory histories of Europe and America (Kramer 32). One significant advantage is that although African Americans were “alienated from African and Western cultures, they were also connected to both cultures in ways that neither Africans nor Europeans could quite imagine” (40). And so, Baldwin believes that instead of alienation being a hindrance to discovering identity, it could “provide a starting point for new cultural and historical insights” (40). Baldwin realises that his history does not begin at the point his ancestor was sold and brought to America, it is not just a culmination of pain and loss. Rather, it is a collection of historical experiences between White and Black people, both throughout history and during his time in America and Europe that has created a “long-developing, complex fusion of Europe and Africa” that makes his experience, and the experience of Black people unique. 

Instead of being torn by the different ways he is treated based on the limited set of cultural and racial identifiers he carries, he combines them all to create a hybrid identity that encapsulates the intricacies of history to set forth a journey that looks to the future instead of just the past. He asserts that “the time has come to realise that interracial drama acted out on the American continent has not only created a new black man, but it has also created a new white man, too. No road whatever will lead Americans back to the simplicity of this European village where white men still have the luxury of looking on me as a stranger” (Baldwin 175). While before he felt a sense of anxiety for being seen as a stranger, he grows to realise that how he is perceived is no longer his own crisis, it is a humanitarian crisis that is no longer divided based on two racial categories. Because of how history has unfolded, the world is no longer and “will never be white again” (175). Instead of feeling anxious at the untraceability of history, he is repurposing history to empower his newfound rounded identity that is based on the vastly different ways African lineage has spread across the Western world, and how it can shape the future of race relations as well.

Disclaimer: This work is original and the property of Aroni Sarkar. It is not authorised for any use, copies or dissemination.

Works Cited

Baldwin, James. Notes of a Native Son, Beacon Press, 1955, pp 138-175. 

Kramer, Lloyd. “James Baldwin in Paris: Exile, Multiculturalism and the Public Intellectual.” Historical Reflections / Réflexions Historiques, vol 27, no. 1, Spring 2001, pp 27-47.