Stranger in the Village

“Stranger in the Village” is an argumentative essay in which Baldwin makes a compelling case for the uniqueness of race relations in the US. He asserts that the sole way forward is for white people to abandon their illusions of innocence and acknowledge the United States’ mixed racial existence. The US is not white, Baldwin argues, and this fact cannot be denied without damaging oneself (129). Baldwin employs argumentative techniques including personal anecdotes, critical analysis, experiential evidence, and historical facts to support his concluding argument about Black people’s earned and irrevocable place in American society.

In the titular Swiss village, Baldwin appears strange because the villagers have never seen a Black person. His status as a stranger there contrasts with the status of Black people in the US, where the relationship between Black and white citizens has a unique and complex history. Much of Baldwin’s essay explicates the factors that shape and define that relationship. In one example, he compares the villagers use of racial epithets to American’s use of the n-word. By elucidating how the experience is different in the two locations, Baldwin uses