James Baldwin, “Notes of a Native
Son” (735-750)
One passage that stuck out to me
was: “I knew about the south, of course, and about how southerners treated
Negroes and how they expected them to behave but it had never crossed my mind
that anyone would look at me and expect me to behave that way. I learned in New
Jersey that to be a Negro meant, precisely, that one was never looked at but
was simply at the mercy of the reflexes the color of one’s skin caused in other
people” (740) This passage stuck out to me because I found it to be a good
example of how the south viewed African Americans. I also found this passage
interesting because it made the readers feel a connection to the feelings of
surprise and bewilderment to the hostility the character faced when moving to
the south. To him, it was a whole new world where he had to actually deal with
the extremes of segregation of the Jim-crow laws. This seems to foreshadow a bigger plot to the story
and leads up to a lesson the narrator will learn. Through words like “behave”
being repeated, we can see the importance of how at this time, whites
(southerners) expected Africans to behave under unfair segregation laws and
rules. Continuing on, what I think he meant when he said he is at “the mercy of
the reflexes the color of one’s skin caused in other people” (740) is that he
stuck under the societal roles created for African Americans at the time and
that one simple thing he did, could set a white off. It is like he is a slave
to society and according to society and maybe even him; he is a slave to his
own skin color. Overall, this passage leads into the overall lesson that only
things that mattered were to be held onto and that in the end, “blackness and
whiteness did not matter” (750).
"Notes
of a Native Son". The Norton Anthology World Literature, Third Edition,
Vol. D. Martin Puchner. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012. Pages
735-750. Fairfield Medium with the display set in Aperto.
Hi Kaylee! I agree that Baldwin does a great job at evoking the horror and discomfort that he feels encountering racism. Though it's shocking and unpleasant to think of and read about, it reminds you that this was the reality he was forced to face every day, and he didn't have the option to just close the book and do something else. I think your insight that even though slavery was over, he was still in a way, a slave to society and even to his own skin color makes a lot of sense.
ReplyDeleteHey Kaylee, great job in analyzing how Baldwin views the perception of whites in society in his time period. It's shocking but true that white people expected black people to act a certain way in society because they were used to the idea that black people have always been enslaved in the past, thus whites think blacks should continue to act and feel as though they are slaves to society because of skin color.
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