JAMES BALDWIN ON WHITE AMERICANS ABROAD
James Baldwin taught me so much about what it means to be white in America. But he is also a very special guide to the behavior of white Americans abroad. Since I am a white American who spent 24 years living in foreign countries, mostly in Asia, I was eager to see how Baldwin could help me better understand myself and what I had experienced.
Being raised as a white American implies a very unusual way of relating to the rest of the world, and toward people of color, in particular. In this shadowy realm, Baldwin can uncover much that has remained often hidden. Who has a more intimate knowledge of what it means to be a white American than a black American? A black American can be a keen observer of the discrepancy between what white Americans believe about themselves and their actual behavior. No black American was better at understanding the reasons for this discrepancy than Baldwin.
Baldwin was well aware of the American contribution to the flawed relations between the United States and the nonwhite world, despite his reluctance to focus on this topic in his work. His subtle understanding of the psychology of the white-nonwhite relationship can be applied to this treacherous terrain as well.
In my own travels, and especially during the time I lived in Tokyo, I had many chances to observe American behavioral patterns in non-Western countries. But I never quite got to the core of the problem until I recently went back to Baldwin who attributed the inability of many white Americans to accept those who are different to innocence and the denial of tragedy. This pattern is evident in white responses both to black people in America and to nonwhite people abroad.
Baldwin expertly details the components of this American syndrome: a collective belief in the country’s inherent goodness and its unique destiny both at home and in the world, blindness to the historical wrongs committed inside and outside the country, great confidence that all human problems can be overcome and that white Americans hold the answers, and a naïve and unhesitating willingness to intervene in the affairs of other countries without concern for the consequences of such interventions on the local people.
I had already made some of the required identity adjustments that Baldwin recommends, since I lived in Africa and Asia for almost 25 years. But he does get me to look once more at my own assumptions of innocence and of living in a world without tragedy. Since such assumptions are fundamental to American identity, the work of becoming conscious of them and letting them go is daunting and endless. I am still engaged with Baldwin’s question about who Americans become after they have lost their empire.
My challenge is to encounter the racial Other in a post-American world with awareness and act in an open, humble, and curious way. It is to listen rather than pontificate. It is to say I don’t know rather than pretend to know.
