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March 13, 2026
from “Stranger in the Village”
in Notes of a Native Son
by James Baldwin
“This world is white no longer, and it will never be white again.”—James Baldwin
Probably the most influential essayist of the twentieth century, James Baldwin moved to France to escape the racism of his home country, but the “American Negro problem” as he called it was never far from his thoughts as a trip to a small Swiss town revealed. ​​
The Paragraph of the Week
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The time has come to realize that the interracial drama acted out on the American continent has not only created a new black man, it has 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. I am not, really, a stranger any longer for any American alive. One of the things that distinguishes Americans from other people is that no other people has ever been so deeply involved in the lives of black men, and vice versa. This fact faced, with all its implications, it can be seen that the history of the American Negro problem is not merely shameful, it is also something of an achievement. For even when the worst has been said, it must also be added that the perpetual challenge posed by this problem was always, somehow, perpetually met. It is precisely this black white experience which may prove of indispensable value to us in the world we face today. This world is white no longer, and it will never be white again.
—James Baldwin
The Visible Speaking
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Check out Kathryn Winograd’s new blog of words and photos called The Visible Speaking here. Read our feature of her book by the same name here.
Commentary
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When Baldwin arrived at a tiny Swiss village where no one had ever seen a black man, he was “a sight.” Children ran up to him shouting “Neger! Neger!” with the “charm of genuine wonder” and “certainly no element of intentional unkindness” unaware of the “echoes” that word would have for him. What the people of this village had no way of knowing was the history of racism in America where the “burning question” of rights for black men and women “became one of those used to divide the nation.” The struggle changed both sides so that a return to the innocence of that Swiss town is impossible. In the process Blacks became “as American as the Americans who despise him,” but slavery, the Civil War, Jim Crow, and the civil rights movement not only “created a new black man,” it “created a new white man, too.” For Baldwin the “Negro problem” was both shameful and an achievement. It has taught us, despite the fantasies of racists in America today, that “the world is white no longer, and it will never be white again.”
—THE
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The Humble Essayist Book Club
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A book club for essayists? Yes! Several times a year The Humble Essayist will devote an entire month of features to a book by one major essayist or an issue of a magazine and we invite you to read along. Our first book will be George Orwell: Selected Essays (Oxford). We will run the features during the month of September and encourage you to comment on it online. More to come.—THE
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by the PEN Award Series
The Beloved Republic has been selected for the Longlist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay.
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PEN International is a worldwide association of writers, founded in London in 1921 to promote friendship and intellectual co-operation among writers everywhere. The association has autonomous International PEN centres in more than 100 countries.
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Other goals include emphasizing the role of literature in the development of mutual understanding and world culture; fighting for freedom of expression, and acting as a powerful voice on behalf of writers harassed, imprisoned and sometimes killed for their views.
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See the trailers below to learn more about the book.
The Beloved Republic by Steven Harvey
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The Humble Essayist Press
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The Humble Essayist Press has always needed to stay humble in its ambitions, and with the publication of our final book, Time's Passage by Robert Root, the passage of time has brought the book publication arm of the Humble Essayist Press to an end. Its editors have set off on other composing and editing projects with much appreciation and admiration for the texts that THE Press was allowed to bring into the world. We hope those books continue to have readers and to those authors we urge, “Write on.” Thanks so much for giving us what you did.
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