While reading James Baldwin’s, Stranger
in the Village, I felt not only the urge to travel but a sense of empathy
towards his story. I understand the feeling of being looked at like you don’t
belong. When I was about seven years old, my family and I went on a road trip
to a family’s farm in Ocala. Not a beautiful Swiss village like the author
experienced, but I experienced the farmlands in Florida. If one has ever been
to Ocala, they know some parts of it are very widespread, very country like as
far as landscape goes. What Baldwin felt was a strong feeling of dis-attachment
to his surrounding area. I felt the same thing, but I was only seven when I
felt it, not as an adult. One morning in Ocala, my dad wanted to grab some breakfast
at a Dunkin Donuts that we saw the night prior. When my parents, baby sister
and I stepped foot into that Dunkin Donuts you can hear a fly fart. The entire
Dunkin Donuts lobby was silent, everyone stopped talking and just stared at us.
No one moved their eyes from us when we approached the front counter, even a
little boy, same age as me at the time, was looking at me like I wasn’t a
little girl. I wonder how he saw me, I often wondered how he mentally
contrasted us in his young mind. In Baldwin’s article the children ran down the
road, calling him a “neger” but they didn’t know better. No one told them it
wasn’t polite. Then again no one told the people in the lobby that staring was
not polite either. Being only seven years old, I had a problem with not
thinking before speaking; I looked at my dad and said loud enough for those to
hear “Daddy, why are they staring at us like that?” I believe that snapped
everyone into reality because the full lobby of people resumed talking amongst
themselves. My dad didn’t say a word to me inside the Dunkin Donuts but when
once we left he merely said they were staring because we are different. Now down here
in South Florida, I have always been told because of my fair skin complexion no
one would ever realize that I am a West Indian and Hispanic mix, most assume
I’m just Hispanic, sometimes mistaken as white. When I was in Ocala I feel like
those people saw all the minority in me and judged me for it. My father felt
the same way Baldwin did in the article, a sense of anger for being looked at
differently. My dad said never wanted me to feel racism because of the way I
look because he had to go through the same things when he first came to this
country from Trinidad. I remember speaking with a student in high school, whose
ancestors were American to the bone whereas I am the first U.S born citizen in
my family; he told me in his eyes I’ll never be white or considered full
American because of where my ancestors hail from and what my mixed cousins look
like. At first that offended me but most,not all, white people I have met in my life has
proven to me that they hold a piece of racism in them. With either slick
comments about me eating rice and beans, black jokes that are out of line, calling indian people terrorist, referencing my family to the Spanish requisition, asking if Trinidad a Spanish
country, or assuming my dad or I speak Spanish. I felt the tension in that
restaurant and so did Baldwin when he would walk the streets of the Swiss
village, we both felt like outsiders. But he was an outsider in a foreign
country, I was an outsider in my own home state, in my own country.
