Swiss Village First Impressions

First Impressions of the Swiss Village

• The author was told he would be a "sight" in the Swiss village, meaning people of his complexion were rarely seen there, although it did not occur to him that there were people anywhere who had never seen a Black person.

  Village Inaccessibility and Amenities

• Being only four hours from Milan and three hours from Lausanne, though it is virtually unknown as a tourist destination.

• Villagers travel to a town with about 5,000 people at the foot of the mountain to see movies or visit the bank

• The village lacks amenities such as a movie house, bank, library, or theater.

• There are limited radios, one jeep, one station wagon, and the author's typewriter was a novelty to the locals, with a population of around 600, primarily Catholic, evidenced by the year-round operation of the Catholic church compared to the seasonal Protestant chapel.

• There are four to five hotels, all closed during the winter, and a few stores including a butcher, baker (épicerie), a hardware store, and a money-changer that cannot process travelers' checks on site.

Village Life and Landscape

• Life in the village ends early, around 9 or 10 PM.
• A building called the Ballet Haus is closed in the winter and of unknown use in the summer.
• There is one schoolhouse for young children, and older children likely descend the mountains for further education.
• The landscape is forbidding, with towering mountains and year-round ice and snow.
• Villagers engage in daily tasks such as carrying washing, wood, milk, or water, and partake in skiing on Sundays
• Throughout the week, boys and young men shovel snow or drag wood from the forest.

Tourist Season and Social Interactions

• The village's hot spring water attracts mostly crippled or semi-crippled tourists annually.
• The tourist season has "a rather terrifying air of sanctity, as though it were a lesser Lourdes"
• The author returns to the village in the winter to work due to the lack of distractions and low cost
• Villagers know the author by name, but still see him as a stranger, and children shout "Neger!" as he walks.

Race deeply influences perceptions and societal interactions.

The author initially tried to be pleasant, a common practice for American Black people, but his smile was not truly seen

Reflections on History and Identity

• The children shout "Neger!", unaware of the impact of their words.
• The author recalls similar experiences as a child.
• The author repeats to himself that that the villagers do not mean to be unkind each time he walks out.
• Joyce's quote about history being a nightmare from which no one can awaken is directly referenced
• People are trapped in history, and history is trapped in them.

Village Customs and Implications

• There is a custom the village shares with many other villages, that involves buying African natives for conversion to Christianity.
• The church has a donation box with a black figurine
• During the pre-Lent carnival, children with blackened faces and horsehair wigs collect money for African missionaries.
• The wife of a bistro owner proudly shares her village "bought" six or eight African natives.
• The author contrasts the villagers' warm reception of white men with their treatment of him.
• There's a difference between Africans seeing white men for the first time and white people seeing Black men for the first time

Cultural Comparisons and Power

• The author finds himself controlled by a culture that has, in a sense, created him.
• He describes those of the culture as people who have cost them more in anguish and rage than they will ever know, who yet do not even know of his existence.
• The villagers' astonishment at seeing him poisons his heart
• The Swiss villagers move with an authority he will never have, seeing him as a stranger and a latecomer.

Western Identity and Heritage

• The village is the West, and these are the people onto which the author has been so strangely grafted
• The villagers are connected to Western culture – Dante, Shakespeare, Michelangelo, etc.

Rage and Dissembling

• The rage of the disesteemed is personally fruitless, but inevitable.

Black Identity and White Perceptions

• Rage makes history.
• Rage cannot be hidden, only dissembled, deluding the thoughtless, adding contempt.
• Rage, dissembling, and contempt inevitably accompany the realization of white power.
• White men represent a heavy weight in the black man's world, creating a non-reciprocal reality.
• Designed to rob white men of naiveté or make it costly.

Insistence on Humanity

• Black men want white men to recognize them as human, not exotic novelties.
• Most people are not naturally reflective or malicious.
• Most white men prefer to keep Black men at a distance.
• White men are in a better position and suspect they might be hated by Black men.
• The white man doesn't want to be hated nor change places, and feels uneasy

Legends and Truth

• Legends about black men lead white men to hell.
• Black men remain largely unsaved, despite centuries of "buying" African natives.
• There is an instantaneous necessity to be divorced from this so visibly unsaved stranger
• There is still the idea of the unspeakable liberty which is allowed the unredeemed.
• Awful wonder emerges when the human beneath the mask begins to be felt.
• The imagination dictates what one makes of other people according to master race laws
• Black man's ability to know who the white man is comes from means of what the white man imagines the black man to be.

Shifting Perceptions in the Village

• The author's status as a stranger in the village changes, with villagers wondering less about his hair and more about him.

Encounters and Attitudes

• Children make overtures of friendship and some have been taught that the Devil is a black man, causing genuine anguish as the author approaches.
• Some older women greet him, others avert their gaze.
• Some men drink with him, suggesting he learn to ski and asking personal questions.
• Others accuse him of stealing wood.

The Abyss of Experience

• There is a "dreadful abyss" between the village streets and the streets of his hometown due to experience, specifically the American experience.
• "Neger!" expresses wonder, while "Nigger!" expresses a war in the American soul.

Historical Context and American Identity

• Village life reminded the author that there was a day when Americans were merely discontented Europeans, seeing black men for the first time.
• Americans promptly decided these black men were cattle.
• The charm and necessity of slavery enhanced this idea.
• This idea is an American bluntness, expressing the attitude of all masters toward slaves.

Slavery and Identity

• American Black slaves could not suppose they might wrest power from masters.
• The Black slaves' condition was undignified because they had no past, no means of revering former life, and no identity.

Loss of Heritage

• The author wonders what the first slave said to the first dark child.
• Haitian slaves can trace ancestry to African kings, but journeys of American Blacks are abruptly arrested by bills of sale.
• There was no possibility of taking power, and the main goal was to "find a 'motive for living under American culture or die"

American Negro Identity

• The American Negro's identity comes from these extreme conditions, causing anxiety for slave masters.
• The question of Black people's humanity became one that divided the nation, creating the epithet: Nigger!
• Europe has never had this.
• The Black people's possessions posed no threat to European identity.

Black Identity

• But, the Black American was an inescapable part of the social fabric.
• The author attempts to show that even despite being an inescapable part, the tremendous effects the Black people have had on the American character are apparent
• The moral beliefs of a person are never as tenuous as life.
• Moral beliefs and convictions provide a frame of reference and a necessary hope

The Danger of Ideas

• To betray a belief is not to cease believing it.
• Morality is based on ideas, and ideas are dangerous because ideas lead to action
• Confronted with impossibility, one can be driven to inhuman excesses.
• Founding American ideas did not originate in America, they came from Europe.

Hard Necessities for Americans

• American democracy was not as radical a break with the past as the necessity of broadening the concept to include black people.
• It was impossible for Americans to abandon beliefs justifying sacrifices.
• American heritage and ideals threatened the idea of white supremacy.
• Americans are notorious for insisting on the idea of white supremacy, and excesses implying uneasiness over the idea's life and power: It's validity"
• The idea of white supremacy rests on white men being creators and guardians of civilization.
• Thus, it was impossible to accept the black man as an equal without jeopardizing their status as white men and complex
• The resulting rationalizations became seemingly pathological.

The Root of the Issue

• At the root of the American Negro problem is the necessity of the American white man to find a way of living with the Negro to be able to live with himself.
• The necessity is to come to terms, find a way around, or do both simultaneously.
• The situation is then described as foolish and dreadful, and someone made the quite accurate observation that "the Negro-in-America is a form of insanity which overtakes white men

The White man on the defense

• The white man's motive was protection of identity.
• The Black man's motive was to establish one's own identity The black man has still won the battle, despite everything he has and continues to endure
• As American as those who despise, fear, and love him.
• A relationship more terrible, subtle, and meaningful than bitterness
• Their survival depends on ability to turn the status in the Western world to his own advantage.
• The cathedral says something to the villagers it cannot say to him, but he is terrified of the well in the crypt and the gargoyles, while the villagers admire the spires, and glory of the windows.

Myth and Acceptance

• An acceptance of the status myth yields may help to change it.
• American Black has arrived at an identity out of estrangement of the past, whereas white men still imagine they can return to innocence
• That is an error: American identity has changed.

American and European Contrasts

• Americans are as unlike other white people as possible.
• The American view with less darkness and moral issues painted in black and white.
• This view is dangerously useless and inaccurate, weakening the gasp of reality
• People who shut their eyes invite destruction and innocence will turn one into a monster.

A New Man

• Interracial interaction has created a new Black man and a new white man.
• No road will lead Americans back to a European village where one is seen as a stranger.
• The fact that Americans are deeply involved in the lives of Black men makes it an achievement
• There always lies a perpetual challenge
• The black-white experience may prove of value to the world, since the world is no longer white and never will be again.