Stranger In A Village, Black Men And Public Spaces, And Letter From Birmingham Jail

All three of the essays I have chosen revolve around Black men and their stories of racism and oppression. They are portrayed as “big bad guys” that are given negative profiles which are based on ignorance as seen in “Stranger in a Village,” “Black Men and Public Spaces,” and “Letter from Birmingham Jail”. Each of the black men in the essays are ridiculed, misunderstood, and have prejudice behaviors due to the color of their skin. The main purpose of these essays were to shed light on the issues that blacks were faced with in the early and mid-twentieth century that are still occurring today. Typically, the main audience is the majority or Caucasian race, who deem themselves as superior. “Stranger in a Village” tells about Baldwin and his stay in a small village in Switzerland. He compares and contrasts his experience as a black man in the village to a black man living on The United States. The thesis is Baldwin's view point and how he sees the frequent disrespect and racism that whites have towards Blacks people.

The author talks about many of the problems he faces as a black man. He shares an experience when he was younger about his “first victim,” a white woman walking down the street. As he walked behind her the women begin to walk faster, almost breaking into a sprint. He uses diction as his rhetorical strategy here because he says “victim” in a sarcastic tone. She stereotyped him to be a “mugger, rapist, or worse.” He goes on to talk about his many other encounters where he was stereotyped. I believe the underlying thesis of this story pertains to the stereotypical views that black people have to contend with by their white