Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son

Chapter 2 describes the events of the Conference of Negro-African Writers and Artists in Paris on September 19th, 1956. Baldwin carefully details the arguments of each speaker and the reactions of the audiences. Some of these arguments compel Baldwin to examine his own perceptions in a new way. Others, like Richard Wright’s assertion that European colonizers brought Enlightenment to Africa and that this was for the good of all humankind, give Baldwin pause.

The conference opens with eight Black men discussing Black culture within the context of European subjugation. Alioune Diop, a Senegalese writer, argues that it is nearly impossible for Black people to reclaim a culture that is steeped in a European history of extreme discrimination and violence. Assimilation demands that Black people succumb to European culture and thinking while still holding them at arm’s length.

Baldwin exposes palpable tension at the conference. The presence of American delegates causes many to censor their language and points, and the wide variety of participants means a range of conflicting political ideologies. Baldwin is also aware of the distinction between conference attendees from Africa and those from the United States. The latter group feels as though they can never fully separate themselves from their European heritage, even though their European culture began as a product of enslavement by white colonizers. Baldwin argues that Black Americans understand that they have also paid a high price for that culture: “Nothing, in any case, could take away our title to the land which we, too, had purchased with our blood” (20). The questions of the conference are how to identify and preserve Black culture, and whether Black culture can be distinguished from European influence.

The shared vision among all the conference participants is the desire to be free from the control of a Eurocentric image of the world and to offer their own image of what the world could be. Aimé Césaire, poet and politician, challenges the intentions of white colonizers. He proposes that colonization only seeks to replace culture with its own to ensure its own power. It is not interested in preserving an old culture or offering culture as a gift. Colonized groups create subcultures on the margins of European culture, because these margins of society are the only space they have been permitted to occupy.

Although Baldwin appreciates Césaire’s point, he feels it is not enough to merely talk about the injustices of colonization. Instead, Baldwin suggests that creativity gives the victim of injustice a new identity. Their power and freedom exist within their ability to create something new, including a new culture of their own.