Summary Of James Baldwin's A Fly In Buttermilk

At the start of his essay, A fly in Buttermilk, renowned author James Baldwin describes the struggle of going from one place to another without losing one's identity. This is the plight of a young African-American boy, who Baldwin refers to as G., courageously accepts the challenge to integrate into an all-white southern school. Because leaving a school that doesn't care about him and attending a school that doesn’t want him puts an unimaginable burden upon him and pushes G. into a state of perpetual isolation. The boy works hard to keep up with his studies to make sure he gets an education, and his quiet, mild-mannered temperament allows him to say he doesn't mind the name calling or all the trouble this switch causes. By not giving us

Baldwin reflects on what the principal said after escorting G. to class through a wall of students, "There hadn’t been any trouble and that he didn't expect any" (193). He blew off the whole blockade incident as merely a gesture because the kids did this before and they were just flippant. The principal also didn't mention the nasty things the children shouted at him. This is kind of naïve of the principal because he should have known from the start G. wasn't going to be accepted readily. Baldwin then changes the conversation by asking about the reason colored children wanted to go to white schools in the first place. The principal offered, "It seems to me that colored schools are just as good as white schools" (195), yet he didn't offer any evidence to prove that colored schools were as good as white schools. He didn’t see what kind of life came out of and what the future holds for the average colored student in the below average colored school. All the colored students want is a better education. With that education, African-Americans will rise out of the place where they have been driven and be recognized for their

Baldwin writes in A Talk to Teachers, "He can more or less accept it with an absolute inarticulate and dangerous rage inside—all the more dangerous because it is never expressed" (681). G. is silent and keeps his head down as he escapes into his books to try to accept the facts for what they are. By keeping to himself, G. at some point might step out of character and become someone he isn't. It is part of the struggle for African-Americans, keeping everything inside to appease white people and accept for now that this is the way the fight has to be. Baldwin notes in Stranger in the Village, "In this long battle, a battle by no means finished, the unforeseeable effects of which will be felt by many future generations, the white man's motive was the protection of his identity; the black man was motivated by the need to establish an identity" (127). By attending the white schools colored students can develop an identity and show that they are just as worthy and just as smart as the white students. People now, of both colors, have a battle within themselves and the barriers will fall by looking inside and accepting the fact that the change isn’t going to be effortless, but it's going to