Paley considers herself a “stranger” in her piece as she is not accustomed to segregation, so when she witnesses it she is able to resist and see it as wrong unlike people who grew up surrounded by it. When she offered to hold a black woman’s baby for her on the bus she saw it as being the right thing to do, however the white man on the bus looked at her in disgust as that was typically unheard of at the time. She didn’t grow up or spend time around people with ideals that she was witnessing on the bus, so she did not find it natural to adhere to their ways of racism. Paley’s status as a “stranger” gave her a different mindset and the ability to resist the injustices of segregation.
