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Black Like Me By John Howard Griffin

668 Words3 Pages

Reena Khamphouy
Professor Renee Celeste
History_1302_2A1
1 May 2018
Racial Segregation: The Life of a Negro in the South
Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin is a nonfiction book first published in the year 1961. This book depicts the story of a white journalist who recounts his journey through the racially segregated states of the deep south. With the use of medication and dyes to temporarily alter the pigmentation of his skin, allowed him to experience firsthand, what it was like to be a negro in the south. In this book, John Howard Griffin argues that negroes suffered mistreatment and racial inequality.
Also, John Howard Griffin wrote this book to let people around the world know that he was aware of the truth. Also, he exposed the harsh …show more content…

Within this book tells of love, hate, confusion, and perseverance. John Howard Griffin argues that negroes suffered treatment and racial inequality. There are indications in this story to believe it to be true. To name a few, Griffin stated that an important part of his daily life in the south “was spent searching for a place to eat, somewhere to find a drink of water, a rest room, or somewhere to wash his hands” (99). Also, when “stopping at the dime store where he had made most of his purchases, the white girl at the counter refused to cash his travelers check” (49). I believe the significance of this book is Griffin’s overall thoughts after his six-week research was complete. He understood that “whites were saying the right things, showing deep concern over injustices, expressing determination to resolve the problem of racism, but never really consulting the black people as equals” (178). I would also like to speak on the strengths and weaknesses of this book. The strength of this book is Griffin’s ability to capture the raw emotions of this experiment as a whole. However, there were some weaknesses as well. The author does not inform the reader of the medication used to alter skin pigmentation. Although, I do agree that blacks were mistreated. I do not agree with his strict focus on the mistreatment of blacks. There are a few indications in the book that allowed the views of blacks from a white

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Racism showed in many different forms during Griffin social experiment. There was the hate stare, which Griffin described as, “You feel lost, sick at heart before such unmasked hatred, not so much because it threatens you as because it shows humans in such an inhuman light (52).” Another form was that blacks were denied the same basic privileges as whites, which Griffin encountered multiple times on his journey. Blacks were denied: jobs (38, 99 – 101), goods and services (49), and bathrooms (60 – 62, 85 – 86). And another form of racism is ignorance.

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In the book Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin, Griffin observed racism firsthand. But he can never fully experience being a Negro, he only changed his skin for 6 weeks. These are point from the book that prove this. In the book Griffin was a white man who wanted to change his skin color to experience racism and see what a Negro goes through.

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