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Black Like Me By John Howard Griffin

684 Words3 Pages

Have you ever noticed any racism in your life? John Howard Griffin decided to prove it existed against blacks by becoming black himself to experience it firsthand. He experienced life from a different point of view, that had deprived him of his civil rights in the South. One critique that read his book, Black Like Me, states that he could never relate to the black race because he was only a black for 6 weeks and that he knew he’d be white again. I believe that Griffin can relate to them, Griffin experienced a lot of racism to the point he was very depressed. Griffin can empathize to the black race because for 6 weeks he experienced everything they did. When Griffin changed his skin color, he almost instantly experienced racism. Within the first few days of being black, in journal November 10th-12th, a bus driver won’t let him off the bus. “He drove me 8 full blocks past my original spot” (Griffin 44). This was one of the common places for Negroes to be deprived of …show more content…

On page 52, in the journal of November 14th, Griffin experiences another “hate stare”. Then a Negro porter comes over to him, “his glance met mine and communicated the sorrow, the understanding” (Griffin 52). This was a moment that Griffin could share with the black community, it is proven by the look of understanding he is given by the fellow black man. After Griffin gets on the bus, he and all the other negroes on the bus are told they can’t get off to use the bathroom. “The whites rose and ambled off. Bill and I led the Negroes toward the door. As soon as he saw us, the driver blocked our way” (Griffin 60). The Negroes are all angry and try planning to get back at him by peeing on the bus, but decide it’d lead to more racism. This is a good example where Griffin relates to the black race, he was right there with them when they were deprived of using the

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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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He tries to get a decent paying job as a negro. Before he changed his skin, Griffin had a job that payed him well. Griffin doesn’t get the job due to his skin color and got told off by the person who interviewed him. (Griffin 111) I think one of the reasons Griffin was upset by this was because he had a job previously to changing his skin color and he wasn’t used to being treated the way he is.

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”(Griffin 7) This quote explains that Griffin wants to bridge the gap between white and black. By writing this it shows how far Griffin will go to make

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John Griffin dyed his skin black to pass as a Negro. He learned that because of his skin color he was judged differently by everyone that he met. This sets the plot of the book by laying out the three themes: race, religion, and identity. With race comes racism and segregation; at least that is how it was back in the 1950’s. All of these were experienced by John Griffin.

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John Howard Griffin, the main character and author of the book Black Like Me, was born in Dallas, Texas. In 1959 Griffin was living in Mansfield, Texas were he found himself frustrated in his inability to understand the black/African American experience. Wanting to experience firsthand the obstacles and hardships of being black in America, Griffin did something no one thought could be done. He decided to go through with a medical treatment to change the color of his skin, temporarily becoming a black man.

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Griffin should have taken the opportunity to accidently walk into the white’s bathroom and would have been able to experience what it was like to be yelled at for an accident instead he asked another black person where he should go. Griffin doesn’t take full advantages of the opportunities to be able to understand more about the race. Another opportunity griffin passed by that would have helped him embody a black person was when he was told “‘You’d better find yourself someplace else to rest’” (Griffin 43). Griffin could have peacefully protested and refused to move because he later discovered that negros had the right to sit in Jackson

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OHN HOWARD GRIFFIN’S BLACK LIKE ME- BOOK REVIEW Introduction John Howard Griffin, the author of Black like me, writes an autobiographical account what he passed through for a period of about 10 months. Howard has an idea that has been haunting him for a long duration of time; he basically wondered the various kinds of life changes that a white man would need to be labeled a Negro in the southern region of the United States. Howard wanted to acquire first hand information of the daily experiences of the African Americans in the Deep South. The book offers an account of the bad and good things that Howard went through because of the vivid makeover from being white to being black. This paper reviews John Howard Griffin’s

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In the book Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin he wants to experience what African America people have to encounter on a daily basis. Griffin explains, “If a white man became a Negro in the Deep South, what adjustments would he have to make?” (Griffin 1960, 1). Here Griffin explains that if a white man were to become a color person many whites wouldn’t believe in his beliefs of his experiment because he wouldn’t go through the same thing that the colored people go through. With the experiment that Griffin goes through he not only convinces people that the Southern legislators don’t have that “wonderfully harmonious relationship” (Griffin 1960, 1).

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John Howard Griffin's Black Like Me

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Was it worth trying to show the one race what went on behind the mask of the others?” (Griffin,126), and realizes that not all whites treat blacks with hatred it’s the blacks that treat the other blacks the same and some whites. After Martin Luther Kings speech in the late 50’s the world did change a lot but not completely but it just needed to take time. The way John Howard Griffin writes his book where he puts himself in the book as the main character and lets the reader know how life was like back in the late 50s and 60s, and how much are world has changed in the past few decades and how cruel white and black people were.

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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

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Racism had affected all African Americans and Griffin had seen it at its worst. As soon as he begins his new life as a black man, Griffin is quickly judged upon and hated. Even though he is a well-educated man who wants to find a decent job, his skin color changes everything that people think about him. They do not care how smart he is or what his personality may be like, they completely dislike him because he is black. Griffin talks about his thoughts of people using racial slurs explaining that “the word ‘nigger’ leaps out with electric clarity.

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