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Black Like Me Themes

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Recommended: Racism in literature

Black Like Me written by John Howard Griffin is a book published in 1960 at the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement. When it comes to the saying ‘step in someone else’s shoe ‘John Howard Griffin take it to real life. .Deeply committed to the cause of racial justice and a need to understand the racial black experience, John Griffin takes it upon himself to temporarily become a black man. Experiences such as this one he undergoes “My revulsion turned to grief that my own people could give the hate stare, could shrivel men's souls, could deprive humans of rights they unhesitatingly accord their livestock." (Pg. 67) shows just what African American were going through at that time.
To want to go to such lengths to change the color of your skin there has to be a good reason right? I believe that John Howard Griffin was a strong believer in fair opportunities stated from the book "Too many of the more militant leaders are preaching Negro superiority. I pray that the Negro will not miss his chance to rise to greatness”, and what was going on with race through the Civil …show more content…

The overall theme that takes on in John Howard Griffins book is vileness of white racism and how evil it can be. The author reveals to all readers how painful it is too exposed to discrimination due to the color of your skin, something one cannot control. Griffin often tells us the anger, depression, and loneliness he felt for being a black man. Because of his skin color he non able to obtain higher achievement. Frustration is shown when quoted "Suddenly I had had enough. Suddenly I could stomach no more of this degradation- not of myself but of all men who were black like me."(Pg.132) I think Mr. Griffins great purpose of this book was to reveal exactly what African American where going through and what better way to do that than changing your identity from a white man to a black

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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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The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is a non fiction book written by Michelle Alexander, a well known civil rights lawyer, is a book that every American citizen should read. Alexander’s book cover is of three metal bars and two strong black hands holding them tightly. The book spent multiple weeks on The New York Times bestsellers list and has a foreword written by Cornel West, he is a well known and respected social activist. The book discuss how the new system of oppression for people of color in the United States is mass incarceration. Jim Crow laws were a systematic way to segregate and discriminate against black people.

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He believes people should not be judged by the color of their skins. So, he decides to take his own actions in his own way. Is skin color a more powerful determinant than gender? Griffin finds out that the people who saw him as white days earlier, would not give him the time of the day just because he his skin color to black. He suffered even more as he rode the bus of New Orleans, now whites would not want to sit by him

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John Howard Griffin is bold and adventurous in his writing in the eye opening novel Black Like Me. He is very descriptive in his experience in the South during the 1950’s. Griffin is a middle-aged white man living in Mansfield, Texas in 1959. Committed to the cause of racial justice and is curious of what it is really like to live as a black man in the South. To find out what it’s really like as a black man in the South during the 1950’s Griffin undergoes medical treatment to darken his skin.

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John Howard Griffin was only black for a short time of 6 weeks. He was still discriminated against almost the whole time he had the darker pigmentation. In the end he still was only Negro for 6 weeks

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The novel ‘Jasper Jones’ by Craig Silvey is centred around a young man named Charlie Bucktin living in the little Australian town of Corrigan in the late 1960 's. Charlie is presented with the issues of racial prejudice, shamefulness, and moral dishonesty. He is tested to address the idealism of right from wrong and acknowledges that the law doesn 't generally maintain equity. The thoughts are depicted through Silvey 's utilization of story traditions which are to either challenge or reinforce our values, states of mind and convictions on the issues brought before us. The 1960 's was an extremely dull period for numerous individuals whose race was recognizably unique - different to that of the “white” population.

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He wrote this piece to express his important opinion about the effect of racism and how he’s viewed as a man of color. He talks about his first encounter of racism when he was young man in college and was assumed to be a mugger or killer just because of skin. “It was in echo of that terrified woman’s footfalls that I first began to know the unwieldy inheritance I’d come into the ability to alter public space in ugly ways.” I feel that the author is trying to connect to his vast audience of people who don’t understand what it is like to a black man in society. Later he contemplated that he rejected or shunned by the white race collectively as a dangerous man.

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He got his first taste of what it was like to be a black when he got to Mansfield, Texas. John says “I remembered to let the white man on first” (12) something so simple as getting in to a car you would have to let the white man first. After several days he encounters multiple incidents of racism. After a while Griffin started to realize that

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“You never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them.” For Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird, this just meant imaging how someone else sees the world. John Howard Griffin, on the other hand, took a more literal approach; in order to understand the degree of prejudice the black community faces, he dyed his white skin black. He then took a plunge into the deep South — the most segregated part of the country. He didn’t change anything else about him — he kept his name, experience, dialect, history and personality — to find out the truth about the racism the other half deals with simply because of the color of their skin.

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By writing Black Like Me, John Griffin was trying to write down everything he felt was important on his journey as a black man. One of the major things wrote down was the idea of white racism. Which is the belief that white people are superior to other races and because of that should run society. So, the main topic of the novel was social divide of whites and African Americans. As a black man John saw the contempt white people had towards African Americans, and just the overall condescending attitude emanated from these people.

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The John Griffin Experience In the 1950’s, racism was at its peak in the US. In the book Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin, he puts himself into a black man’s shoes to experience an everyday life of what it is like being of darker color. He takes it upon himself to seek medical treatment to change the pigmentation of his skin from white to black. After undergoing this treatment, he sets out to New Orleans to begin his life in darker skin.

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The naivety of the narrator also reveals that during the time period, African Americans did not have the privilege of being naive because they could be taken advantage of, whether by their own community or their oppressors. Naive or not, however, African Americans often had to lose a part of themselves in order to conform. The only way the narrator was able to grow and find his sense of self was when he had the experiences and wisdom to acknowledge the fact that he was being forced into a mold that did not fit

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The story represents the culmination of Wright’s passionate desire to observe and reflect upon the racist world around him. Racism is so insidious that it prevents Richard from interacting normally, even with the whites who do treat him with a semblance of respect or with fellow blacks. For Richard, the true problem of racism is not simply that it exists, but that its roots in American culture are so deep it is doubtful whether these roots can be destroyed without destroying the culture itself. “It might have been that my tardiness in learning to sense white people as "white" people came from the fact that many of my relatives were "white"-looking people. My grandmother, who was white as any "white" person, had never looked "white" to me” (Wright 23).

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