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Racism In John Griffin's Black Like Me

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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. Black Like Me gave me more insight on racism, taught more about the importance of identity, and the arrogance of hypocrisy. The novel opened up my eyes to how gloomy it was to be dark-skinned in the fifties, even currently in the world today. Millennials have such a widespread source of how we can retrieve news and keep up to date with the world just at the press of a button; however, commonly having that ability is not always a fantastic thing. As a society we need to be more accepting of those who are unique, race does not define someone and people should not have to think “will they treat me as who I am regardless of my skin color or will they treat me as some nameless Negro?” (Griffin 8). After acknowledging more about the circumstances of being a different skin color, comments about it can not “describe the withering horror and sadness” that is felt by those who experience such cold and spiteful words or actions (Griffin 46). If we do not make these changes together as a nation, our society will become ruined as those with
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Black Like Me is an incredible journey into what life was like in the Deep South during the late 1950s. John Griffin performed a social experiment to see what was life really like for blacks in the Southern States. John Griffin transformed himself into a black man and recorded his experiences into a book, Black Like Me. I was fascinated that 1950s science and medicine had advanced enough to allow someone to change the pigment of their skin. The procedure that Griffin underwent was simply taking pills and exposing himself to ultra violet rays (6).

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"But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that “Funtown” is closed to colored children, and see the depressing cloud of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored,” when your first name becomes “nigger” and your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodyness” -- then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait."

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