Black Like Me
In the Fall of 1959, John Howard Griffin set
out on a journey of discovery. A discovery of his
own nature, as well as a discovery of human nature.
With the help of a friend, Griffin transformed his
white male body into that of an African-American
male body. Through a series of medical treatments,
the transformation was complete. He spent the next
several months as an African-American traveling
through the deep South of the United States. What
he discovered changed his perspective of himself,
as well as his perspective of others.
On his journey, John Howard Griffin encountered
what could be termed the dark side of human nature.
He experienced racism in its purest form. He
experienced what it was like to live in squalor
with a sense of hopelessness. John Howard Griffin
also experienced the antagonism of those that
feared him solely because of the color of his skin.
His experiences even included witnessing acts of
racism with the African-American community. (1)
As a “white man” in “White America”, John
Howard Griffin enjoyed certain luxuries. With
those luxuries, however, is an independence of
sorts. A majority of white people pass through
life without much notice of other white people.
What he found as an African-American was that he
developed a bond with other African-Americans. The
type of bond that is shared between people in the
same situation. (2)
With this discovery came a certain amount of
hope. A hope that the human spirit will prevail
through any hardship. Through his journey, he
would step back into his true white self, and enter
back into the white world. He would then observe
the “black” world with a new sense of clarity. (3)
While in the “white” wo...
... middle of paper ...
...r as though both thinkers share
similar ideas in regards to this form of human
nature. It would be interesting to determine
whether race makes a difference in the outcome.
That is to say, what would happen if the roles were
reversed? What would happen if the black person
were in a position of power and the white person
were supressed?
If these are truly examples of human nature,
one could theorize that the outcome would remain
the same. As John Howard Griffin discovered from
his experiences, the only difference between white
and black is the color of our skin.
Bibliography:
(1) “Black Like Me” John Howard Griffin Pg. 55-59
(2) “Black Like Me” Pg. 116-117
(3) “Black Like Me” Pg. 118-121
(4)&(7) “The Battle For Human Nature” Barry Shwartz Pg. 41
(5) “Black Like Me” Pg. 85-96
(6) “Black Like Me” Pg. 156
(7)”Black Like Me” Pg. 133-139
John Howard Griffin's Black Like Me In John Howard Griffin's novel Black Like Me, Griffin travels through many Southern American states, including Mississippi. While in Mississippi Griffin experiences racial tension to a degree that he did not expect. It is in Mississippi that he encounters racial stereotypical views directed towards him, which causes him to realize the extent of the racial prejudices that exist. Mississippi is where he is finally able to understand the fellowship shared by
"Black Like Me" written by John Howard Griffin. Based on a white man who becomes black. Griffin wanted to know how life was for African American in the south. However, he was white and so that he would not be accepted by the Negroes. For that reason, Griffin darkened his skin and live as a Negro in the southern states in the 1950s. The central theme in the book was the white racism that he faced as African American. The author told us his experience as a Negro, and how he was a victim of the white
John Howard Griffin The black man in the Deep South of America was greatly despised during the 1950’s. The world that the Negroes lived in was not the same as whites in their society. In this book, John Howard Griffin Sacrifices his life as a middle-class white man and becomes a dirt poor Negro, trying to survive in the South. He simply did all of this in order to bring out the truth about what it is really and truly like to be a Negro in the South during the 1950’s. John Howard Griffin is a
In The South John Howard Griffin’s chronicled experiences as a black man in his book, “Black Like Me” is an arrogant if well meaning book. It is arrogant because a 28 day experiment does not compare to the years (especially when learning right from wrong) of prolonged discrimination and racism suffered by African-Americans in the southern United States during the 1950’s. Consider being treated not as a 2nd class citizen, but as a 10th class citizen. Consider being in front of a washroom,
Can’t Get Enough: How John Howard Griffin Is Unable to Understand the Daily Life of Blacks in America and Racism Towards Blacks In the late 1950s and early 1960s, author John Howard Griffin changed the color of his skin to test and experience the life of black people in America at the time. He soon discovered that there were many things he did not understand or expect about black life that shocked and surprised him. In the text Black Like Me, John Howard Griffin uses his thoughts and dialogue to
During the civil rights era, tensions between races were at an all time high. These tensions can be seen in John Howard Griffin’s autobiography, Black Like Me, and Guy Green’s screenplay, A Patch of Blue; yet while there are many historical and cultural similarities between the two works, there are also large dissimilarities. A Patch of Blue was originally a screenplay written in 1959 called Be Ready With Bells by Elizabeth Keta (Kringas). Born Elizabeth McDonald, Keta based her story after thinking
John Howard Griffin was an American Journalist who wrote mostly about racial equality. He is devoted to the problem of racial justice and confused about him being a white man trying to understand the experience of living like a black man. In this book, “Black like Me” Griffin took an essential move and went to a professional doctor to get his skin changed to black for a short period of time. Throughout this book, he is trying to understand living like a black man, he wants to find discrimination
Racism has the power to reform one's mind and dehumanize them. Southern society, blinded by the color of one's skin, disabled black people to share their true identity. The entries in John Howard Griffin’s book “Black Like Me” revealed the evils of racism within the South and the grotesque views of a white man on a black man. Through Griffin's experience and transformation to a black, second class citizen in America’s racist South, he exposes
way actions taken can influence an individual's understanding of themselves. For example, in John Howard Griffin's memoir, Black Like Me and Wes Moore's memoir, The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates were both authors encounter lifestyles of similar individuals. Through both comparable lifestyles, Griffin and Moore display the way work can affect the personal and social identities of
Did John Howard Griffin (Black Like Me) capture what it was like to be black or did he fool himself as well as everyone else? I am defining being ‘black’ not only as a skin colour but to include a black heritage. In this essay I will demonstrate that John Howard Griffin only got a glance at what it was like to be black and therefore did not capture what it meant to be an African-American. Furthermore, I will example that Griffin did not fool himself into thinking he was black as he was constantly
Black Like Me is a nonfiction book by journalist John Howard Griffin first published in 1961. Griffin was a white native of Dallas, Texas and the book describes his six-week experience travelling on Greyhound buses throughout the racially segregated states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia passing as a black man. Sepia Magazine financed the project in exchange for the right to print the account first as a series of articles. Griffin kept a journal of his experiences; the 188-page diary
Black Like Me Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin is a Multicultural story set in the south around the late 1950's in first person point of view about John Griffin in 1959 in the deep south of the east coast, who is a novelist that decides to get his skin temporarily darkened medically to black. What Griffin hopes to achieve is enough information about the relationships between blacks and whites to write a book about it.The overall main obstacle is society, and the racial divide in the south with
John Howard Griffin's novel, Black Like Me, and Barbara Kingsolver's novel, The Poisonwood Bible, describe journeys made by white Americans into black societies in the early 1960's. Griffin, a white journalist for Sepia magazine, took medication to darken his skin and entered the United States' Deep South to experience the plight of African Americans (Bain 195). His book is a true account of his experiences as a black man. Kingsolver writes of a man who, in many ways, made a similar journey
make himself black so he could go undercover and see how hostile whites treated blacks. Griffin traveled around throughout the south and saw how the race relations changed in different places in the south. Once Griffin completed his experiment and told everyone about his findings, he was shunned by every white in his hometown in Texas but received support from both whites and blacks world wide. Both blacks and whites supported his idea to show everybody how badly whites treat blacks. Griffin got
John Howard Griffin, an American author, photographer and journalist, was best known for his six-week long diary of a journey into oblivion, Black Like Me (1961). He was born the second son of John Walter and Lena May on June 16, 1920 in Mansfield, Texas. Griffin had pondered for years how a white man must change in order to pass as a Negro, and in November 1959, he finally decided to test this, exposing himself to ultraviolet lights and ingesting pigmentation pills to darken his skin. After five