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marfireheart 's review for:
Black Like Me
by John Howard Griffin
“Black Like Me” by John Howard Griffith is a book that is compiled of his journals during a race experiment he conducted in the late 1950’s. It was interesting to see a white man decide to become a black man all for the sake of understanding racism; he was literally putting himself in someone else’s shoes. He changes his skin color in order to integrate himself into the “Negro” world and be able to understand how the average black man lives and how others treat him.
During this experiment, there are a few select people who know what he is doing. There is the shoe shiner who believes in what he is doing and always offers him advice. There is the doctor who helped change his skin pigmentation who was, at first, excited, but began to share concerns after seeing his skin actually darken.
Griffith wants to understand the bigotry and prejudiced against black people and he wants to understand it more than just a white man’s point of view. He wants to understand it more realistically: as a black man. He gets more than he bargained for, though, because he has to learn all the silent signals he never noticed before. He has to change his personality because smiling at a white woman while being a white man is polite, but if you smile at a white woman and you are black, well, then it is anything but friendly and polite. It used to get black people beaten, and even killed in some extreme cases (i.e. Emmett Till)
Griffith’s entire experiment was basically a question he wanted to answer: Were people racist, and if they were, why? Griffith believed that if he changed his skin color and shaved his head, but kept his personality intact, then he could discover whether people judged him based off of character or his skin color. He quickly learns that it is the latter. It didn’t matter how kind or polite or intelligent he was; white people only say his skin color, and that is all they wanted to see.
It took this drastic measure for Griffith, a white man, to come to the same conclusion that every black person already knew and lived: White people were racist and they judged people based off of their skin color.
There were some unpleasant moments in the book that Griffith had to deal with and there were some really startling and beautiful moments that he experienced while as a “black man”. Since he had to go so deeply into this experiment he conducted, he gained an interesting perspective into black people and their relation to the world which is beautifully said on page 119: “At such a time, the Negro can look at the starlit skies and find that he has, after all, a place in the universal order of things. The stars, the black skies affirm his humanity, his validity as a human being...The night is his consolation. It does not despise him.”
The people that were upset about his experiment and published journals were racist, white people. They didn’t like that “one of their own” had turned on them and then so publicly told the world about their racism. They didn’t like having to come face-to-face with the fact that they were ignorant, horrible people.
John Griffith’s experiment shed a light onto racism, during a time when most white people believed they were above such intolerance. His experiment made people confront the root of racism and take a hard look at themselves. In order for society to progress, the problems first need to be addressed, and that is what Griffith helped to do with this experiment.
During this experiment, there are a few select people who know what he is doing. There is the shoe shiner who believes in what he is doing and always offers him advice. There is the doctor who helped change his skin pigmentation who was, at first, excited, but began to share concerns after seeing his skin actually darken.
Griffith wants to understand the bigotry and prejudiced against black people and he wants to understand it more than just a white man’s point of view. He wants to understand it more realistically: as a black man. He gets more than he bargained for, though, because he has to learn all the silent signals he never noticed before. He has to change his personality because smiling at a white woman while being a white man is polite, but if you smile at a white woman and you are black, well, then it is anything but friendly and polite. It used to get black people beaten, and even killed in some extreme cases (i.e. Emmett Till)
Griffith’s entire experiment was basically a question he wanted to answer: Were people racist, and if they were, why? Griffith believed that if he changed his skin color and shaved his head, but kept his personality intact, then he could discover whether people judged him based off of character or his skin color. He quickly learns that it is the latter. It didn’t matter how kind or polite or intelligent he was; white people only say his skin color, and that is all they wanted to see.
It took this drastic measure for Griffith, a white man, to come to the same conclusion that every black person already knew and lived: White people were racist and they judged people based off of their skin color.
There were some unpleasant moments in the book that Griffith had to deal with and there were some really startling and beautiful moments that he experienced while as a “black man”. Since he had to go so deeply into this experiment he conducted, he gained an interesting perspective into black people and their relation to the world which is beautifully said on page 119: “At such a time, the Negro can look at the starlit skies and find that he has, after all, a place in the universal order of things. The stars, the black skies affirm his humanity, his validity as a human being...The night is his consolation. It does not despise him.”
The people that were upset about his experiment and published journals were racist, white people. They didn’t like that “one of their own” had turned on them and then so publicly told the world about their racism. They didn’t like having to come face-to-face with the fact that they were ignorant, horrible people.
John Griffith’s experiment shed a light onto racism, during a time when most white people believed they were above such intolerance. His experiment made people confront the root of racism and take a hard look at themselves. In order for society to progress, the problems first need to be addressed, and that is what Griffith helped to do with this experiment.