Black Like Me - 804 Words

Black Like me The book Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin is a moving true story of how a white man manages to experience what it is like to be a â€Å"Negro† or black person in the 1950s. The author did this social experiment by taking medication and dying his skin a deep brown. He wanted to really experience the challenges and changes a black man in this time would go through. By traveling through the far south, Griffin got a taste of what real life was for a Negro. The experiment starts in the 1950’s and continues through the 1960’s. Griffin was a journalist seeking an opportunity to truly get to know what life was like for a Black person, especially in the South. At the time he was a middle-aged white man and grew up in Texas, where he†¦show more content†¦Ã¢â‚¬Å"He promised perfect discretion and enthusiastically began coaching me†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (23). Griffen soon left Sterling and began traveling through Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia. â€Å"How did one start? The night lay out there waiting. A thousand questions presented themselves.† (11) After taking the medication and applying the dye to his bare skin, looking in the mirror was surprising. It took some time to get used to. In the time he was traveling through the south, he encountered situations he had never been in before. Griffen learned many things through his journey, especially about how he was expected to act towards white people. â€Å"Once again a ‘hate stare’ drew my attention like a magnet.† (51). He learns not to stop and loiter, not to look directly in the eyes, and also not to stare at white woman. The author talks about how much of a contrast there was between the life of a privileged white man and a black man in the South. It was harder for blacks to get jobs, to buy meals, and to own a home. He wrote about how he was treated in a store. The clerk â€Å"jerked the bill furiously from my hand and stepped away from the window. In a moment she reappeared to hurl my change and the ticket on the counter with such force most of it fell on the floor at my feet.† (51). It was surprising to him that just based on somebody’s skin color, the change of attitude in people. In addition he experienced negative attitudes while traveling on a bus; the atmosphere was diffe rent as aShow MoreRelatedLiterary Analysis Of Black Like Me 1389 Words   |  6 PagesUniversity Of South Florida A Literary Analysis of â€Å"Black Like Me† Raed Margushi Academic Preparation Lisana Mohamed 4th of December, 2015 A Literary Analysis of â€Å"Black Like Me† John Howard Griffin was a writer who wanted to write about the truth. In dealing with the racial discrimination problems in the United States, Griffin wanted to write about the realities of the situation. However, he was a white man. He empathized with the black people and wanted equality for them as well howeverRead MoreBlack Like Me972 Words   |  4 PagesBlack Like Me Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin is a Multicultural story set in the south around the late 1950s 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 southRead MoreBlack Like Me1031 Words   |  4 Pagesfor thousands of years, due to the built up ignorance and intolerance of prior generations passing along bad morals onto their offspring. In fact, it was not until the 1954 Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education (EEOC) that whites and Blacks even began to attempt to integrate publicly. And even then, whites held an unreasonable amount of hostility against the African-American race. But even despite multiple failed attempts in the past, the government was finally beginning to gain groundRead MoreEssay on Sociology: Black Like Me1713 Words   |  7 Pagesbased on their abilities. (Class notes, SOCI 201, Winter 2010) An example to illustrate this argument from Black Like Me is found on page 39. The elderly owner of the Y cafà © complained to Griffin about how unfair the economic system was to black people. Many brilliant black students graduated with great marks, but still ended up doing the most menial work or very few selected jobs. Many black people, therefore, chose not to educate themselves. As a result, the whites said they were not worthy of first-classRead MoreBlack Like Me : Book Report979 Words   |  4 PagesGrace Haskin Communication Research: Book Report November 21, 2014 Black Like Me Black Like Me is a research diary kept by John Griffin in 1959. Griffin, a white male, is bothered by racism and wants to experience what it is like to be black. He begins taking medication and rubs shoe polish on himself to darken the color of his skin to temporarily pass as a black man. Sepia, a black oriented magazine, sponsors Griffin’s study in exchange for written articles about the experience. With his newRead MoreBlack Like Me Sociological Terms1088 Words   |  5 Pages9, 2012 Black Like Me Black Like Me is a non-fiction book written by John Howard Griffin about what a black, middle-aged man has to go through every day in the Deep South. To find out what it is like to be a Negro, Griffin changes his skin color to that of a black. During his experiences, Griffin keeps a journal and that is what this book is. Black Like Me is a journal of Griffins feelings, experiences, pains, and friends. The setting of Black Like Me is intenselyRead More The Beauty of Color Essay2043 Words   |  9 Pagescaressed me immediately; in synch with the stopping of the engine was the start of us. I say us because I feel like that’s what it is to become intimate with someone, you merge, mesh, mix into some form of a united being. I enjoyed him. Intimacy was an act of passion. It didn’t take love to feel passion, and it didn’t take an appropriate union to become a part of another person. We were one as he kissed me, touched me. I felt him and he felt me. One. â€Å"You like that,† he said, panting like some needyRead MoreAnalysis Of The Book Black Like Me 1582 Words   |  7 PagesThe book â€Å"Black Like Me† presented a lot of interesting topics about racial diversity in the United States during the 1960’s. Howard Griffin embarked on a journey that no other man in this time would dare do. H decided to leave his privileged life as a white man behind and travel to the South and live as a black man, to really understand the pressures that they dealt with and to see things from a different perspective. The only real way to do so was to become a black man. He began taking medicationRead MoreEssay on Black Like Me and Crash965 Words   |  4 PagesBlack Like Me and Crash In 1959 John Howard Griffin, the author of the book Black Like Me, disguised himself as an African American and decided to go live out in society to see what it would be like to be a black man. The book Black Like Me is his documentation of that experience. His story spread around the world and he got a lot of praise from people around the world, but he also got a good amount if hate from the white power groups who were quite prevalent at the time. Now, much time has passedRead MoreBlack Like Me : Character Analysis2454 Words   |  10 Pages Black Like Me Character Analysis Matthew Wighton March 20, 2015 Dr. Karafantis ICBS-302 W01 Black Like Me is about a white male, John Howard Griffin, who was disheartened by how blacks were being treated. In an effort to bridge the gap between blacks and whites Mr. Griffin conducted research on blacks. Because Mr. Griffin is a white man the black community would not speak to him truthfully. Blacks were afraid that whites would harm them if they said anything offensive. Mr. Griffin