Analysis Of The Book ' Black Like Me '

Kelly Brown Douglas begins by posing a series of questions, including, “Who is the Black Christ?” and “Is the Black Christ Enough?” (6-7) For Douglas, the Black Christ, “…represents God’s urgent movement in human history to set Black captives free from the demons of White racism” (3). The question of “Who is the Black Christ?” is addressed in Chapter 3. The question of “Is the Black Christ enough?” is addressed in Chapters 4 and 5, as Douglas critically examines the relationship of the Black Christ to the Black community and ends with addressing what womanist theology is and why there is a need for it in understanding the Black Christ.

Much like social norms vary from legal norms. Social norms were the predominant force Griffin encountered throughout his research. Although legal norms played a particular part, judgment was based on the structures of mutual belief, not necessarily judicial. For example, the "whites" of the southern United States were holding the assumption that the "blacks" were sexually demented and intellectually impaired (Griffin, 1962: p. 114). The southern white majority assumed that African-Americans were so open about their sex lives that they even performed activities in the streets and in front of children. They also believed that the blacks wanted white woman sexually and that due to their lack of education all they knew was their natural instinct to reproduce. They assumed this behavior to be applicable to all African-American men. As Griffin tries to explain, he can find no inferiority amongst the blacks; "These characteristics don't spring from whiteness or blackness, but from a man's conditioning" (Griffin, 1962: p. 92).

The book Black Hearts opened my eyes to how leadership from a single Officer can have a grappling effect on such a wide range of soldiers from the lowest of ranks. One of the best takeaways from Black Hearts is to never do anything: illegal, unethical, or immoral. Although this is a easy statement to repeat, Black Hearts demonstrates the difficulties that lie behind these words. It has also painted a picture of how leadership can topple extremely quickly from a top down view. The Army is portrayed in a bad light throughout the book relentlessly. This is due to the concentration of poor leadership of the 1-502nd Regiment (Referred to as “First Strike”), a battalion of the 101st Airborne Division.

The black race has faced many hardships throughout American history. The harsh treatment is apparent through the brutal slavery era, the Civil Rights movement, or even now where sparks of racial separation emerge in urbanized areas of Baltimore, Chicago, and Detroit. Black Americans must do something to defend their right as an equal American. “I Am Not Your Negro” argues that the black race will not thrive unless society stands up against the conventional racism that still appears in modern America. “The Other Wes Moore” argues an inspiring message that proves success is a product of one’s choices instead of one’s environment or expectations.

“Have you ever wondered what a human life is worth? That morning my brother’s was worth a pocket watch.” This book is Between Shades of Grey, by Ruta Sepetys. The genre of this book is historical fiction. The book is about a 13-year-old girl, Lina, and her family. They are a Jewish family at the time of the Nazi’s. This was not a very good time in Lina, her brother, or her mom’s life. All of a sudden Lina and her family find themselves on a railroad cattle car and they don’t know where they are going or where their dad is. On the cattle car, Lina meets a cute boy her age named Andrius who is trying to find his dad, also. Lina and Andrius go and try to find their dads. Lina finder hers, but Andrius comes up empty-handed. When they get off the cattle car, which is 1 year later, Lina is split up from her dad, so she has to work to try to find him again but then she finds out he is dead. Lina gets out of the camp they are in and her and Andrius get married. In the book Between Shades Of Grey, by Ruta Sepetys Lina is courageous, determined, and loving.

“Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I had clutched at books.” –Richard Wright, Black Boy. The author suffered and lived through an isolated society, where books were the only option for him to escape the reality of the world. Wright wrote this fictionalized book about his childhood and adulthood to portray the dark and cruel civilization and to illustrate the difficulties that blacks had, living in a world run by whites.

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.

David R. Roediger displays the history of how the theory of “whiteness” has evolved throughout the years in America in his book, The Wages of Whiteness. According to Roediger, “whiteness” is much a constructed identity as “blackness” or any other. He argues that this idea of “whiteness” has absolutely nothing to do with the advantage of the economy, but that it is a psychological racial stereotype that was created by white men themselves. He claims that it is definitely true that racism should be set in class and economic contexts, also stating that “this book will argue that working class formation and the systematic development of a sense of whiteness, went hand in hand for the U.S white working class.” Roediger basically lays out the fact that “working class ‘whiteness’ and “white supremacy” are ideological and psychological creations of the white working class itself.

What if we could walk in each other’s shoes? What if we could truly understand what our brothers and sisters are going through? These questions and more are what John Howard Griffin strived to answer when he surgically changed his complexion to resemble that of a black man in his book, Black Like Me. He set out to write a biting commentary about the state of race in the United States, but what he experienced changed his life forever. Griffin learned two very valuable lessons that dominated his experience; good can exist in the midst of suffocating evil and to bridge the gap between races there must be mutual understanding. To analyze such a powerful book, I will start with a summary and then explain my thoughts on the text.

The book opens with a squad of soldiers running a tactical control point just outside of a village called Yusufiyah. They are approached when a man Abu Muhammad had found his cousins family brutally murdered not too far off. Sgt. Tony Yribe and 3 others went to go investigate it. Although it was a terrible scene Sgt. Yribe had just assumed that it was like most other situations in Iraq in that the family was a victim of Iraqis attacking other Iraqis. The one thing that bothered him was that there was a shotgun shell and Iraqis do not normally use shotguns.

Life for black men and women in the early and mid 1900s was difficult. They were often discriminated against by members of the white race. Many people tried to understand what life was like for the black race during this time, but none went as far as John Griffin. Some say that his story was not true or that it was not really a black man’s experience, but a white man’s. I believe that a white man could come close to understanding what discrimination against black men and women was like but I don’t believe that it was foolish of him to try it because of his newfound knowledge and empathy towards the black race.

How would you feel to be discriminated, or harassed by people who are the same as you, but see you as something different? In the story Black Like Me, a white man named John decided to find out for himself, by turning his skin to black and move to the worst places in the country. ¨With my decision to become a Negro I realized that I a specialist in race issues, really knew nothing of the Negroś real problems.¨ (Griffin 8) I will be finding similarities and differences between the Black Like Me film and book.

So, Mr. Griffin had a multistage process done on his body so that the pigment of his skin would appear darker. After many treatments of ultraviolet light and tablet pills, Mr. Griffin had become a black man. After Mr. Griffin’s transformation was complete, he immersed himself into the black community. Mr. Griffin was not prepared for what would happen to him once in the black life. While Mr. Griffin traveled to different places in the south he met numerous people, both black and white. Some people were friendly while others were quite hostile.

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 however he lacked the experience and exposure to the truth. He decided that the best way to write about this was to be a part of the black community. He consulted with a doctor about making his skin darker so that he can be physically identified as a black man. His doctor was successful in providing him medicine that would make him dark-skinned.

Baratunde Thurston book, How to be Black, paints hilarious comedic memoir of the authors life growing up black. In his book, Baratunde gives you a guide for anyone wanting to be befriend or work with a group of African American individuals or challenge those who claim to speak for all African American individuals. The book is not only filled with comedic advice but paints his childhood during the worst crack addict neighborhood in