Black Like Me Analysis

The discriminating social stratification in 1950’s developed a set of servile behavior on the blacks. They were thought to be inferior to whites, and were treated accordingly. Moreover, different parts of the country had various ranges of sensitivities while dealing with the blacks. For example, in Mississippi things were particularly tense after the Parker lynch case. No black man would dare look into any white man’s eyes in fear of the repercussions. On the bus, a man warned Griffin to watch himself closely until he caught onto Mississippi’s ways. In an extreme case like this, it was vital to learn about their roles and behave accordingly.

Griffin confided his true identity with a few on his journey, but most knew him only as a

The assigned book, Black Like Me is a gripping story. John Howard Griffin, the author and the main character of the book, made two decisions. 1) to become a “Negro” to find out if discrimination (the real problem) exists between the White and Black Americans and 2) to bridge the gap between the White and Black Americans. To me, his experience felt like an eternity in Hell. Because he was no longer white, I didn’t know what was going happen to John Howard Griffin. Like him, I too had questioned wether the “whites” would treat him nicely or treat him like a shadow, also known in the book as one of those “nameless Negro.” I didn’t expect the Griffins experience to go down the way it did. The whites knew the White, John Howard Griffin, so why did they hate the black, John Howard Griffin?

In the beginning of the book, Griffin thoroughly believes that the only way “to bridge the gap between us [white men and Negros] was to become a Negro.” He took the next step after developing this hypothesis and literally became a black man after several days of rigorous treatment to his skin. He looked like a Negro through and through, so much that once he saw his new self, he had an identity crisis. The John Griffin he once knew was erased and replaced with an unfamiliar dark face that goes off into the city looking for a place to stay. As he does this, he observes how people treat him and sees a huge difference in treatment between his once white self and his now black self. Before his transformation, white people had greeted him with friendly smiles and gestures and black people glared at him resentfully.

Introduction—include the title of your book, the name of the author, the central question, and a thesis statement, or position you will take in your essay.

In The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man written by James Weldon Johnson, the theme that builds up throughout the novel is identity is shaped by many different aspects, and, at times, it can be hard to find. The main character, James Weldon Johnson, goes through multiple different aspects of society with hardships and difficulties while he is finding who he is. In order to find his identity, James finds out that he is a black man; he encounters many hardships; wonders if his passion is with music; and, in the end, comes to identify himself as a white man.

In chapter 1, The Seat on the Trouble, of his book, The Mis-Education of the Negro, Carter Godwin Woodson discusses the disdain that educated Negroes have towards their fellow Negroes because in school, they were taught to honor other races and detest their own. Woodson states, “the “educated Negroes” have the attitude of contempt toward their own people because in their own as well as in their mixed schools Negroes are taught to admire the Hebrew , the Greek… and to despise the African” (7). The Negro was dismissed as a being mediocre. According to Woodson, being educated does not change things for the Negro as often time, opportunity for them is limited so they return to black communities to teach what they have been taught. However, as they have been taught to hate their own race, their role is questioned. Further on in the chapter, Woodson says that, the worst form of lynching is to trammel a student by teaching him that being black is a curse and there is no hope of change in his situation (8). In every type of school, Woodson argues, Blacks are deprived of the teachings they need to develop on their own. Success, as the Blacks are taught, is to live in the Whites shadows. This shows the contrasting views between Woodson and the eurocentric education system which he discusses in the chapter.

Black Like Me is a film about a white reporter who darkens his skin in order to report and experience life from the other side of the “color line.” John Howard Griffin passed as an African American man for six weeks in the deep south during the height of the civil-rights movement. John undergoes mental torment, abuse, discrimination, and treated as an inferior by whites. Throughout histravels, John encounters three Southern white men who are wiling to stop to pick him up when he hitchhikes. Disturbingly two of the men only do so to ask offensive and indelicate questions about his sex life. Having ben picked up by repulsive racist, John is last picked up by a kind construction worker who seems to not care about John’s skin color.

In the fall of 1959 John Howard Griffin, a white man, was engrossed with the state of the race/segregation issue in the southern United States. To accomplish this task JHG took special pills and exposed himself to ultraviolet rays to darken the pigmentation of his skin, on top of the pills he also rubbed in a special dye that caused his skin to become even darker. After “transforming” into a bald-headed, black man JHG set across the southern United States. On his adventure he kept a journal, to document the events, in his journal he wrote about the people that he met and the advisement that they gave him. A considerable amount of the quotes throughout the journal Black like Me are profound and carry a meaning

As Griffin lives as a Negro he strives to find the ‘immortality’ in the black race, but finds more fault in the narrow-minded whites. The novel is an exceptional and creative story that captures the true reality of ‘being in someone else’s shoes.’ “Black Like Me” supports the hypothesis as it clearly displays how ignorance is deeply embedded in traditional values.

The narrator’s loss of identity also stems from his inability to understand or accept his black heritage (Draper 674). He is ashamed of his Southern roots, and he often disparages his ethnicity and racial traditions. He even fails to acknowledge others who

During his experiment, Griffin noticed right away the differences in which he was treated when he was a white man and then when he would transform into a black man. When he was a white man, the white folks would treat him with respect and with courtesy, while the black folks would be suspicious with him. When he was a black man, they would treat him as if he was one of them, but the white folks disregarded him and treated him like any other “nigger”. A particular scene where he noticed the difference is when he went into a pharmacy. When he was a white man, he was able to order limeade or ask for a glass of water, but when he went in as a Negro, he was not able to. Griffin had said the smells he smelled as a white man were the same as a black man. I believe it is very true and that no matter the color of our skin some things we will always have in common. I was also able to obtain an insight on the effects a child has growing up during the segregated south.

Covering the Dialogical Self Theory entails an encompassing understanding of how the self functions and exist. It is also imperative to have a comprehension of what self denotes and the manner dialogues apply to self. This concept is a complex one to perceive, in as much as we conduct ourselves through our daily lives in appreciation of the Dialogical self-theory. Throughout Griffin’s Black Like Me, there is an illumination of the Dialogical Self- a mentality that allows the author to see himself as both black and white, often living as both races simultaneously in his mind.

“I’d thought about the idea of living as a black person ever since I read John Howard Griffin’s Black Like Me.” This is an excerpt from Skin Deep: “Black Like Me” My Own Journey into the heart of Race-Conscious America. It was an intriguing story of how a young white male felt such an urge to encompass the life of a black man that he purposely changed his skin color. My first reaction was, “How strange for someone to do that” yet; as I read on I changed my initial reaction of puzzlement to, “What a reality check that must have been.”

between a white and a black man and settles in his mind that everyone is a human being. Griffin narrates that in his life as a black man he witnesses sociability, which is the one thing he never thought as a white man existed within the black society. Griffin had never practiced what it meant to be black, and his I position was enlightened by how the blacks behaved towards white people and what they said. In his white society, the “I” position regarding blacks was not quite a real picture of the blacks experience in the racist society. As a black man, he saw things in a new light and realized how racism was established among white people.