Black Like Me Book Report

“All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” This is not a choice it is a right. As a human being, we have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But as of now, no black people are getting these unalienable rights. Why do we think we are better than anyone else? Why do we mistreat them? Why do we not give them the rights they deserve? Do not let the society influence you. We are all one. We are in this together.

In Richard Wright’s novel, Black Boy, Richard is struggling to survive in a racist environment in the South. In his youth, Richard is vaguely aware of the differences between blacks and whites. He scarcely notices if a person is black or white, and views all people equally. As Richard grows older, he becomes more and more aware of how whites treat blacks, the social differences between the races, and how he is expected to act when in the presence of white people. Richard, with a rebellious nature, finds that he is torn between his need to be treated respectfully, with dignity and as an individual with value and his need to conform to the white rules of society for survival and acceptance.

On his journey Griffin anticipates that he would experience prejudice, oppression, and hardship, but he what he wasn’t equipped to handle the magnitude of it: with every step he took, he experiences some form of racism. The word "nigger" seems to sprout out the mouth of the common man as water flows from a faucet left an echo on every street corner. In his travels to New Orleans he founded how hard it was to find a job, a nice place to eat, or even find a decent restroom for blacks. After numerous traumatic days in New Orleans, Griffin decides to continue his

The struggle for equality has existed throughout history. The color of a person’s skin seems to depict everything about them. Not only was this an issue in earlier times, but the present as well. The battle to overcome inequity was made significantly more troublesome in the Plessy v. Ferguson case of 1896.

In this spellbinding lecture, the author of White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son offers a unique, inside-out view of race and racism in America. Expertly overcoming the defensiveness that often surrounds these issues, Wise provides a non-confrontational explanation of white privilege and the damage it does not only to people of color, but to white people as well. This is an invaluable classroom resource: an ideal introduction to the social construction of racial identities, and a critical new tool for exploring the often invoked – but seldom explained – concept of white privilege.

According to law, civil rights are something that everyone is given. However, history has shown that this is not always the case. Everyday, Americans still go through discrimination because of their skin color. As a result of the KKK, the United States today is not as integrated as it should be.

The election of Barack Obama as the 56th president of the United States raised many hopes that the “Black struggles” was finally over. For conservatives, Obama victory reassured their beliefs that there was no longer such thing as racism and that every American had equal rights and opportunity to pursue the American dream. While many people have come to believe that all races have equal rights in America, Tim Wise argues in his documentary “White Like Me” that not only does racism and unconscious racial bias still exist, but that also White Americans are unable to simply relate to the variety of forms racism and inequality Blacks experience. This is mainly because of the privileges they get as the “default.” While Wise explores the variety forms of racism and inequality today such as unconscious racism, Black poverty, unemployment, inadequate education system, and prison system, the articles by the New York Times Editorial Board, the Human Rights Watch (HRW), and Adam Liptak further explore some the disparities in the criminal justice system. Ana Swanson points out in her article, “The Stubborn Persistence of Black-White Inequality, 50 Years after Selma” that while the “U.S. has made big strides towards equal rights,” significant gaps still remains between the two races. With the Supreme Court striking down a “portion of the Voting Rights Act that stopped discriminatory voting laws from going into effect in areas of the country with histories of disenfranchisement,” civil

If you stop and sit on the curb, a police officer will pass and probably ask you what you’re doing. I have heard none of the Negroes speak of police harassment, but have warned me that any time the police see a Negro idling, especially one they do not recognize, they will surely question him.(pg.43)

As both Americans and people, our rights are limited and regulated by those in command. The enforcement of these regulations of just treatment is, unfortunately, more severe or less severe depending on race, gender, and wealth. Since the beginning of the United States, the oppression of people of color was present to the strongest extent. White, Europeans arrived in the Americas and looked at the people of color as beings brought to serve them. We forced them to work and when the Native people died out, the Europeans brought in African Americans as their new slaves in the 1700s. Since then, even though they fought to abolish slavery and for their rights, our country continues to treat them differently. This was the case of Henrietta Lacks,

What if you were captured as a slave how would you feel? Do you think you could survive? In the 1700’s life was very different than it is now. Back then if you were a Negro you would have to be extra careful or you could be sold as a slave. But imagine being sold after witnessing the death of your parents and being a child you would be traumatized. Now we do not have those kinds of worries; life was very different then than it is now. As a child, Aminata was taken away and captured as a slave, faced public humiliation, and lost her family, but in the end she overcame it all.

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 passed and many people say the days of racism are over. That is a completely untrue statement. The movie Crash depicts modern day racism and shows how prevalent it really is in today’s society. Both of these works can relate to one another in many

The book’s narrator and main character is Griffin himself. At the beginning of the book, Griffin is living in small town rural Texas. Being an adamant supporter of the civil rights movement and plagued by an inability to understand what the black community is going through, Griffin decides to take a radical step. He hatches a plan to go undercover and surgically change his appearance to that of a black man. Griffin then plans to write an article chronicling his experience. He travels to the deep south to experience racism first hand.

The Book of Negroes and A Boy Called Nam are two influential pieces of Canadian literature. Published in 2007, Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes is a historic fiction while A Boy Called Nam, written in 1984 by Leo Heaps, is based on a true story. The Book of Negroes chronicles the fictional life of Aminata Diallo from the time she is kidnapped from her West African village and sent to colonial America as a slave to her eventual journey to freedom. Conversely, A Boy Called Nam is about a ten-year-old Vietnamese refugee, his survival of the shipwrecking of his refugee boat, which kills everyone else on board, and his new life in Canada. To better understand the two literary works, a reader must examine the authors’ life in addition to the text.

There are several themes that we can all relate to in The book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill, one of which is language. Language in this novel represents power as it is the driving element of the story. Language is a fundamental theme in this story because it helps Aminata cope with the situations she is put in and saves her when she is in danger.

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.