Black Like Me, By John Howard Griffin

In everyday life, everyone experiences racism. Whether it is a humorous racial stereotype joke or to something offensive like asking how Asians can see or asking an Asian person if he or she is Chinese. What we need to remember is that no one is born racist. Racism is either taught or learned. The definition of the term race that was created socially which signifies and symbolizes social conflicts and interests by referring to different types of human bodies. The definition of race is how we use it. For example the label “white” instead of using Caucasian. Racism still exists today because is how we distinguish people by their pigment of the skin.

John Howard Griffin, the author and main character of “Black Like Me”, is a middle-aged white man who is living in Mansfield, Texas in 1959. Deeply devoted to the finding justice for racism and frustrated by his inability as a white man to understand the black experience, Griffin decides to take stand: he decides to change the color of his skin and temporarily become a black man. After securing the support of his wife and of George Levitan, the editor of a black-oriented magazine called Sepia which will fund Griffin 's experience in return for an article about it, Griffin sets out for New Orleans to begin his life as a black man. He finds a contact in the black community, a soft-spoken, articulate shoe-shiner named Sterling Williams, Eventually, Griffin looks in the mirror and sees a black man looking back. He briefly panics, feeling that he has lost his identity, and then he sets out to explore the black community.

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

The intended audience for this article is people of Caucasian descent. “Yes, we all have unconscious biases, but white people 's biases support a racist system”(Blake, 4). In America, the Civil Rights movement was about freedom of people of color from white supremacy. While people of color are able to enjoy freedoms that they were not able to enjoy in previous centuries, there are still remnants of racial prejudices that exist. The author argues that while everyone stereotypes, racism continues to persist because of the stereotypes of prominent white persons.

When John Howard Griffin wrote the book “Black Like Me” he made it so that it was set in the southern states of the 1950’s. Griffin was a middle age man during the era of segregation ,he decided to change the color of his skin to see how his kind will react to the new depiction. The setting was critical to the story for being in the post-slavery era people where blacks and whites were separate but not equal. The tone of the story is gentle yet produces a powerful meaning. The main message from this story is racism is a very evil subject.

An example is a study that was done on NBA referees, which found that white referees unintentionally tended to call more fouls on black players, and vice versa (Blake). Griffin experiences this prejudice when offered rides by white men while hitchhiking. He is stunned that they would ask such probing questions about his private life, and he realizes that they would not ask the same questions of a white man for the fear of being rude, but when talking to a black man, they see them as subhuman (Griffin 86). Many would believe it is not a racist act, as the white men are not physically harming them. However, by treating them this way, they are affecting them psychologically by reminding them of their “inferiority.”

Racism and racial stereotypes have existed throughout human history. The radical belief associated by thinking the skin color, language, or a person’s nationality is the reason that someone is one way or another has become extremely detrimental to society. Throughout human existence it has sparked tension between groups of people and ultimately influenced wars and even caused slavery. Racism in America dates back to when Native Americans were often attacked, relocated, and assimilated into European culture. Since then, racism within the states has grown to include various other cultures as well. In the essays by Brent Staples, Bharati Mukherjee, and Manuel Munoz, they discuss the various causes as well as the effects that racial stereotyping can place on a victim and the stigma it leaves behind for the society to witness.

Racism is a serious problem in the United States because there are many immigrant people who live there (Welch, 2007). There are two effective ways to solve the problem of stereotyping African American as

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.

In 1964, after centuries of outright oppression and discrimination, the civil rights act was signed and the black community had finally received the right to be treated as equal. Many hoped this would mean the gradual end of any and all forms of racism, however, this has proven to not be the case. Instead, racism has become much more covert and subtle. Today, racism can be seen in the form of a stereotype. A stereotype is a widely held but fixed image of a certain type of person or thing.

Stereotypes allow people to see one person and assume that everyone that looks like them is guilty of the same thing. Gary Grobman, an author for more than eleven years, insists that ” these stereotypes often lead to unfair discrimination and persecution” (9). The unfair discrimination that Grobman states can be seen in everyday life. Often times people believe the stereotype that African Americans are all criminals. To a person who has never met an African American before, they may see one on the street and automatically go to clutch their purse. These fears based off of stereotyping can be dangerous for people who get stereotyped. For those people getting stereotyped, their character may already be getting assassinated before they even have the chance to

The racism that runs deep in the blood of the United States is a complex issue to tackle. As white supremacy was the foundation on which the country was born, many believe that society breeds this racism and deny the possibility of change. bell hooks eloquently addresses the problems faced by those who seek to make change and establish equality in her essay, “Loving Blackness as Political Resistance.” She discusses these problems through the lens of her instruction by using responses to lectures. This brings to light the contemporary struggles in a very real context as most of her students are those who believe that they are progressive, yet hooks demonstrates where they lack: loving blackness. This notion goes

Unfortunately, the non-white populace in the USA has been repeatedly subjected to individual and institutional prejudice (Crocker, 2007). In America, racism is noticeable at all individual, group and institutional levels. The racists spread and conserve racism by introducing planned activities and policies in economical, communal, political, learning, spiritual and cultural aspects of life ("Racism", 2012). Regardless of the fact that several civil rights groups and political leaders have sincerely endeavored to stop racial discrimination practices, they have not stopped. In today's contemporary society of America, there are still countless non-white citizens who are living their lives in a state of melancholy, unhappiness and depression due to the widespread prejudiced beliefs (Crocker, 2007).

Racial discrimination and stereotypes are a couple of many huge social problems in our society we can refrain from as a gesture of value and respect for one’s culture and identity. Racism is a form of oppression: prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior (Oxford University Press, 2017) This character has been visibly demonstrated in workplaces, schools and campuses, in the community, government agencies, and even at home.

On October 28, 1995 John Howard Griffin, a white man, decided to saunter the streets of the south as a black man. Griffin, a journalist from Texas, was a “race specialist.” He would learn in 1959, while running his “experiment” to transcribe his public journal Black Like Me, that he was not the race specialist he thought he was. Griffin discovered that the blacks were viewed asymmetrically by themselves than how the whites viewed them; furthermore after his “experiment” he would construct his own opinion.