Black Like Me Book Report

The author wants his son to be aware of the country he grew up in calling it his home. Instead, Ta-Nehisi says this country is a place that judges you based on your skin color. Ta- Nehisi illustrates this by not only giving his son advice on what he should or should not do, but instead uses examples of his experiences, history, and the criminal justice system devaluing the “black body”. Ta-

Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, vacant esteem; ever-present anger and racial socialization are all very important to making America a fair and equal country. Post traumatic slave syndrome is the everlasting effect that slavery has had on African Americans for example how African Americans perceive other darker and “bad hair” African Americans less than fair skinned and “good hair” African American. This was practiced by the slave owners and would give more power and privileges to the fair skinned good hair slaves. This is just one example of PTSS and its effect on African Americans today.

DuBois impacted black education with his spread of his ideas to help equalize education between all races. Du Bois thought scholarships could promote racial equality and promoted that idea by writing numerous books and articles including Black Reconstruction in America in 1935. His doctoral thesis, "The Suppression of the African Slave Trade in America," became the first book published by Harvard University Press in 1896. Before the end of the 19th century, DuBois taught at the University of Pennsylvania and Atlanta University. During this period of his endeavor in black education, he became the first scholar to regularly study African American urban life.

John Howard Griffin purposely titled the novel “Black Like Me” because of the way it portrays his personal feelings and thoughts as a black man. In the middle of the novel Griffin references to the remark, “Learned behavior patterns so deeply engrained they produce unconscious involuntary reactions” (Griffin 68). Griffin began to feel connections to society as a black person and no longer as a white. Griffin uses the title to link back to those feelings of being “Black Like Me”. The title is significant in helping readers capture Griffins true emotions in his transformation.

Black Like Me is an incredible journey into what life was like in the Deep South during the late 1950s. John Griffin performed a social experiment to see what was life really like for blacks in the Southern States. John Griffin transformed himself into a black man and recorded his experiences into a book, Black Like Me. I was fascinated that 1950s science and medicine had advanced enough to allow someone to change the pigment of their skin. The procedure that Griffin underwent was simply taking pills and exposing himself to ultra violet rays (6).

While Zora Neale Hurston associates race with identity in her essay, “How it Feels to Be Colored Me,” Gloria Anzaldúa similarly relates language to identity as well in her essay, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue.” In Hurston’s situation, because she’s black, she is forced to succumb to society’s views and standards on African Americans; growing up, she never realized her race was treated differently until she moved to a new town. Segregation was occurring at the time, and throughout her essay, she comes to terms with the realization that being black is a part of her identity. Correspondingly, Anzaldúa realizes that her language is also a part of her identity when she is forced to forfeit her native tongue to accommodate English speakers rather than them having them accommodate her. Although both authors have gone through

The Farmer’s Register Letters in 1837 contain primary sources on white perceptions of enslaved African Americans .The letters also offer information about master-slave relationship between whites and African Americans. The Farmer’s Register Letters also informs the reader about how the slaves were treated by means of material as well as working conditions . In the reading of Farmer’s Register Letters, each author perceived the character of African Americans to be underestimated because Africans are "like plastic clay, which , may be molded into agreeable or disagreeable figures, according to the skill of the molder .

McLaurin’s Separate Pasts does a very good job of reflecting the injustices of segregation during the 1950’s in the south. The black people that McLaurin describes in his book and the impact they had in his own beliefs are good examples how black lives were in a segregated south during that time period. Surprises such as, a white man found not guilty of killing his wife and the black man, when he found them in bed together, questions and attracts reader to his world, his true and deep explanations about each and every black person makes readers realize themselves the challenge racial prejudice and segregation created among the whites and the blacks. However, the book shows McLaurin as someone very special which might make readers question his

In Black Like Me, John Griffin chronicles the events during his experiment in the black South. Having lived all of his life as a white male, arguably the most privileged demographic at the time, Griffin decides to go undercover as a black man using special medication and skin darkening techniques. He develops valuable insight, but there was no way he could have come close to have fully lived as a black man in the South. However, the experiment itself was not in itself foolish. The fact that Griffin would never be able to fully live as a black man is a point that he even points out himself.

The John Griffin Experience In the 1950’s, racism was at its peak in the US. In the book Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin, he puts himself into a black man’s shoes to experience an everyday life of what it is like being of darker color. He takes it upon himself to seek medical treatment to change the pigmentation of his skin from white to black. After undergoing this treatment, he sets out to New Orleans to begin his life in darker skin.

John Howard Griffin: Black Like Me Black Like Me, by John Howard Griffin, states the chilling truth of being a black man in the late 1950’s to the early 1960’s. John Howard Griffin is a white journalist who wants to know the real experience of being treated as a black person. Griffin transitions from a white man to a black man by darkening the pigment of his skin through medication. He walked, hitchhiked, and rode buses through Georgia, Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi. As Griffin makes his way through the South, he experiences things that no human ever should.

According to Carol A. Heintzelman (2003, Vol. 10, No. 4), the Tuskegee study of untreated syphilis in the African American male was the longest nontherapeutic experiment on human beings in medical history. The study began in 1932 in Macon County, Alabama, where the government used 600 men in a forty-year experiment. The purpose of the Tuskegee study was to record the history of syphilis in blacks, but to ultimately determine if syphilis had the same effect on African Americans as whites. The African American men were told that they were receiving free “treatment” for “bad blood”, in which case they thought they were being treated for different ailments. But in actuality they were being injected with syphilis and watched to see how their

Three African American civil rights leaders helped change history by educating blacks. After reconstruction Ida B. Wells, Booker T. Washington, and WEB Dubois all educated blacks so that today we can have African Americans in higher authority positions like President Barack Obama. Booker T. Washington and WEB Dubois taught older blacks while Ida B. Wells taught children. Ida B. Wells was born a slave in Mississippi. She took a job as a teacher and taught children.

Black Like Me is a very interesting book that describes the hatred John Howard Griffin received as he poses as a black man traveling on racial segregated busses. I feel that this book is very shocking because it entails the truth of the way blacks were treated.

Du Bois interviewed thousands of residents in Philadelphia about their living conditions, from this study he concluded that the things that the black people endured was an inequality based on their race. “The Souls of Black Folk” in 1803 is considered his greatest work, it focused on how racism effected the African American community. In this book he also talked about Book T. Washington, he believed that Washington didn’t fight for equality for all as the 14th amendment stated should happened. This led to formation of the Niagara Movement, a group of African American leaders and scholars that oppose Booker T. Washington conservative platform. Although the Niagara Movement didn’t last long it lead to the formation of the NACCP (National association for the Advancement of Colored