John Griffin Black Like Me Analysis

The black experience: Review of john Griffin’s black like me

John Howard Griffin

Black like me. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.1961

978-0-451-19203-5

Introduction

John griffin was born in June 16, 1920 in Dallas Texas to john Walter griffin and Lena may young. His love of music grew from his mother. He studied French and literature and later medicine. Left blind during the war, he began to write in 1946, where he also published his experience with blindness in the book scattered shadows. He married in 1953, one of his students Elizabeth Ann. He published the book ‘black like me’ in 1961

It’s a brilliant sociological study of the black experience, it mainly talks about a 39 year old white journalist who changed his skin tone and went to live among the blacks. He stayed for seven weeks among the blacks in one of South American states which were under racial segregation. Being a white man disguised in a black man’s skin he underwent all the social injustices that black men went through at that time.

Griffin’s journey mainly

Griffin was temporary blinded by war after being hit by shrapnel. During his partial loss of sight griffin realises that the blind only see a man’s heart and his intelligence. This leads him to enter into the character of a black man and try to experience what a black man goes through in a white community. He conveys the senses that although most whites are too intolerant to oppose racism, there are many good white people out there. He emphasizes that there are many non-violence ways to deal with social change.

The book explores racism and segregation. Black like me is written with the reader in mind and possibility to look at how a human can love. Griffin constantly puts his narration to move, interest, enthral its readers and persuade them in the importance of tolerance and how to practice justice in a social way.