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Review Of Black Like Me By John Howard Griffin

757 Words4 Pages

John Howard Griffin, a white man from Mansfield, Texas, is the author of the book “Black Like Me.”The book is a journal he kept during the time of civil rights from
October 1959 until August 1960. Griffin is trying to depict what it is like for a black man from a white man’s perspective during this period in history.
John Howard Griffin is interested, yet irritated, that he cannot comprehend what a black man feels or is being treated like since he is a white man. With permission and support from his family and a friend who happens to be George Levitan, an editor of a black magazine, Griffin sets out to New Orleans where he receives treatment to become a black man temporarily.Along with traveling to New Orleans, he also makes his way to
Mississippi, …show more content…

Griffin even experiments with his treatment from day-to-day, changing his pigment occasionally.
Griffin does a great job of using creativity to show exactly how poorly the whites in the South treated the blacks in the 1950’s and 60’s. He displays the brutality and sense of fear through the viewpoint of a middle-aged white man from Texas.Griffin states that he could no longer identify himself and feels he lost his identity when he first starts the pigment treatments. He is able to understand the trouble blacks have to acquire jobs or even food because of their skin color. Through all of his travels and difficulties, Griffin learns that racism can corrupt the spirit of humans, however, it is incapable of eliminating a person’s ability to express love and kindness to others.
Jordan Adams:

What Griffin does that is genius is he switches his pigment a few times in the same town from day to day. One day he is a black man and receives violence and animosity from the whites, yet compassion and generosity from the blacks. As a white man, he experiences uneasiness and fear from the blacks and respect and civility from the whites. This tells the reader that neither race has a true comprehension of each …show more content…

He believes this to be another form of racism, one that will not end peacefully. Rather with more brutality and misunderstandings than there were before.
Griffin could have put a little more dialogue into the book for contextual purposes. Towards the middle and end there seems to be more description than conversation. Which is nothing to complain about, however, it feels as if the book would benefit more from a little bit more encounters with other people or at least the recording of those conversations.
The interesting thing about this book is that it teaches new information and experiences to the reader. A first-person perspective not skewed or misinterpreted by fear of being attacked for comments made or biased misconception of what actually is happening. As the author, a white man, transforms his skin color to become a black man that will experience the everyday life of a black for a few months. After his time

researching he gains a full understanding of just how cruel and obscene life is for a black day in and day out. It also shows the black conception of the whites, which up to this point has not truly been uncovered.
John Howard Griffin digs down deep to find all of the hidden

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