John Howard Griffin’s Black Like Me is one of the most popular books on the topic of segregation in the Deep South during the late 1950’s. It is a place of lynching, white-only restrooms, and denied rights guaranteed in our constitution, that everyone is created equal. Griffin decides to dye his skin black and cross over the color line to see what it is really like to be a Negro in the South. There he discovers racism, a deep hatred that we sometimes see today. This document should disturb anyone who believes in injustice of democracy.
This book’s main theme is to show how the blacks are segregated from the whites and how they are treated by racists. The Segregation is defined as the separation of groups by custom or law. This includes using separate restrooms, restaurants, and many other things. John Howard Griffin experiences each of theses while in the Deep South.
It is hard to believe that a law can allow this, but it can and did. Jim Crow Laws, first developed in a few Northern states in the early 1800’s, were eventually adopted in the South. These segregation laws actually demanded that blacks and whites be separated. Jim Crow laws went as far as to deny the blacks the right to vote. For more than fifty years, many states used the “separate but equal” law to separate the two races in public schools, transportation, recreation, sleeping, and eating facilities.
The Essay on Black Like Me White Griffin People
... south where it was known to be treated like a street-rat. America was two separate and unequal societies- one black and one white ... group, we condone the destruction of all social stability." (John Griffin, Black Like Me; April 11) Basically, the way I interpret this ... misconceptions and hate. We are ignoring our societies morals and laws, and by doing this, we are allowing the obliteration of ...
Segregation is usually the result of a period of long group conflict. In Griffin’s book, it shows the whites considering themselves superior and dominating the black race using force, law, and custom to deny them of their basic rights.
Segregation involves favored treatment for the dominant group. This group, the whites, is expected to receive the best education, homes, and public services. The people that do this usually don’t consider it unfair but think of it as proper for society and think nothing wrong of racism.
Racism is defined as the belief that human beings can be decided into races and that members of some races are inferior to members of other races. The people who do this are considered racists. Groups, as well as individuals, differ. It is disturbing, however, that people actually think skin color can determine intelligence and the self-worth of a person.
Racism is also considered as a form of prejudice. Racists consider their own appearance and behavior as proper and desirable. Theses people tend to distrust or have a strong fear of people who look or act different than they do. In Black Like Me, the difference that people of the South feared is skin color, and skin color alone. This type of attitude leads to the belief that whites are better than blacks. People doing this do not bother to search for similar qualities between a black and a white person, but look only at the outside, their skin color.
Griffin, while doing this experiment, sees racism first-hand every day of his Negro life. White people give him hate stares, deny him food, and degrade his personal value. The first experience Griffin has with the hate stare is at a ticket booth in a bus station. The lady who is supposed to be helping him answered him rudely and glares at him with such loathing that Griffin says he knew it is the “hate stare” (24).
Griffin says in his book “It is far more than the look of disapproval one occasionally gets but was so exaggeratedly evil that he would have been amused if not so surprised (25).” His reaction is to ask, “Pardon me, but have I done something to offend you (25)?” But it then comes to reality that it is nothing but his skin color that offended her so greatly. After returning home, however, he also received this kind of treatment. He experiences the unbelievable. “The whites as a group can still contrive to arrange life so that it destroys the Negro’s sense of personal value, degrades his human dignity, and deadens the fibers of his being (48).” His effigy is hung from the traffic light on Main Street. A cross is burned on the lawn of the black church near his house. He also receives death threats and is denounced as a traitor to the white race.
The Term Paper on Black Student White People Whites
It is very easy to imagine a world that does not involve race. Humans would work together to make advances in medicine, technology, and education. Asides from imagining, hoping, and dreaming the question comes to mind; is it possible From the day that you learn that Columbus discovered a New World a cloud settles in over the rays of hope and imagination. In the educational system you are molded to ...
This may not hit you too hard, but imagine doing as Griffin does. Imagine sacrificing six weeks of your life to becoming a completely different person of a completely different race. Going into a strange, evil place known as the Deep South, to experience the segregation and racism as described. Would you be strong enough to handle that?
Griffin is strong enough to leave a loving family and friends to be haunted by the unequal treatment of Negroes. His purpose in doing what is achieved. He wants to let people see what is actually being done to the black race on a day-to-day basis and describe how terrible every day is for them.
What if this had been reversed in history? Imagine if the white race was the race considered inferior. Imagine having to walk five miles to the nearest restroom that, thank God, was available to whites. Or being the last person hired and the first person fired at a job that pays nothing near the amount received by a black. What would a person living in the 1950’s think about segregation and racism now? Would it exist? Maybe they would have seen how morally incorrect it is and how unfair the blacks were actually being treated.
Times now have changed, but only after a lot of wasted time to hate and tribulations for the black race. The term desegregation refers to the process of ending group segregation. During desegregation, races start acting toward each other in new friendlier ways. It is continuing to get better.
The main theme of Black Like Me is about segregation and racism in the Deep South during the 1950’s. Griffin powerfully describes these aspects by going into the south and experiencing it as a black man. It takes a powerful person to go after something they feel so right about. John Howard Griffin’s motivation is to gain equal rights for blacks. What is yours?
The Essay on Reflections on the Black Race
That the issue of Obama’s racial background is much talked about in terms of his fitness for the US presidency only proves this: that we Americans have a long way to go in our pursuit of adherence to the ideals of our declaration of independence. After all the document held the fundamental equality of people, and everyman’s inalienable rights, to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The ...
