Black Like Me Analysis

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The year is 1959, an era of racial injustice and social unrest. The narrator is haunted, wanting to know “what is it like to experience discrimination based on skin color.” Black Like Me is John Griffin’s account, documenting segregation and racial injustice, based on the color of one’s skin, in the deep South by walking in another man’s shoes. Using medical enhancements, he changes the pigment of his skin, becoming “Negro” and begins journaling life as a black man.
John Griffin is a noted journalist and self-proclaimed “specialist on race,” has written two novels and five books on racism. He was a medic in the French Resistance, helping smuggle Jews to safety and in the South Pacific with the US Army Air Corps, to study the local culture where he was the only Caucasian on the island. After losing his eyesight in a military accident, began writing. It is no surprise his life was dedicated to identifying the struggles of others and writes to persuade others to open their eyes, seeing the plight of the African Americans. …show more content…

In doing this, his hope was to make the reader either validate what was already known or to honestly see the problem as injustice and unfairness. The repetition enforced reality. With the intent to prove treatment of African Americans was solely based on skin color, was validated through Griffin’s own search for employment. Despite his credentials was told there were no jobs for “your kind.” The belief that the “white man” would keep them uneducated and in lowly jobs was a means of control was supported by those he met from the shoe shine man to the father of six children who provided food and

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