Historic Analysis of Griffin's "Black Like Me"
Historic Analysis of Griffin's "Black Like Me"
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.
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...