Black Like Me - John Howard Griffin

[Hampton]

In the Deep South of the 1950s, journalist John Howard Griffin decided to cross the color line. Using medication that darkened his skin to deep brown, he exchanged his privileged life as a Southern white man for the disenfranchised world of an unemployed black man. His audacious, still chillingly relevant eyewitness history is a work about race and humanity-that in this new millennium still has something important to say to every American.

It would be intresting to have this done today to find out that not much has changed.

[Pete]

That is...interesting. Like the reversal of what Michael Jackson did to him self.

[Umoja]

We read that book for school. I hated it. He talked about "The Negro" like it was some race of dogs, but I was also at my most sensitive at the time.

[Nickademus]

it was a good book, i read it in a manner of hours...but i will say a few things baout it...

yes he does use the term "Negro" a lot but you must remember that when the book was written that term was politically correct, so much as there was political correctness back then.

and i think the book was built up for me..it seemed rather tame in comparison to what i had been expecting.

[Umoja]

It wasn't that he used Negro as a word, he used it in a condescending manner. That's what bothered me.

[MJM]

From the perspective of a white trash teenage boy - it really opened my eyes up. It changed me as a person more than any other book I've ever read.

[canikickit]

Sounds quite amazing. I'm pretty sure I've heard of it before, but now I must check it out to the fullness.

[Hampton]

I just thought that the idea was something that was quite amazing, to be able to be seen as someone of a diffrent race, to be treated as they do, and to have to live like they do even if it's for a short time like it was for Griffin.

But, I do have to admit re-reading the book a few days ago that there are some points where it does sound like Griffin is talking about black people in a rather abstract perspective like they were, I don't want to say not human beings, but, like peoples who were removed from society, if that makes any sense.

The book also reminded me about a movie form the 1980's called Soul Man (http://movies.yahoo.com/shop?d=hv&id=1800119665&cf=info&intl=us) where this white guy takes tanning pills to get into Harvard but later learns from a black single mom who he falls for.

[Fever]

I thought it was a great book. It really helped to put into perspective the prejudice of the that time period.

[Spartacus2002]

i read that book it was awesome...