Black Like Me

A detailed Summary of Black Like Me


"Black Like Me"- the story of a white that chooses to alter his skin color in order to find out what it is like to be a black person. The book is written from John Howard Griffin's point of view. He composes each incident that happens to him as a black person opposed to if he was a white person. He conveys each detail of his journey very specifically with a very objective point of view.

This book was written because a white man wanted to find out why black people were being oppressed and discriminated against. Was it because they were truly inferior? Certainly not. During the time of this book's writing, racism in the South was the utmost type of discrimination against any minority group in the U.S. White people were discriminating against blacks without cause or just. For some it was just something to do. This book delves into the reasons of discrimination from its source, the unsuspecting white man. The white man who didn't know that a bald black man was planning to expose his entire thinking of blacks in an attempt to rationalize


"Black Like Me" illustrates many, many mentalities of the way whites think about blacks, but the central and most important ethical message that I found in the book was the power of ignorance. Ignorance is used by every discriminate white person in the book as a tool. Ignorance was their "excuse" for depressing black people. One incident of this happening was when Mr.Griffin was given a ride at night by a young intelligent white male. The white man immediately assumes because Mr.Griffin is black, he is an expert in black sexuality. He says it is because blacks are more open about it than they are. Again, this is where ignorance in the book creeps in. If he had been more informed, as Mr. Griffin explains to him, he would know the reason why blacks are more notoriously known for sex than white is because whites left sexuality to be one of the few forms black people had of expressing themselves. Most of every encounter between

"Once again a "hate stare" drew my attention like a magnet. It came from a middle-aged, heavy-set, well-dresse

Some common words found in the essay are:
Howard Griffin's, Black Me-, black people, book written, whites blacks, black person, hate stare, white person, white people, person book,

Approximate Word count = 708
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Novels

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