"Black Like Me"- A Review by Bob

Title: Black Like Me

Author: John Howard Griffin

Date Published: 1961

Date Read: Last Week

Pages: 200

It was a huge best-seller in the day, but I had not heard of it. The author was a journalist that decided to become black for several weeks during the height of the Civil Rights unrest in the South. With the use of injections and medication (and occasional supplements of dye) he was able to become black for a couple of weeks. He shaved his head and his arms and was never recognized as a white man.

In fact, having no idea how to enter the community of Black Americans in New Orleans he connected with a shoe-shiner at his stand several days before he "became black." After the procedure (which was highly secretive and sponsored by a Sepia magazine) he went back to the shoe shine stand and the fellow who had shined his shoes the days previously did not recognize him at all. He recognized the shoes and was stunned when the author told him specific details of their previous conversations. He was very enthused about the idea and promised to keep Griffin's secret. 

The story is painful. John Howard Griffins had decided not to change anything about himself except his skin color. If people asked, he told them his full name and what he was doing. He simply did not tell them he was white. He tells about going into Mississippi and the tension tha was palpable. People were scared all the time. (In a recent interview John MacArthur shared about the same kind of tension during those days when he was arrested for associating with the Blacks). The outrageous treatment he endured just for being black. He could not believe it until he experienced it. 

One time on a long bus trip the white bus driver stopped for a restroom break. All the blacks were in the back of the bus, of course, and all the whites got off to go to the restroom, but as the blacks got to the door he slammed the door shut in their face and dared them to challenge him. They were forced to go back to their seats and be uncomfortable. 

He could never go to a restroom that was for "Whites Only." One time he saw a dilapidated outhouse behind a bar where blacks were served. He asked if there was a restroom nearby. The man kindly told him that he could walk down the street a couple blocks and turn left and walk a bit more and he would find a restroom. Of course, there was a restroom in the bar, but Griffin knew better than to ask for that. So, he said, "May I use the outhouse?" The man just turned away.

Some whites, he said, were apologetic, but never had the guts to go against the grain.

Some of the language is raw. I don't think it ever gets offensively over-the-top. He just puts you right in the scene. The parts that describe the white's perverted interest in black sexuality and their abuse of black women is done in such a way that did not offend my sensibilities. It just angered me appropriately.

There were tender moments. He tells about not having a place to stay and being picked up by a black man who lived in a cabin in the woods with his wife and four kids. It was the night of his daughter's fifth birthday and he couldn't help but think about the different life his daughter was leading at that very moment. There was no electricity. The father did not dare complain about his work. Businesses were actually trying to intimidate the black man out of the state. Griffins, a devout Catholic, tells about how he wept that night as he contemplated the evil way men treat other men and the bleak future that faced those children.

Personal observations:

1. I think Christian education (home and formal) has failed a whole generation of Christians because of its isolation from culture. This book is actually required reading for many seniors in highschools and is often reported on in college. Christians, for the most part, know nothing of it. I think that is due to several reasons:

  a. a bias against everyone and all that were involved in the Civil Rights movement.

  b. a deliberate unwillingness to put ourselves in the mocassins of another.

  c. an unhealthy idea of isolation from culture that doesn't want to read a book because it may have a bad word in it, even though the book is non-fiction and highly influenctial.

2. I think it is a terrible blight on American Christianity that the Civil Rights battle was fought mostly by Roman Catholics and liberals. Why didn't a believing person think of this? It's an accepted fact that evangelical christians were by and large missing from the fight, insensitive to it. BJU only just now limply apologized for its racism. It made news, but it's also newsworthy that it is in 2008 and not in 1968.

3. It made me think of the incarnation. And the most effective ministry is always incarnational. We have to get in the other person's skin. Jesus did more than anyone. If we are to be like Him in our outreach we need to learn how to feel things as others feel them. 

I noticed this when so many whites could not even conjure up empathetic feelings of happiness when a black man was elected president. They could not understand conservative blacks who were both happy and sad. They were just mad. An incarnational attitude can understand both the happiness and sadness of black conservatives. 

4. This book made me ashamed. I have been more vocal than many in my circle about the sins of the evangelicals/fundamentalists in this area, but I am ashamed that my culture was part of the Southern White culture that oppressed the black.

5. I realized that there is still much, much work to do to recover the damage that has been done in our country. We have a HUGE problem when our church is considered unique in this town as one of the most integrated churches under 300 and, to date, we have only 2 black families.

It was a powerful read. It's a shame it's not required reading for college students in bible colleges.