Griffin is a white man his whole life, and readers think his slapping on some make-up for six weeks would allow him to understand the black experience. And I should point out that with this reasoning, it would follow that every black man and woman born in the United States during our hundreds of years of terror against black people ought to be considered heros-yet Griffin is the one being celebrated. Sorry, but read a book by a black American about the black American experience if that’s what you want to learn about I suspect any would be more holistic than to cast black men and women as purely agents of suffering with such despairing lives that poor Griffin should be exalted to sainthood for attempting to “live as a Negro” for 6 weeks. It’s ridiculous to cast John Howard Griffin as some kind of hero because he was “brave enough” to “endure” the “black experience” for less than 8 weeks. I was ready to give this book a somewhat generous review for what may be obvious reasons, but then I read some other reviews and now I’m annoyed.

Others use the code word 'arrogant' and more than once, 'socialist' hasĪs long as we tolerate this quality of public discourse, we will give this

Yet we have a nationally popular pundit who uses the word 'uppity' Who challenge racism are somehow doing it for cynical political gain. ONe of the most insidious claims is that racism is not part of our world or that those Part of the reason our public discussion is such a miserable intellectual failure. We have a ridiculous excuse for public and political discussion today. Racism is amazingly strong, persistent, insidious, and all too easily accepted.Īnd if you think it magically died in the 60's you're not paying attention. and more than once was beaten by groups of my When i became a mouthy teen ager i would try to take this on myself. since i was a very small boy, my safety became a concern Since my family was mentioned inthe book, we were threatened as well. (castration,tarring and feathering, outright murder to name a few) Lived with us for many weeks until the threats died down.

when the book came out, the Griffin family My father took Griffin to the bus station in Dallas when he started h is journey.

Griffin black like me