Black Like Me

by John Howard Griffin

how can you render the duties of justice to men when you’re afraid they’ll be so unaware of justice that they may destroy you? - especially since their attitude toward their own race is a destructive one.”

I began to understand Lionel Trilling’s remark that culture - learned behavior patterns so deeply ingrained they produce involuntary reactions - is a prison.

It shows that the most obscene figures are not the ignorant ranting racists, but the legal minds who front for them, who “invent” for them the legislative proposals and the propaganda bulletins. They deliberately choose to foster distortions, always under the guise of patriotism, upon a people who have no means of checking the facts. Their appeals are of regional interest, showing complete contempt for privacy of conscience, and a willingness to destroy and subvert values that have traditionally been held supreme in this land.

If this doesn't describe the Republican Party and FOX News, I don't know what does.

He cannot understand how the white man can show the most demeaning aspects of his nature and at the same time delude himself into thinking he is inherently superior.

“When you force humans into a subhuman mode of existence, this always happens. Deprive a man of any contact with the pleasures of the spirit and he’ll fall completely into those of the flesh.”

“I’ll tell you … we don’t want you people. Don’t you understand that?” “I know,” I said with real sadness. “You can’t blame a man for trying at least.” “No use trying down here,” he said. “We’re gradually getting you people weeded out from the better jobs at this plant. We’re taking it slow, but we’re doing it. Pretty soon we’ll have it so the only jobs you can get here are the ones no white man would have.” “How can we live?” I asked hopelessly, careful not to give the impression I was arguing. “That’s the whole point,” he said, looking me square in the eyes, but with some faint sympathy, as though he regretted the need to say what followed: “We’re going to do our damnedest to drive every one of you out of the state.” Despite his frankness and the harshness of his intentions, I nevertheless had the impression he was telling me: “I’m sorry. I’ve got nothing against you personally, but you’re colored, and with all this noise about equality, we just don’t want you people around. The only way we can keep you out of our schools and cafés is to make life so hard for you that you’ll get the hell out before equality comes.”

I concluded that, as in everything else, the atmosphere of a place is entirely different for Negro and white. The Negro sees and reacts differently not because he is Negro, but because he is suppressed. Fear dims even the sunlight.

The white racist has masterfully defrauded the Negro of this sense. It is the least obvious but most heinous of all race crimes, for it kills the spirit and the will to live.

The white man’s fears have been widely broadcast. To the Negro these fears of “intermingling” make no sense. All he can see is that the white man wants to hold him down - to make him live up to his responsibilities as a taxpayer and soldier, while denying him the privileges of a citizen. At base, though the white brings forth many arguments to justify his viewpoint, one feels the reality is simply that he cannot bear to “lose” to the traditionally servant class.

The monk laughed. “Didn’t Shakespeare say something about ‘every fool in error can find a passage of Scripture to back him up’? He knew his religious bigots.”

The great danger in the South comes precisely from the fact that the public is not informed.

I am annoyed by those who love mankind but are cruel and discourteous to people. - Curtis Bok, Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, speech at Radcliffe College Commencement, 1960.

The Negro does not understand the white any more than the white understands the Negro. I was dismayed to see the extent to which this youth exaggerated - how could he do otherwise? - the feelings of the whites toward Negroes. He thought they all hated him. The most distressing repercussion of this lack of communication has been the rise in racism among Negroes, justified to some extent, but a grave symptom nonetheless. It only widens the gap that men of good will are trying desperately to bridge with understanding and compassion. It only strengthens the white racist’s cause. The Negro who turns now, in the moment of near- realization of his liberties, and bares his fangs at a man’s whiteness, makes the same tragic error the white racist has made. And this is happening on a wider scale. Too many of the more militant leaders are preaching Negro superiority. I pray that the Negro will not miss his chance to rise to greatness, to build from the strength gained through his past suffering and, above all, to rise beyond vengeance. If some spark does set the keg afire, it will be a senseless tragedy of ignorant against ignorant, injustice answering injustice - a holocaust that will drag down the innocent and right-thinking masses of human beings. Then we will all pay for not having cried for justice long ago.

The experiment that led to writing Black Like Me was done at the very end of 1959, before the first “freedom rides” or any other manifestation of national concern about racial injustice. It was undertaken to discover if America was involved in the practice of racism against black Americans. Most white Americans denied any taint of racism and really believed that in this land we judged every man by his qualities as a human individual. In those days, any mention of racism brought to the public’s mind the Nazi suppression of Jewish people, the concentration camps, the gas chambers - and certainly, we protested, we were not like that.

It got so bad that Lillian Smith wrote: “It’s high time we stopped giving the communists credit for every decent, brave, considerate act” white men might show in regard to black men.

Racists showed high ingenuity in developing schemes to destroy a man’s reputation as a means of nullifying his work.

FOX News anyone?

For example, many civil rights advocates, white and black, traveled and lectured extensively. In the early days, a number of effective men were entrapped in situations that either damaged them personally or ruined their reputations. Those who were with lecture bureaus were particularly vulnerable. Anyone could write the lecture bureau for the travel schedule of its speakers. If a man made a long flight to fulfill a speaking engagement, the chances were at least fair that when he landed at the distant airport he might make use of the rest room. It would be enough to plant one or two men in the rest room and accuse him of some indecency. This happened to a Mississippi white attorney in a case that was given maximum publicity in white newspapers. He had to fly to Los Angeles for an appearance. His travel schedule was known. At the end of this flight he went to the men’s rest room, and when he emerged, he was arrested because two men claimed he had indecently exposed himself. He was tried in absentia and found guilty in Mississippi. He was publicly labeled a pervert and his career in civil rights was effectively quashed.