Black Like Me

by John Howard Griffin

The black man is wholly a Negro, regardless of what he once may have been.

Tonight they looked at me but did not see me.

I wondered if the world outside was so bad for us that we had to counter it among ourselves by salving one another with kindness.

“Until we as a race can learn to rise together, we’ll never get anywhere. That’s our trouble. We work against one another instead of together.

They make it impossible for us to earn, to pay much in taxes because we haven’t much in income, and then they say that because they pay most of the taxes, they have the right to have things like they want. It’s a vicious circle, Mr. Griffin, and I don’t know how we’ll get out of it. They put us low, and then blame us for being down there and say that since we are low, we can’t deserve our rights.”