In John Howard Griffin’s controversial 62 memoir Black Like Me, white-man Griffin usually takes an anthropological and personal voyage, posing being a black gentleman in the deep south in an attempt to understand the black experience. Equal parts personal revelation and argumentation, Griffin tries to present proof of pervasive racial elegance and show that, through sympathy, white persons can change and start to understand the experience of black people. The problem, yet , is that Griffin himself does not change. The bad encounters this individual experiences at times provoke short lived shifts in the identity and argument, although ultimately just contribute to the same misguided notion: the belief that simply by painting his skin dark-colored, Griffin can easily understand and, therefore , talk to a black person’s knowledge. He begins to use the “we” pronoun to refer to the black community practically immediately after transitioning. As a result, he simultaneously dismisses and usurps the dark identity, injuring his very own identity of empathy and undermining his credibility to argue for racial equality. Griffin’s purpose is definitely well-intentioned and radical because of its time. However, his desolation to speak to get black people ultimately merely undercuts his argument of equal mankind and leads to a detrimental theme of imperialist sympathy when the white guy claims power on the experiences of a marginalized people.
Immediately after changing his skin tone, Griffin starts to use the collective “we” with reference to black persons, implying which the simple dyeing of his skin allows him of talking for the black community as a whole. Within one day of becoming black-skinned, in what he him self sees since his “first intimate glimpse” into dark life, Griffin declares, “We were Negroes and each of our concern was the white person and how to get along with him” (Griffin, 35). Besides he work with his limited experience like a black gentleman to establish the “concern” of all negroes, but alienates himself from the “white man” he was just a couple days back. Furthermore, Griffin remains surprisingly-open about his “former” whiteness, not as they wants to focus on a variation between his internal identification and outward appearance, but mainly because to him the fact that he “was once white” is insignificant (35). Intended for Griffin, the physical blackness of his skin gives him licence to phone himself “wholly a Marrano, regardless of what this individual once may well have been” and an instantaneous claim to the sense of “shame, inches “fear, ” and failure of the dark experience (23).
Griffins self-declared blackness gives him false permit to act as being a misguided tone for the black equality movement. Griffin’s quest to empathize with the black community and argue that the white-man will not “have virtually any God-given rights that [the dark-colored man] does not have, ” (though presumptuous), is definitely well-intentioned (36). And, inside its historic context, even brave. However , his disagreement does not make it through the test of time, brand new critics showcasing the moral fallacies and problematic effects that come once white males equate empathy with a fundamental understanding of a marginalized groups’ experience. As the 2016 documentary thirteenth says, the moment white persons “take the lead of the conversation [about black movements]that they inevitably produce more repression” (Ana DuVernay). To John Howard Griffin, though, his experience “is what it is like to be a Renegrido in a terrain where all of us keep the Renegrido downnot the white mans experience being a Negro inside the South” (11). Ultimately, even though griffin is usually well-meaning in his goals, his inability to acknowledge the dark experience because anything further than black pores and skin simply leads to a subconsciente racism that hinders the fight for equality into the future. The insights in to the black experience that Griffin does gain through his journey ultimately hold very little weight since they come by a white man who have refuses to recognize that his self-inflicted experience cannot completely represent that of a true black man.
Griffin’s turn is seen as a a sculpt of hopelessness and reducing agency, as he begins to reduce a sense of empowerment. Rather than claiming that this individual undertook his “experiment, inch his quest to understand the black experience, he admits that it “was undertaken, inches using unaggressive voice to spell out the alter he once wished to actively create. (175). This new perception of failure seems like legitimate insight into the black male’s struggle, insight into the inescapability of blackness and the bad connotations this carries. However , even as Griffin finds this kind of understanding, this individual continues to use the pronoun “we, ” never acknowledging that, unlike all those born dark-colored, his blackness is certainly not futile: he can, and performed, become light again. Screwing up to recognize this disparity, Griffin undermines his persona of empathy and, therefore , the credibility of his debate.
History black background especially is no stranger towards the trope from the well-meaning light man, the person who uses a contrived impression of understanding for the black mans struggle to advocate for his rights. And while white men with very good intentions like Griffin certainly help to combat large challenges against segregation and discrimination, they also take out black people from the discussion. In doing this, they provide false reliability to white-colored politicians who also verbalize their opposition to racism whilst also instituting subliminally-racist courses like the American prison system. Though Griffin attempts to cultivate an identity of empathy then use this empathized-understanding to argue against discrimination and general racism, he in the end just deepens himself into a troubling historical trend by which marginalized peoples are cut out of their own discussion.
