Black Like Me

Content Warning: This section of the study guide contains detailed discussions of racism and violence motivated by racism, including references to lynching and suicide. The source material includes outdated and offensive racial terms and slurs, which are reproduced in this guide only via quotations.

Black Like Me attracted controversy at the time of its original publication and continues to be criticized today, though for different reasons. Griffin decided to alter his appearance so that others would perceive him as Black, hoping not only to understand the experiences of Black people under segregation for his own sake, but also to publish what he learned to educate white people and help bridge the divide between white and Black Americans. In the early 1960s, when Griffin’s book was at the height of its popularity and influence, the memoir played a role in changing the mindset of white Americans by giving them a glimpse into racial discrimination they did not personally experience. However, Griffin’s challenge to the status quo was not without repercussions; his family had to leave Texas after an effigy of Griffin was hung on Main Street in his hometown. Later editions of Black Like Me note that in the 1970s, Griffin was targeted by the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi, where he was beaten and abandoned on a backroad (Bonazzi, Robert. “Afterword.” Black Like Me: The Definitive Griffin Estate Edition by John Howard Griffin. Wings Press, 2006, p. 203).

Modern criticism centers primarily on the ethics of Griffin’s experiment. Despite his intentions, Griffin’s claim that he “became a Negro” by changing the color of his skin oversimplifies the complexity of the Black experience (7), as Griffin carries neither the multigenerational history or trauma of racism nor the personal life experience—prior to his transformation—to fully understand the experiences of Black people in America. Others criticize Griffin for wearing “Blackface” and for claiming to have become Black essentially overnight (McKenzie Jr., Sammie. “‘Black Like Me’ Is Blackface Too.” Medium, 2019). Some have noted Griffin’s work as incomplete, singular, and failing to portray success or hope among Black people. Furthermore, the “outside looking in” nature of Griffin’s experiment has been criticized as “othering” Black people, despite his statements espousing a common brotherhood of humanity and a shared experience. Other critics argue that Griffin did not need to perform the experiment at all, as Black Americans have their own voices and did not need a white man to speak for their experience. However, Griffin was aware that he was writing not only for a predominantly white audience—many of whom harbored prejudices that prevented them from accepting the credibility or authority of Black voices—but also in an environment in which a Black man telling a truth that was “unpleasing” to white audiences was a dangerous prospect.