Racism In The Deep South Summary

This book covers the experimentation done by the writer, John Howard Griffin on racism in the Deep South. The author is working to show the true racial tensions of the South during the height of segregation. As he knew, blacks are not the first people to be oppressed and found ‘inferior by a group of people’. He knew that diagnosing this would be just like diagnosing the problems of the Jews in Germany. Griffin states “…the story of the persecuted, the defrauded, the feared and detested” (Griffin Preface). The way he does this is different from the common observatory ways of scholars and writers during this time by actually changing his skin color to see the underlying cause of this racism through the eyes of all people. There is no convincing, this book is made to make people aware and serve a history lesson that has never been taught before. Griffin decided that to create the ultimate publication on racism in the Deep South, he would have to dig deeper than any writer before him ever had. To do this he consulted his most trusted colleagues about the idea that he had. This idea was to change his skin color. To find the underlying cause, why not become a subject of the …show more content…
This book teaches a lot of the conflict of the races, not only white vs black but black vs black, white vs white, and people against themselves. The fighting caused people to hate themselves and fight against themselves and their own race just because they couldn’t figure out another way. The work that he did to create this book is very fascinating. The book is very well written and gives a lot of detail through the eyes of the writer. I learned a lot about the true hardships of the oppressed blacks in the South and about the many conflicts that kept them from stepping up in the South as true equals. The book was meant to be from his experience but more outtakes from other observers of the problems of race in the South would have helped his