Reflection On Black Like Me

Black Like Me is a story set in the 1950s and 1960s where our protagonist John Howard Griffin temporarily changes the color of his skin in an attempt to do research on the social differences between whites and blacks. In this book John Howard Griffin Undergoes many conflicts and experiences that changed his views on the way blacks were talked to, looked at, and how differently they lived. In this essay we are going to take a look at examples that show how he changed in these ways from how he originally thought.
When the books first started, John has high hopes for the way that he would be treated, but later on he would discover that his hopes would be crushed by reality. An example of this is when John is having lunch with the three FBI agents, Mrs Jackson and Mr. Levitan when he ponders the future and asks a question to them. “‘Do you suppose they’ll treat me as John Howard Griffin, regardless of my color-- or will they treat me as some nameless Negro, even though I am still the same man?’”(John Howard Griffin,4). From this text you can see that John had a lot of faith in the people of society and how they would treat …show more content…
Then we have John knowing that there would be ramifications for turning himself into a Negro for a little bit but he later realizes just how bad those ramifications would be when the doctors words fly into his thoughts. Finally we have John having his privileges as a white taken away and him having to deal with the small rights he has as a Negro then later he turns back into a white person with the privileges he had before and he can really appreciate what privileges he has now when he has experienced not having those privileges. With these examples you can see that there were many experiences that John Howard Griffin went through that changed him as