Black Like Me

by John Howard Griffin

  Again, we had the duality of viewpoint regarding who was actually implementing these patterns of tension, rumor and explosion. Black people were absolutely certain it was not black people, and it was generally feared it might be some white racist group and therefore another symptom of genocidal manipulation. I traveled from city to city in those days, and the view from within the ghettos was terrible and terrifying. While white people in the periphery were arming themselves against the day when they would have to defend themselves from attack by blacks (and really believed someone was fomenting a racial war in which black people would rise up and attack them), black people mostly without arms huddled inside the ghettos feeling that they were surrounded by armed whites. Black parents tried to keep a closer watch on their children. Black men spoke of the old “licensed bloodlust” which allowed racists to do anything to black people and get away with it.

  Local white leadership was discredited in the eyes of black people, too, by their insistence on asking me, when we met to discuss the local events, usually with black people, if I had discovered who was the traveling black agitator who had come in and stirred up their “good black people.” And had I discovered if there were any communists behind the disruptions? Black people could not believe local white officials, who surely must be aware of local conditions, could really think the explosion had been caused by “outside agitators” or communists. And the white officials were viewed as completely insincere. Sadly enough, I knew the white officials really and sincerely did believe the causes lay elsewhere than in their own backyards.

  During the Miami Republican convention of 1968, because the media had black reporters who could get into the black area even in crisis times, this whole nation saw the making of a riot unfold before them on TV screens. They saw the unwarranted police raids on black political caucuses because these caucuses refused to allow white reporters. They saw a curfew that was ordered in the afternoon when most black people were at work or did not have their radios on. They saw that curfew really being made known for the first time to most black people that evening when law enforcement men rolled into the black areas, unleashed a cloud of tear gas and only then announced on their portable speakers that a 6 P.M. curfew had been ordered and all people should return to their homes and stay inside. After that series of provocations, the city exploded into a riot. The country saw it, got a good and expert report on it. The commentators even mentioned the fact that it was very hot and the people were cooling themselves outdoors, since there was little or no air-conditioning in the dwellings of that part of the city. And yet, within hours, one of the state’s top officials blandly announced that they were looking for the communists and black outside agitators who had caused it. Presumably they never found them. Black people who had witnessed this all over the country could only despair at the gullibility of white people who, seeing all this, swallowed the old line that it was caused by communists and black agitators.

  Three weeks before the assassination of Martin Luther King, I met on the West Coast with a group of black leaders to compare notes. Almost simultaneously, many black people had become convinced that every time a black community was goaded into such an explosion, it served only the cause of racists and brought us closer to a genocidal situation. The word went out not to let racists goad the communities into flare-ups. This is certainly one of the reasons why Dr. King’s murder did not unleash massive violence, as might have been anticipated. There were, of course, scattered pockets of retaliatory violence in some of the Eastern cities and Washington, D.C., but it was not the all-out race war that it could have been.

  What reconciliation was possible then? If whites looked at blacks with distrust, it was nothing compared to the vast distrust with which blacks regarded whites.

  Almost ironically, the person of Martin Luther King in life and in death became the touchstone for a whole new evaluation among black thinkers. This evaluation led to alternatives to violent confrontation. So, in a bizarre sense, Dr. King, who had seemed so defeated and who had died without much hope that his philosophy of nonviolent resistance had accomplished anything, became the mainspring for a whole new way of thinking among black people and, in the long run, averted violent head-on collision between the citizens of this country. As a result of this new thinking, the “take ten!” call faded. Black men began to see other ways out. A whole new dynamism was put into play at the time of Dr. King’s martyrdom.

  Up until that time black thinking had been focused on the dream of an integrated society as the ultimate solution to discrimination and racial injustice. It was a dream held also by many whites, a dream for which many whites and blacks had already died. This dream was so deep, so cherished, and seemed to be such an unqualified good that no one really questioned it. It took men of great mental toughness to begin to ask if that dream had not carried in its wake certain weaknesses for the black American. When this painful line of thought was opened up, it became apparent that at least some of that dream had kept black men weak. For example, if a black man set up a business, he might very well hear his black potential clients say: “After all this struggle for integration, I’m not going to self-segregate,” and refuse to patronize his business.

  Also, it was generally believed, though the belief was fading, that most “good whites” lived in the North and most “bad whites” lived in the South. Certainly many Northern cities deplored what was going on in the South. But when Martin Luther King, who had been so praised in the North for the work he did in the South, came to work in the cities of the North, the very officials who had praised him sometimes led opposition to his work locally. This revealed to black people that there was no basic difference between attitudes in the North and South. A white-imposed separation had always existed in both areas. Dr. King’s trips into the North showed that even in the friendliest cities there would always rise up out of the local community sufficient opposition to prevent bridging this separation. It became bitterly apparent that this separation was going to go on existing into the foreseeable future.

  What then? Black leaders and thinkers began to stand back and review the situation. Their conclusions were harsh. The old dream, and the constant hope for one solution - that of an integrated society - had not worked and had little chance of working now. Black people were jammed together in ghettos and were going to have to stay there. All the apparent progress had not changed the problems of black people living in the ghettos of this land. Black men were still not able to function as men, as leaders of their households, as self-determining, self-respecting human individuals. What were the possible alternatives to these exhausting and violent cycles of hopes built up and then dashed through the moods of white society?

  Black leaders pondered. They must find the genius to turn a seemingly hopeless situation into an advantageous one. The first step was to accept the realities of the situation and act on them rather than on some nebulous dream of a future when all men would come to the realization that racial justice was for the good of all society, not just for the good of the oppressed.

  Once viewed from this perspective, some startling facts became clear. Black thinkers, discarding the old dream, began to expose the weaknesses that had been built into the system. The first of these weaknesses was called “fragmented individualism” by the philosophers. As soon as it was defined, it was understood by black people and recognized. What fragmented individualism really meant was what happened to a black man who tried to make it in this society: in order to succeed, he had to become an imitation white man - dress white, talk white, think white, express the values of middle-class white culture (at least when he was in the presence of white men). Implied in all this was the hiding, the denial, of his selfhood, his negritude, his culture, as though they were somehow shameful. If he succeeded, he was an alienated marginal man - alienated from the strength of his culture and from fellow black men, and never able, of course, to become that imitation white man because he bore the pigment that made the white man view him as intrinsically
other. The instant the term fragmented individualism was understood, it was completely understood by black men who had lived it in all its nuances. And as soon as it was understood, black men could do something positive to counter it. The “brother” and “sister” concept swept in. Black people deliberately stopped trying to imitate white men in dress, speech, and etiquette. Black men reversed the weaknesses of fragmented individualism by studying black history, developing black pride, even using words like “black” which had been oppressive before, hammering them home until they stood for the symbol of the New Black and became beautiful.

  Black thinkers spoke of turning the ghettos into gardens, taking over their own schools, building a “nation within a nation.”

  They pointed out the economic weaknesses of the old system. Most businesses in black areas were owned by white men, particularly the big chain grocery stores. Black people were shown that their dollars lost strength when spent in those stores because the profits went into white banks, which would not discriminate against black people for TV and car loans, but would discriminate against them for small-business or housing loans. With this understanding, black people in Chicago began to make the rounds of such stores, saying in effect that if the stores expected to sell another leaf of lettuce to black people, the stores had to hire black personnel, including black people at management level; and furthermore, they had to bank the proceeds of that particular ghetto operation in black banks which would not discriminate against black people in loans. The stores had to comply, and this was so successful in Chicago that the techniques spread across the country.

  At more personal levels, it began to be understood, and was then quickly understood, that black society must work to salvage the black male child. Always before there had been concern for the black girl child. It was now pointed out that the black male child, even in a black school using white textbooks, could early come to the conclusion that all the heroes in history were white men. Furthermore, with the exception of nationally known black civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, Roy Wilkins, James Farmer, and others, the black male child frequently saw the adult black male as ineffectual and defeated. The old picture of the white man leading the black man by the hand toward the solution to his problems again gave the black male child a view of the adult black male as something not worth becoming, and killed his spirit and his will to become an adult, problem-solving individual. This perception swept the nation. Black parents began to demand changes in textbooks and to demand that black people be visibly involved in the solutions to all problems that concerned them. A few white men who had worked long and hard in civil rights saw the immense importance of this new perception. Men like Saul Alinsky and Father James Groppi and others, who were regarded as heroes of the civil rights movement, began to fade from public view, although continuing to work privately. They felt, as many blacks now felt, that for the sake of that black male child, black men should be seen as the problem-solvers and leaders, and that whites should stay out of the spotlight.

  Some whites, who had never really understood, were offended by this sudden death of their role as the “good white leading the poor black out of the jungle.” Many of these were among the saddest people of our time, good-hearted whites who had dedicated themselves to helping black people become imitation whites, to “bringing them up to our level,” without ever realizing what a deep insult this attitude can be.

  White perception of these rapid changes in black concepts lagged. Whites, in general, could not keep up with the progress in black thinking. It was fascinating and tragic to see so many whites who had given long years to civil rights work suddenly excluded from the thinking of black men. Black students were particularly aware that they had to give the black child a view of black men standing on their own, and to erase all hints of the old view of being led by whites. College students formed black student unions and excluded white students. Few white students understood. White college students, after all, had been one of the great bulwarks in the battle for racial justice, and many had dedicated themselves heroically to this cause. But part of that incipient racism had always led whites to assume the leadership positions and perpetuated the view that whites rather than blacks were the heroes of the movement. Really sincere and informed whites were thanked for what they had done and advised to go and work in their own communities, to combat the racism there which could ultimately be as oppressive to nonracist whites as to blacks. Some did this and continue to do it, though it is perhaps more onerous than working with blacks.

  The same principle held in black universities, where students demanded more and more black teachers. White professors who had virtually dedicated their lives and their academic careers as historians, anthropologists, sociologists, to the problems of racism and its cures, thinking they did this for the good of the oppressed victims of racism (and often suffering social and academic insults as a result), were asked to leave schools in favor of black teachers. Some of them turned very bitter.

  Some who were eminent authorities in their disciplines, and were recognized as such by black authorities in the same disciplines, were told by students that their work was not relevant because they were not black. To have one’s life’s work dismissed in such a frivolous manner by people who had never yet studied it was a severe insult. One elderly scholar who had been a thundering advocate of civil rights now speaks of “those black punks.” Another, a sociologist, still involved in the study of discrimination in medicine and medical schools, recently told a professor at a California medical school who was proud of the achievement of black medical students there, “Well, I hope when you get sick you call one of them.”

  Such men, deeply offended to be excluded from participation with black men in the solutions to the problems of racism, sometimes began to look for symptoms of inferiority as a means of self-defense. We are seeing a recrudescence of these contentions by scientists, even to the recent suggestion that men with lower IQs (by white-oriented tests) be paid to have vasectomies - one thousand dollars for each point lower than 100, so that a man with an IQ of 90 would get ten thousand dollars to have himself sterilized. This has been viewed as another example of genocidal thinking.

  All of this is part of the current scene. Some people call it polarization, and many of us, white and black, still remember the days of the early and mid-sixties when we were all working together, singing “We Shall Overcome” and thinking that success was just around the corner.

  But now, though we can still bungle into fratricide, there is really more hope than in the past. In the past, hope was based on the moods of the majority - a fragile and slippery basis. That is gone now, and a realism - harsh, full of contradictions - has replaced it as something more solid on which to build, a basis which says that black people will continue to move toward being fully functioning and self-determining people. All this is irreversible.

  Polarization. Separation. No one has wanted this, white or black. It has come because the things we dreamed of did not materialize. Many still hold the old dreams even while accepting today’s realities.

  A couple of years ago I was seated in an auditorium in Detroit where Reverend Cleage was explaining to a conference of priests that what they called “black separatists” were in reality men who recognized the implacability of a white-imposed separation.

  Afterward, one of the priests got up and asked: “But aren’t you advocating an un-Christian way - the way of accepting as a reality this white-imposed separation? You are a minister. Are not all of us who are ministers obligated to bring men together in love?”

  “Yes,” Reverend Cleage said. “And because you have not preached that long enough and loudly enough, we are faced with accepting the separation.”

  Eventually, some black thinkers believe, this “separation” may be the shortest route to an authentic communication at some future date when blacks and whites can enter into encounters in which they truly speak as equals and in which the white man will no longer load every phrase wit
h unconscious suggestions that he has something to “concede” to black men or that he wants to help black men “overcome” their blackness.

  Beyond Otherness 1979

  In Black Like Me, I tried to establish one simple fact, which was to reveal the insanity of a situation where a man is judged by his skin color, by his philosophical “accident” - rather than by who he is in his humanity.

  I think I proved that, because as a white man I could go anywhere freely; but as a black man I was restricted by segregation laws and Southern white customs. I was judged entirely by my pigmentation and not by my qualities as a human individual.

  This simple fact was indisputable, yet many whites did not seem to comprehend this, or were unwilling to accept the truth, or flatly denied it. My experience as a “Negro” merely substantiated an experiential truth known by all black people and all persons of color universally - that white majority cultures discriminate against minorities solely on the basis of skin color.

  This system of discrimination, an inculcated double standard, may vary in content from culture to culture, but it is always unjust. There are thousands of kinds of injustice but there is only one kind of justice - equal justice for all. To call for a little more justice, or a moderately gradual sort of justice, is to call for no justice. That is a simple truth.

  And there is another simple truth: Humanity does not differ in any profound way; there are not essentially different species of human beings. If we could only put ourselves in the shoes of others to see how we would react, then we might become aware of the injustice of discrimination and the tragic inhumanity of every kind of prejudice.