Review: Black Like Me

Empathy is one of those tricky words. Upon first study, ‘empathy’ is simply an advanced level of ‘sympathy,’ fortifying an altruistic pity with a shared experience of being in a place of either victimization, isolation, or misfortune. But like all words in culture, meanings evolve with the spirit of the times, bending in tune to the shifting displacement of the wind. ‘Empathy’ is, likewise, not immune to these meta-forces of groupthink, and the contemporary result places its vacillating definition somewhere between the zenith of human compassion and a heralded best practice in the social service lingo. With each commercialization of humanitarian effort, a la LiveStrong, empathy is shaded gray as a buzz word for, at its basest terms, is ‘being a good person.’ No longer are the clear-cut lines of institutional racism and cultural bigotry apparent in our 21^st American culture of subtlety, efficiency, and passive aggressiveness. Still very much alive and (I believe) persistently thriving, racism is like a burning candle that, to the modern mind, was snuffed out in 1964 with the passage of the Civil Rights Act, but whose burning embers linger long enough to produce a cloudy haze and a second reigniting of its previous form.

But this post isn’t about the second flame of cultural and institutionalized racism in post-modern American culture. Rather, this post searches to examine what history has taught us thus far about how a white journalist in the racially charged early 1960s decided to step down from his world of white privilege and enter the black community the only way he thought most feasible: by coloring his skin. And as a journalist, John Howard Griffin didn’t seek this thing called empathy to change the world. Rather, he simply sought to record the facts—and the truth he found was a world turned on its head from his previous privileged existence at the top of the racial ladder.

One of the strengths of Griffin’s account is his reversed vantage point. History, as the Winston Churchill maxim goes, is written by the victors. With that formula, it makes sense then that those with the most power, access to resources, and control of the media are the ones that will record said ‘history.’ Griffin, in becoming for all apparent purposes a black man, places himself at the bottom of the American caste system, certainly not a victor in any sense of the word. He also is an alien. True, he indeed shares in and suffers the plight of the black man, but Griffin is also a mere ‘convert’ to the race, a masqueraded imposter who knows not the context or cues of assimilating into his new community. From this double-edged vantage point, Griffin records his personal account, describing an America ill-fit to its traditional definition, a ‘strange country that is suspended in ugliness.’

Griffin’s estrangement reminds me personally of how simple, on the surface, life appears to me. Of course, as a white male in our society, the opportunities presented me are endless, and I move rather uninhibited through the system, a move that is simply based on the amount of melanin in my skin. This comfort I feel and have felt my entire life is an insulated comfort, like the young Buddha inside the palace walls, estranged enough from reality to misjudge virtue for placated power. How could life not be thoroughly beautiful, all sewn up neatly without any rough edges? Yet, it is not so. Life as viewed from the top-down is harrowingly different when viewed from the bottom-up. Can you imagine the effect upon our collective subconscious if the stories we told and the traditions we passed on were those written by the marginalized peoples of our society? It’s disturbing, really.

But the questions remains: so what remains of empathy? Is it even possible to right the wrongs of a country divided since its founding, where ‘all men’ was a title to be decided legislatively rather than divinely? Or are we just left with hopelessness for unity and our country’s future? Perhaps we should just put our hopes in the legislative system, or, even better, a political candidate to make sweeping reforms that will finally and rightfully stand everything on the ground of truth and common decency! But we would be better pupils than to mistake our political optimism for history. The narrative we receive by John Howard Griffin bares the most devilish rues of human nature, whether that is small-town rural Mississippi or in the chambers of our national Senate. Considering the tide of our current culture, one that is a mere four decades removed from Griffin’s writing, I believe that Black Like Me is still every bit applicable to the road before us in unifying the racial divide. Yet, the grittiest gruntwork, in my opinion, lies not in our undoing our cultural tidings of black and white but in disembedding the colorblind ideologies that perpetuate ignorance and institutional bias. For that work ahead, we are going to have to make our own history, but only if you we really want to.