This was sort of hard to get into at first- I couldn’t get past the abhorrent blackface. I had to keep reminding myself it was based in fact, a real part of history, and getting through this could be no harder on me than it was the people of its time.
I took a break at some point in the movie, told one of my friends about what I was watching and she said, “Imagine if someone tried that today.” To which I responded they wouldn’t need to, if they were genuinely curious about the black experience they could just go listen to a black person.
This experiment was done before segregation was outlawed so going up to a black person and asking about their experience wasn’t as easy of an option. John Howard Griffin is so incredibly bold going through with something like this. I very thoroughly enjoyed the part where the black man told him if he wanted to be black he was going to have to learn how to “dress different, talk different, act different, think different.”
That is one of the first things I thought about. His speech is too formal, he’s too put together. Albeit there are many black people with very structured dialect, me being one of them, but this was the South in the 50s. They weren’t afforded the same opportunities to have such language and the ones that were, were most likely berated for possessing knowledge white people felt they didn’t deserve. To the present day, black children are taught at an early age to think differently from their peers. In every act they do they have to consider how it appears to others, for their own safety. Being black in America comes with an undeniable target on your back, you’re not afforded the same bliss and leisure as the white American and this experiment is proof of that.
This happened in 1959, 65 years ago, so the cruel language and treatment towards black people is much more overt and in your face but what I really enjoy about this film in connection to now, is that while in the current day the “hatred” might not be as loud, there are certain moments where he begins to let his guard down with a white person, only for them to get hostile when he doesn’t submit the way they want/expect. After this happens a few times, he becomes hostile himself, waiting for the shoe to drop. A very kind white man approaches him, no ill intentions whatsoever but John’s just been threatened, multiple men have made crude remarks about his wife and he can’t help but to be on edge. Which I feel is a prefect representation of where we are today.
I have a friend who was born in 1958, a very kind, lively white man who likes to tell me stories of the past. Imagine the men from this time who aren’t so kind, who have children and grandchildren they tell their stories too. This is what has circulated the mistreatment of black civilians and kept this country trapped in its dooming cycles of violence.
“Love and then do what you will.”
When love is your leading light, your TRUE leading light, it will show in what you do and how you treat others. Love self, love God, love others. There is an interconnection, you cannot love one without loving all.
This was sort of hard to get into at first- I couldn’t get past the abhorrent blackface. I had to keep reminding myself it was based in fact, a real part of history, and getting through this could be no harder on me than it was the people of its time.
I took a break at some point in the movie, told one of my friends about what I was watching and she said, “Imagine if someone tried that today.” To which I responded they wouldn’t need to, if they were genuinely curious about the black experience they could just go listen to a black person.
This experiment was done before segregation was outlawed so going up to a black person and asking about their experience wasn’t as easy of an option. John Howard Griffin is so incredibly bold going through with something like this. I very thoroughly enjoyed the part where the black man told him if he wanted to be black he was going to have to learn how to “dress different, talk different, act different, think different.”
That is one of the first things I thought about. His speech is too formal, he’s too put together. Albeit there are many black people with very structured dialect, me being one of them, but this was the South in the 50s. They weren’t afforded the same opportunities to have such language and the ones that were, were most likely berated for possessing knowledge white people felt they didn’t deserve. To the present day, black children are taught at an early age to think differently from their peers. In every act they do they have to consider how it appears to others, for their own safety. Being black in America comes with an undeniable target on your back, you’re not afforded the same bliss and leisure as the white American and this experiment is proof of that.
This happened in 1959, 65 years ago, so the cruel language and treatment towards black people is much more overt and in your face but what I really enjoy about this film in connection to now, is that while in the current day the “hatred” might not be as loud, there are certain moments where he begins to let his guard down with a white person, only for them to get hostile when he doesn’t submit the way they want/expect. After this happens a few times, he becomes hostile himself, waiting for the shoe to drop. A very kind white man approaches him, no ill intentions whatsoever but John’s just been threatened, multiple men have made crude remarks about his wife and he can’t help but to be on edge. Which I feel is a prefect representation of where we are today.
I have a friend who was born in 1958, a very kind, lively white man who likes to tell me stories of the past. Imagine the men from this time who aren’t so kind, who have children and grandchildren they tell their stories too. This is what has circulated the mistreatment of black civilians and kept this country trapped in its dooming cycles of violence.
“Love and then do what you will.”
When love is your leading light, your TRUE leading light, it will show in what you do and how you treat others. Love self, love God, love others. There is an interconnection, you cannot love one without loving all.
