Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by John Howard Griffin

Quote by John Howard Griffin

“In reality, the Us-and-Them or I-and-Thou dichotomies do not exist. There is only one universal We - one human family united by the capacity to feel compassion and to demand equal justice for all.”

Quote by John Howard Griffin

Book:Black Like Me
Create image

Work

Black Like Me

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

John Howard Griffin
John Howard Griffin

John Howard Griffin was an influential American journalist and writer, best known for his 1961 work 'Black Like Me', which documented his experience of passing as a black man to expose the harsh realities of racial segregation. His work had a profound impact on racial equality and social justice. more

You May Also Like

“But there are differences. The social studies I’ve read …” “They don’t deal with any basic difference in human nature between black and white,” I said. “They only study the effects of environment on human nature. You place the white man in the ghetto, deprive him of educational advantages, arrange it so he has to struggle hard to fulfill his instinct for self-respect, give him little physical privacy and less leisure, and he would after a time assume the same characteristics you attach to the Negro. These characteristics don’t spring from whiteness or blackness, but from a man’s conditioning.”

Us HistoryRacial Discrimination1959
Book:Black Like Me
Create image

“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.”

Us HistoryRacial Discrimination1959
Book:Black Like Me
Create image

“The music consumed in its blatant rhythm all other rhythms, even that of the heartbeat. I wondered how all this would look to the casual observer, or to the whites in their homes. “The niggers are whooping it up over on Mobile Street tonight,” they might say. “They’re happy.” Or, as one scholar put it, “Despite their lowly status, they are capable of living jubilantly.” Would they see the immense melancholy that hung over the quarter, so oppressive that men had to dull their sensibilities in noise or wine or sex or gluttony in order to escape it? The laughter had to be gross or it would turn to sobs, and to sob would be to realize, and to realize would be to despair. So the noise poured forth like a jazzed-up fugue, louder and louder to cover the whisper in every man’s soul. “You are black. You are condemned.” This is what the white man mistook for “jubilant living” and called “whooping it up.” This is how the white man can say, “They live like dogs,” never realizing why they must, to save themselves, shout, get drunk, shake the hip, pour pleasures into bellies deprived of happiness. Otherwise, the sounds from the quarter would lose order and rhythm and become wails.”

Us HistoryRacial DiscriminationTags 1959
Book:Black Like Me
Create image

“I must have had a dozen rides that evening. They blear into a nightmare, the one scarcely distinguishable from the other. It quickly became obvious why they picked me up. All but two picked me up the way they would pick up a pornographic photograph or book - except that this was verbal pornography. With a Negro, they assumed they need give no semblance of self-respect or respectability. The visual element entered into it. In a car at night visibility is reduced. A man will reveal himself in the dark, which gives the illusion of anonymity, more than he will in the bright light. Some were shamelessly open, some shamelessly subtle. All showed morbid curiosity about the sexual life of the Negro, and all had, at base, the same stereotyped image of the Negro as an inexhaustible sex-machine with oversized genitals and a vast store of experiences, immensely varied. They appeared to think that the Negro has done all of those “special” things they themselves have never dared to do. They carried the conversations into depths of depravity.”

Us HistoryRacial Discrimination1959
Book:Black Like Me
Create image

“After the first difficulties in Rochester, New York, I was asked to consult with community leaders. I went and spoke for quite a long time. The leaders were concerned and sincere men. The first question one of them asked after I talked was: “Well, Mr. Griffin, what is the first thing we should do now?” I told him that I had been asked to come and consult with community leaders, and yet I was sitting in a room full of white men. The white man who had asked the question slapped his forehead in real chagrin. “It never occurred to me to ask any of them," he said apologetically.”

Us HistoryRacial Discrimination1959
Book:Black Like Me
Create image

“We need a conversion of morals,” the elderly man said. “Not just superficially, but profoundly. And in both races. We need a great saint - some enlightened common sense. Otherwise, we’ll never have the right answers when the pressure groups - those racists, super-patriots, whatever you want to call them - tag every move toward racial justice as communist-inspired, Zionist-inspired, Illuminati-inspired, Satan-inspired … part of some secret conspiracy to overthrow the Christian civilization.”

Us HistoryRacial Discrimination1959
Book:Black Like Me
Create image

“He told me how all of the white men in the region craved colored girls. He said he hired a lot of them both for housework and in his business. “And I guarantee you, I’ve had it in every one of them before they ever got on the payroll.” A pause. Silence above humming tires on the hot-top road. “What do you think of that?” “Surely some refuse,” I suggested cautiously. “Not if they want to eat - or feed their kids,” he snorted. “If they don’t put out, they don’t get the job.”

Us HistoryRacial Discrimination1959
Book:Black Like Me
Create image