Richard Wright and John Griffin Term Paper

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The Oxsoralen he took to change the color of his skin may have hastened his death. Why did he do it? "If I could take on the skin of a black man, live whatever might happen and then share that experience with others, perhaps at the level of shared human experience, we might come to some understanding that was not possible at the level of pure reason" (Power 2006).

Through all of his experiences as a "black" man, Griffin felt the deprivation of basic needs, to go to the rest room, to get a drink of water, to earn a decent living, to find a place to sleep, and that denial by white citizens made him realize that in this land of freedom many citizens were not free, in fact and in their mind. His temporary immersion in the black world of the day made him realize his own "otherness," and shocked him into a life-long attempt to correct the situation.

Even though he felt, for 66 days, racially-motivated deprivation and the disrespect of whites for African-Americans, Griffin could not possibly understand, as Richard Wright did, the constant put-downs from birth that warped and scarred a person's soul and spirit. He did not have the background of 400 years of history that often crushed any attempt at pride and honest respect for family and self among those of African-American origin. His family history did not include murders and hate crimes in it, a common story for most African-American families of his day. Having grown up with wealth and privilege as a white man, Griffin, sympathetic though he might have been, could never have felt the degradation African-Americans had felt. Still, Griffin tried to experience what it was like to be black and got a taste with which to teach others.

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Though Griffin tried to reenact the life of an African-American man, and then tell his story, it might be better to learn what it is like to grow up "black," by reading African-Americans' writings about the same thing, such as Richard Wright's story.

Black women also wrote about their experiences growing up African-American. Women, such as Amanda Smith, H. Cordelia Ray and Alice Walker have written good books about what it was really like. The shattered pasts they came from, even their origins, being from different tribes in Africa, all were lumped together as if they were alike, they were treated with indignity and worse, subjugation and hatred, by the whites in America. This racial stereotype was continued through centuries, passed down through the families as submission was taught to young black people by their parents and relatives. Richard Wright's family tried their best to instill this submission in him, but he rebelled and tried to escape.

Even today incidents of hate crimes crop up; the Neo-Nazis reflect the true feelings of some Southern young people. Griffin's name appeared on one of these Nazi death lists and he felt the sting of racial hatred after he returned to "white" life. Perhaps he may have eventually understood what African-Americans live with day by day, but in the 1960's, even with black skin, passing as a newly "black" man, there was no way that Griffin could have understood what it was really like to be "black."

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