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.

Existence nullified by men; reaffirmed by nature.

The core concept in Griffin’s writings about racism – that members of dominant groups tend to view minorities, because they seem different in some extrinsic way, as intrinsically other, and “as merely underdeveloped versions of their own imprisoning culture” – was intuited in Black Like Me and articulated in a seminal essay, “The Intrinsic Other.

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...

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.

They put us low, and then blame us for being down there and say that since we are low, we can’t deserve our rights.” Others.

The vast difference between what this country was saying and apparently believing, and what the black man was experiencing, was embittering.

All human beings face the same fundamental problems of loving and of suffering, of striving toward human aspirations for themselves and their children, of simply being and inevitably dying. These are the basic truths in all people, the common denominators of all cultures and all races and all ethnic categories. In.

We, who were reduced to eating on the sidewalk, were suddenly elevated in status by this man’s misery. We were the aristocrats and he the beggar. It flattered us. We were superbly above him and the comedy gave us a delusion of high self-respect. In a while, the magnanimity of the rich would complete the picture. We would feed our scraps to the poor.

My revulsion turned to grief that my own people could give the hate stare, could shrivel men’s souls, could deprive humans of rights they unhesitatingly accord their livestock. I.