Black Like Me

My childlike understanding of the issues of prejudice and racism suddenly became very complex just before my sophomore year in high school.  My family moved from a mostly white community (three black students at my high school) to a southern town where for the first time I was in the minority. I was made to realize many forces were at work beyond obvious and ugly racial bigotry including: self segregation, cycles of poverty and abuse and even reverse discrimination. Each of these injustices is indicative of unhealed wounds.

 Since that time I have continued to ponder the question. Have the wounds inflicted upon people who’s ancestors suffered slavery, segregation and racial bigotry in this country been healed simply because time and some laws have passed? What about the self inflicted wounds of those who hate? Do not the sins of our parents visit the children to the seventh generation? It seems to me penance is a necessary part of healing these wounds. It seems to me there is still a need for acknowledging the sins of our parents one by one and make reparation on their behalf.

 I recently finished reading a book by John Howard Griffin. Griffin, a white reporter who had his skin temporarily chemically darkened, conducted an investigation on racism in the south in the late 50s. His wrote an account of this journey in his book Black Like Me. I recommend this book to mature readers due to a few blunt accounts of sexual improprieties. The book has given me a new perspective on the history of the civil rights movement in the US and so a better grasp of what obstacles we face today.