Black Like Me

Black Like Me

Black Like Me is a documentary-style film based on the 1961 nonfiction book, Black Like Me, by journalist John Howard Griffin. The film was released in 1964 and centers on a white journalist, John Finley Horton. Horton, whose story is based on the true experiences of Griffin, artificially darkens his skin in an attempt to pass for a black man, allowing him to gain “first-hand experience” with racism in the segregated South. Throughout the film, the main character encounters many different aspects of racism, including fear from white women, degradation, lack of employment opportunities, name-calling, and hypersexualization of black men. The film “became a model for the ways in which public opinion deemed the color line as unjust and undemocratic” (Baldwin). Because it was too controversial for Hollywood at the time, independent film producer Julius Tannenbaum purchased and produced the film (Niemi).

Through the depiction of Horton’s confrontations with racism, the film attempts to reject the idea that race is an essential difference between people by convincing the viewer that race is an artificial construct, only skin deep. However, while the film’s utilization of passing aims to trouble boundaries of difference, the film’s conceptualization of race underscores differences between whiteness and blackness. Horton’s whiteness frames his blackness, and his successful passing unintentionally shows that “while purportedly disrupting the hegemony of whiteness through infiltration, blackness in its lightest form, its passing form, served to support the very racial boundaries it sought to sever” (Baldwin 109).

When Horton first reveals his true identity to black shoe shiner Burt Wilson, Wilson urges Horton to allow him to teach Horton how to adopt the mannerisms of a black man. The image above, created for display in theaters that screened the film and in newspapers and magazines, reflects this didactic relationship between Wilson and Horton. In the image, Horton, left, stares at Wilson, right, as Wilson challenges Horton’s understanding of what it means to be a black man. Wilson leans on the countertop, his muscled arm prominent in the foreground of the scene. He smiles up at Horton with an amused expression. Horton, on the other hand, appears taken aback, and his face is shadowed slightly. The lightness of his eyes and lips stands in stark contrast with his blackened skin. The sharpness of his features protrude through his darkened skin and make him unbelievably black, even though all the characters in the film, both black and white, accept Horton as black based on his appearance. In much of the same way that the donning of blackface was used to communicate to audiences that a white actor was meant to be a black character, much of Horton’s ability to pass centers on his skin color.

At this point in the film, Horton has shed his coat and tie and has rolled up his sleeves, per Wilson’s instructions. Even after altering his wardrobe, Wilson tells Horton, “You’re still too-well dressed. You’ve got to learn how to act. You talk too educated one way, and then another way, you gotta get smarter. You’ve got to act different, you’ve got to talk different, you even gots’ to think different.” In Eric Lott’s book, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class, Lott states that “Black performance itself, first of all, was precisely ‘performative,’ a cultural invention, not some precious essence installed in black bodies” (Lott 40). This image speaks to the performative nature of race that the film both rejects and underscores. Although Horton’s attempts to pass and his encounters with discrimination show that racism is based on physical appearance, Wilson recognizes that blackness is more than skin color. The concept of passing and its place in conversations around race create the risk of constructing race as a concept dependent on ways of seeing (Baldwin). Although passing as a topic claims to question boundaries of difference, Black Like Me highlights the reality of the color line and the differences between blackness and whiteness. In this way, passing “reifies racial distinctions” (Johnson Gosselin 49).

Baldwin, Kate. “Black like Who? Cross-Testing the ‘Real’ Lines of John Howard Griffin’s ‘Black like Me.’” Cultural Critique 40 (1998): 103–143. Print.

Crowther, Bosley. “Black Like Me (1964): James Whitmore Stars in Book’s Adaptation.” The New York Times, 21 May 1964. Web.

Johnson Gosselin, Adrienne. “Racial Etiquette and the (White) Plot of Passing: (Re)Inscribing ‘Place’ in John Stahl’s Imitation of Life.” Canadian Review of American Studies 28.3 (1998): 47–68. CrossRef. Web. 30 Apr. 2015.

Lott, Eric. “Love and Theft: ‘Racial’ Production and the Social Unconscious of Blackface.” Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. 20th-anniversary edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Print. Race and American Culture.

Niemi, Robert. History in the Media: Film and Television. Santa Barbara, Calif: ABC-CLIO, 2006. Print. Sieving, Christopher. Soul Searching: Black-Themed Cinema from the March on Washington to the Rise of Blaxploitation. Middletown, Conn: Wesleyan University Press, 2011. Print. Wesleyan Film.