46 pages • 1 hour read

Black Like Me

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1961

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Preface-Chapter 9

Chapters 10-14

Chapters 15-39

Key Figures

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Segregation

Content Warning: This section of the study guide contains detailed discussions of racism and violence motivated by racism, including references to lynching and suicide. The source material includes outdated and offensive racial terms and slurs, which are reproduced in this guide only via quotations.

Segregation is a constant motif in Griffin’s memoir, a force that shapes his every experience and interaction. Griffin spends most of his time in neighborhoods deemed “ghettos,” places within cities where Black people were driven to live, away from white people. In these neighborhoods, he is denied service at several businesses while other white men stand on street corners attempting to entice him to buy from them, a contrast that Griffin finds darkly ironic. On the busses he takes along his journey, Griffin is judged for actions as simple as looking at or offering a seat to a white woman, witnesses Black passengers being told to vacate their seats for white passengers, and experiences discrimination when he and other Black passengers are not allowed to deboard for a washroom break. Griffin has to walk, sometimes for miles, to find basic facilities, such as washrooms, places to get water, or hotels available to Black people. When he can find facilities, he notes a distinct difference in the quality compared to those available to white people, spending one night in a windowless hotel room. He is not allowed in most theatres, museums, or anywhere else he might go to have fun. Griffin describes his experience as one of longing and isolation: “The Negro often dreams of things separated from him only by a door, knowing that he is forever cut off from experiencing them” (45). He laments that the experience of segregation never gets easier and that The Psychological Effects of Discrimination are cumulative: “Each new reminder strikes at the raw spot, deepens the wound” (47). Segregation, Griffin finds, issues an unrelenting message to Black people of their inferiority not only in the eyes of their white neighbors, but also of the law. Segregation is the most prominent manifestation of The Illusion of Racial Differences.

Music

Music is a key symbol in Black Like Me, representing escape from one’s circumstances. Griffin, himself a musicologist, observes the “jukebox jazz” blaring from bars at all hours in New Orleans, where he notes that watching people dance is better than looking at the “ghetto.” Music is most prominent in Chapter 10, when Griffin arrives in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, soon after the Mack Parker lynching. As he takes stock of the tense mood of the town, he describes the “grinding rhythm” of the jukebox rock music pouring forth in the town’s Black quarter. Griffin views the pounding music as an escape from the “immense melancholy” looming over the town, suggesting that Black residents are diving into pleasure not, as white people might assume, in jubilance or celebration, but in order to “dull their sensibilities in noise” (70). Griffin suggests that music is a way to silence the constant reminders of oppression, particularly after the Parker murder: “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’” (70).

Food

In Black Like Me, food represents both the extent of segregation as well as the sense of community among Black southerners, who were often in search of their next meal. When Griffin goes out into the world with dark skin, he finds almost immediately that most of the world’s doors are closed to him. He is not allowed in most restaurants, is not offered water when he needs it, and often has to walk for miles to find a café that will serve Black people. Particularly in the rural South, the convenience of finding a meal when he’s hungry—something that he once took for granted—was suddenly a challenge and at times, a desperate need. Griffin learns to eat a lot when he has the chance, because he does not know when his next meal will be.

Many of the Black people that Griffin meets demonstrate hospitality through food. In New Orleans, Griffin eats a creole meal out of milk cartons with Sterling and Joe, a mixture of rice, vegetables, and spices Joe puts together. Griffin is often served beans and rice, which he at first assumed to be simple and unsatisfying, but grows to find hearty and delicious. In many of the cafes that Griffin visits, he meets people who tell him their stories and opinions of the changing times, and Griffin learns a great deal from these people. When Griffin stays with the family by the swamp, they offer him their modest meal without apology or humiliation, knowing that food is food and that any kindness goes a long way. It is through food that Griffin gets to know the intimate side of the Black community.