93 John Howard Griffin Quotes on Black Like Me, Conditioning and Black Like Me - Quotes.pub

Here you will find all the famous John Howard Griffin quotes. There are more than 93 quotes in our John Howard Griffin quotes collection. We have collected all of them and made stunning John Howard Griffin wallpapers & posters out of those quotes. You can use this wallpapers & posters on mobile, desktop, print and frame them or share them on the various social media platforms. You can download the quotes images in various different sizes for free. In the below list you can find quotes in various categories like Black Like Me, Conditioning and Black Like Me

If we could only put ourselves in the shoes of others to see how we would react, then we might become aware of the injustice of discrimination and the tragic inhumanity of every kind of prejudice.

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.

The great danger in the South comes precisely from the fact that the public is not informed. Newspapers shirk notoriously their editorial responsibilities and print what they think their readers want. They lean with the prevailing winds and employ every fallacy of logic in order to editorialize harmoniously with popular prejudices.

We fill too many gutters while we argue unimportant points and confuse issues.

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.

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.

Many otherwise decent men and women could find no other solution. They are willing to degrade themselves to their basest levels to prevent the traditional laborer from rising in status or, to put it bluntly, from “winning,” even though what he wins has been rightfully his from the moment he was born into the human race. I.

I knew, and every black man there knew, that I, as a man now white once again, could say the things that needed saying but would be rejected if black men said them.

Phew!” His small blue eyes shone with repugnance, a look of such unreasoning contempt for my skin that it filled me with despair. It was a little thing, but piled on all the other little things it broke something in me. Suddenly I had had enough. Suddenly I could stomach no more of this degradation – not of myself but of all men who were black like me.

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...

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

The emotional garbage I had carried all of those years – the prejudice and the denial, the shame and the guilt – was dissolved by understanding that the Other is not other at all.

We must return to them their lawful rights, assure equality of justice – and then everybody leave everybody else to hell alone. Paternalistic – we show our prejudice in our paternalism – we downgrade their dignity.

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.

This system of discrimination, an inculcated double standard, may vary in content from culture to culture, but it is always unjust. There are thousands of kinds of injustice but there is only one kind of justice – equal justice for all. To call for a little more justice, or a moderately gradual sort of justice, is to call for no justice. That is a simple truth.

We’ve reached a poor state when people are afraid that doing the decent and right thing is going to help the communist conspiracy.

You can’t get around what’s right, though,” he said. “When we stop loving them, that’s when they win.

When enough Americans realize how rotten are the fruits of our policy of ‘benign neglect,’ how costly our prejudice is both in dollars and in human misery, the demand for change will be made-not for the sake of minority people, but for the sake of all of us.

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.

Your blanks have been filled in far differently from those of a child grown up in the filth and poverty.

In reality, the Us-and-Them or I-and-Thou dichotomies do not exist. There is only one universal We – one human family united by the capacity to feel compassion and to demand equal justice for all.

I’m annoyed by those who love mankind but are discourteous to people.

If we say, as we do, that no one in this country intends for racism to lead to genocide, the effects of racism are genocidal, regardless of our intentions.

Every fool in error can find a passage of scripture to back him up.

Customers came - whites, Negroes and Latin Americans. Well-dressed tourists mingled with the derelicts of the quarter. When we shined their shoes we talked. The whites, especially the tourists, had no reticence before us, and no shame since we were Negroes. Some wanted to know where they could find girls, wanted us to get Negro girls for them. We learned to spot these from the moment they sat down, for they were immediately friendly and treated us with the warmth and courtesy of equals. I mentioned this to Sterling. “Yeah, when they want to sin, they’re very democratic,” he said.

1959 Quotes Black Like Me Quotes Racial discrimination Quotes Us history Quotes

him dumfounded as he chanted the Gregorian

Black Like Me Quotes

measure up - disillusion us by showing

Black Like Me Quotes

Existence nullified by men; reaffirmed by nature.

He showed me the lowest. I had to surmise the highest.

Black Like Me Quotes Graciousness Quotes Optimism Quotes Perspective Quotes

He was not talking with US, but with his IMAGE of us.

Black Like Me Quotes Prejudice Quotes Stereotypes Quotes

God is invoked … and He is invoked against the God of the spirit, of intelligence and love - excluding and hating this God. What an extraordinary spiritual phenomenon this is: people believe in God and yet do not know God. The idea of God is affirmed and at the same time disfigured and perverted.

Black Like Me Quotes

In the context of today, this WAS heroism.

Humility Quotes / Black Like Me Quotes Conventional wisdom Quotes Culture Quotes Discipleship Quotes Maturation Quotes

If virtue does not equal powers, powers will be misused.

Humility Quotes Leadership Quotes / Black Like Me Quotes Discipleship Quotes Self discipline Quotes Servant leadership Quotes

He kept himself in line with popular opinion, which meant popular prejudice.

Assumptions Quotes Biases Quotes Black Like Me Quotes Conventional wisdom Quotes

The author explains that some find recourse from injustice in literature and art but that these tend to deepen sensitivity to injustice rather than dull it.

Education Quotes / Black Like Me Quotes Idealism Quotes Perspective Quotes

All the courtesies in the world do not cover up the one vital and massive discourtesy.

Bitterness Quotes Black Like Me Quotes Hypocrisy Quotes Perspective Quotes

Night coming tenderlyBlack like me.

Black Like Me Quotes

A law is not good merely because the legislature wills it, but the legislature has the mortal duty to will only that which is good.

Black Like Me Quotes Good Quotes Judgement Quotes Law Quotes

If the judgement makes the law and not the law directs the judgement, it is impossible there should be such a thing as an illegal judgement given.

Black Like Me Quotes Illegal Quotes Judgement Quotes Law Quotes

Racists are not the pipe-smoking type, I thought to myself.

Black Like Me Quotes Pipe smoke Quotes Racists Quotes

Now you go into oblivion.

Black Like Me Quotes Oblivion Quotes

Turning off all the lights, I went into the bathroom and closed the door. I stood in the darkness before the mirror, my hand on the light switch. I forced myself to flick it on. In the flood of light against white tile, the face and shoulders of a stranger--a fierce, bald, very dark Negro--glared at me from the glass. He in no way resembled me. The transformation was total and shocking. I had expected to see myself disguised, but this was something else. I was imprisoned in the flesh of an utter stranger, an unsympathetic one with whom I felt no kinship. All traces of the John Griffin I had been were wiped from existence.

Turning off all the lights, I went into the bathroom and closed the door. I stood in the darkness before the mirror, my hand on the light switch. I forced myself to flick it on. In the flood of light against white tile, the face and shoulders of a strange--a fierce, bald, very dark Negro--glared at me from the glass. He in no way resembled me. The transformation was total and shocking. I had expected to see myself disguised, but this was something else. I was imprisoned in the flesh of an utter stranger, an unsympathetic one with whom I felt no kinship. All traces of the John Griffin I had been were wiped from existence.

Black Like Me Quotes

Our experience with the Nazis had shown one thing: where racism is practiced, it damages the whole community, not just the victim group. Were we racists or were we not? That was the important thing to discover.

Black Like Me Quotes

The author meets an African-American who observes that his fellows who begin with aspirations to a good education, solid career, and the raising of a family slowly lose that incentive. Even those who have a college education, he observes, need to take menial jobs and begin to look for excitement in less productive places.

Education Quotes / Aspirations Quotes Black Like Me Quotes Goals setting Quotes

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

Black Like Me Quotes

Didn’t Shakespeare say something about ‘every fool in error can find a passage of Scripture to back him up’? He knew his religious bigots.

Black Like Me Quotes

A couple of years ago I was seated in an auditorium in Detroit where Reverend Cleage was explaining to a conference of priests that what they called “black separatists” were in reality men who recognized the implacability of a white-imposed separation.

1959 Quotes Black Like Me Quotes Racial discrimination Quotes Us history Quotes

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