"Black Like Me" Excerpt

After talking with Jenny about how we need to find books we enjoy reading I discovered she and many other school children read the book "Black Like Me".  I had heard of it from time to time and it always sounded interesting so I finally picked a copy up from the library a week ago.  I've been enjoying it thoroughly and it has been an easy read.  Of course, it's always interesting to find pieces of literature that have been around for decades that still, at their core, hold hard truths even today. 

Here is a passage that I must admit I am posting with my political slant in mind.  My use of this passage in no way should take away from the amazing, much broader analysis he delivers on the human mind, spirit and history of race relations in this book.  I am posting it to allude to something that feels all too familiar even today.

Quick Set-up: He is in the middle of racism central/Mississippi and has luckily found haven with a friend for the weekend -- His friend has compiled news clippings and propoganda for him to rifle through (1950's internet - ha)...

"I left them around eleven and meant to fall into bed.  But the material P.D. had placed on the two bed tables fascinated me so that I studied it and made notes without sleeping until dawn.  It is perhaps the most incredible collection of what East calls "assdom" in the South.  It shows that the most obscene figures are not the ignorant ranting racists, but the legal minds who front for them, who "invent" for them the legislative proposals and the propoganda bulletins.  They deliberately choose to foster distortions, always under the guise of patriotism, upon a people who have no means of checking the facts.  Their appeals are to regional interest, showing complete contempt for privacy of conscience, and a willingness to destroy and subvert values that have traditionally been held supreme in this land."

Last paragraph of November 15 - "Black Like Me" by John Howard Griffin