"Black Like Me" by John Griffin and "Appearances" Essay by Carmen Vazquez

Essay by Irusya6College, Undergraduate December 2005

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The 'Fundamentals of Composition I' course was very interesting and taught me a lot. I understood many new things, and I got knowledge of many problems that our society is currently facing. Even though all the works that we have read throughout this semester were interesting and helped me gain some new understandings, "Black Like Me" by John Griffin and "Appearances" by Carmen Vasquez impressed me the most.

Personally, I consider John Griffin's book, "Black Like Me", being the representative of the classical literature. Also, I believe, it is an excellent teaching tool as it gives the readers a lot of knowledge about one of the biggest issues in today's society - racism. Today's life is full of problems and obstacles. Many of them are people's personal difficulties, however, some of them are becoming the tragedies of the whole societies. Today, racism is considered one of the most important issues in the United States.

However, as unpleasant as it sounds, for some people racism doesn't appear to be a problem at all.

The book teaches people that everybody is equal in today's world. The color of skin should not be a reason for disrespect or ignorance toward the other people. The fact that Griffin decided to "become black" and to enter the completely different and even dangerous world had a great impression on me. I believe it takes more than just a regular person to do something like that. His experiences and observations showed whites that people of the other race are not different from them.

It was always really hard to be a part of minority group in any country. The majority of the population usually believes that the minorities are the people of the lower class and doesn't consider them being equal to themselves. I am saying that...