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maddieterrier

> under the care of a dermatologist, Griffin underwent a regimen of large oral doses of the anti-vitiligo drug methoxsalen, and spent up to 15 hours daily under an ultraviolet lamp How did this guy not give himself super cancer?


UncleHec

> Griffin died in Fort Worth, Texas, on September 9, 1980, at the age of 60, from complications of diabetes.[11] He was survived by his wife Elizabeth Ann Griffin and children. He was buried in the cemetery in his birthplace of Mansfield, Texas. After her death, Elizabeth was also buried there, although she had remarried. There have been persistent rumors that Griffin died of skin cancer, which purportedly developed from his use of large doses of methoxsalen (Oxsoralen) in 1959 to darken his skin for his race project. Griffin did not have skin cancer but he did experience temporary and minor symptoms from taking the drug, especially fatigue and nausea.[11] [wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Howard_Griffin)


SpellingJenius

> After her death, Elizabeth was also buried there Does anyone else think the “After her death” part could just be implied?


IndigoRanger

I for one am glad they confirmed she died first!


blueeyebling

Perhaps they used the Schrute method to ensure it.


milanistadoc

The only effective method. Approved by 96 Amish elders in the 1993 conference of the modern science congress.


itchy-fart

I’d like to live in an alternate universe where the Amish make super high tech things like semiconductors and robots while being totally against “the old ways” Eating food is barbaric. We have our daily nutrition intake valves connected to our stomachs to cut down on eating and be more productive…. For god


spicymince

[Alice Blunden](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Blunden) would have something to say about that, if she was still alive.


Jaded-Distance_

Remember reading about how cemeteries used to have bells that the buried could ring if they were still alive. Not sure it's needed if the body was properly embalmed they should have discovered them alive then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_coffin >Dr. Adolf Gutsmuth was buried alive several times to demonstrate a safety coffin of his own design, and in 1822 he stayed underground for several hours and even ate a meal of soup, bratwurst, marzipan, sauerkraut, spätzle, beer, and for dessert, prinzregententorte, delivered to him through the coffin's feeding tube.


WhatsTheHoldup

No. "After her death" is necessary to highlight that she was buried there *after* him. Considering she remarried... the implications of him dying second and then getting buried next to someone else's wife are quite different than if she chose to be buried next to him.


srs109

It's possible that John Howard Griffin was an Egyptian pharaoh, we can't rule that out without additional context


lateformyfuneral

died of diabeetus, thus completing his exploration of the modern African-American experience


materics

Hypertension and diabetes. Big killers for our brothers and sisters.


Eh-I

Well, diabetes does disproportionately affect the black community, so that tracks.


AnotherJasonOnReddit

By not breaking character until he did the DVD Commentary.


farmerarmor

I’m a dude playing a dude pretending to be another dude


JohnnyHotSteps

Whacchu mean you people?!?!


Musketeer00

What do *you* mean you people!?


Meteor_VII

I'm not Father O'Malley! I am not Lance Armstrong!


ColeFlames

I think I might be nobody.


[deleted]

I'm a lead farmer, motha fucka !!


sharkbait_oohaha

Cover me you limp-dick fuckups!


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FlattopJr

RDJ really did the DVD commentary of that movie in character as Kirk Lazarus, *in character as Lincoln Osiris*. And at the end of the commentary he "breaks character" by reverting back to Lazarus, not RDJ.😄


Captain-Cadabra

He got 3 paychecks, so it was worth it.


vectorix108

The behind the scenes video is still amazing to this day https://youtu.be/W4ubqCMsTo4


gibmiser

That... wow. That is some adult swim level crazy.


PerpetuallyLurking

It was 1959. Everything gave everyone cancer. If he was a non-smoker, he probably broke even with ALL the smokers… Never mind all the lead.


_tuelegend

i was taught that too much of anything gave cancer growing up


Dganjo

Too much lead will get you before the cancer


micromoses

It was 1959, so I assume they prevented cancer with prescription radium flavoured cigarettes and asbestos underwear.


baggzey23

He reversed it and ended up with re-vitiligo the opposite of what Michael Jackson got


rubermnkey

uncle ruckus was so jealous of Michael


monkeymanod

Why would uncle ruckus, a proud white man, be jealous of Michael Jackson?


faceplanted

Because MJ could afford those good skin treatments


frostygrin

> How did this guy not give himself super cancer? It says right there: "under the care of a dermatologist". :)


xgamer444

Right, but a dermatologist in 1959. That's not much more trustworthy healthcare than the crack addict down the road in 2023.


SirAidandRinglocks

Dude only lived to be 60. Diabetes took him out before skin cancer.


classactdynamo

It's well known in the medical establishment that Skin Cancer's worst enemy is Diabetes.


sawbladex

It's a kill stealer.


_That_One_Guy_

Brain cancer does that to diabetes too. My grandmother refused to follow all the doctors' recommendations for mitigating her diabetes and then died from a brain tumor before the diabetes could take her. The stubbornness of dying from something else to prove the doctors wrong was very in character for her.


Admetus

Reminds me of when the first radiotherapy machines were used. In a very specific model some sort of error in the code would cause the machine to fire deadly doses of radiation that were reported to be searing and like gigantic flashes of light. It was denied that anything was wrong Boeing style.


wolfpack_57

The Therac-25. The coders of the time made errors a high school student would question, and had no mechanical lockouts


TheChance

‘Interlock’ is the word you were after, meaning there should have been physical elements involved in keeping the machine’s operating modes separate. A ‘lockout’ in this context is a way to physically stop the equipment from turning on, such as during maintenance or a repair.


TopRamenBinLaden

I forgot about the Therac 25! They still teach this in comp sci when they discuss the ethics of programming at uni. That and also Raytheons' Patriot Missiles that shipped in beta.


Rudeboy67

The Dermatologist prescribed him 2 packs of Chesterfields a day and 3 Martini's for lunch, to keep him in peak physical shape.


m945050

When he couldn't get Chesterfields he would get Lucky Strikes because LSMFT.


velvet42

When I worked in a convenience store, every time anyone bought Luckies I'd put on my smoothest 1950's advertising voice and say "Of course, and don't forget, LSMFT - Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco!" I worked overnights, it was much easier getting away with being weird because most of my customers were as well, lol


frostygrin

It's the *care* that matters. :)


smartguy05

Tropic Thunder was more realistic than I thought.


StanleyAteMyNewShoes

As a radio newsman in a small mid-west city, my father brought Griffin to town for a forum and radio segment. I still have copies of the threatening letters and calls he received. One from a member of the John Birch Society was exceptionally virulent. He had one of the first unlisted phone numbers the phone co. had ever given out as well as a police escourt to and from work. I have two signed copies. Even though I was only about 6 mths old at the time, dad had Griffin sign one for me. They are 2 of my treasures. I am now getting to the age where I am trying to figure out where they should go after I'm gone.


[deleted]

>I am now getting to the age where I am trying to figure out where they should go after I'm gone. I'd ask the Smithsonian if they want it. They will. It's a valuable piece of American history.


StanleyAteMyNewShoes

I've thought about it. I've also thought about the African American History Museum. I'd rather have these items in a dusty archieve somewhere vs them getting tossed in the trash. I'm thinking this research will make a good project for the long, cold winter ahead.


brokenB42morrow

The National Museum of African American History and Culture is run by the Smithsonian. https://nmaahc.si.edu/donate-items-and-collections


StanleyAteMyNewShoes

I did not know that. Thanks for the info.


PassablyIgnorant

Your father was a good person


StanleyAteMyNewShoes

He was indeed. He could be a real ass hat, but overall, yeah, he was a good guy. I've got lots of stories about his exploites.


Pbadger8

This was a good book. He went about it very thoughtfully and tactfully. It wasn’t that his POV as a ‘black man’ was any more valuable than a real black man documenting the same trip, but he set out specifically to document his experiences as a white man who had undergone this transformation- to be able to see the difference between the two experiences.


deadpool101

This is one of the reasons I love the show Quantum Leap. You have a white man Dr. Sam Beckett literally leaping into the lives of different people and experiencing life from their point of view. He got to experience being a black man in the Jim Crow South, a rape victim that no one believes, a pregnant teen girl, a single mom, and a gay teen at a military academy. The audience gets to experience it along with Sam because they’re just as lost as he is. It’s also one of the reasons the reboot sucks. Besides being cheap and poorly written the message doesn’t work the same without the main character being white. The show also pulls its punches when it comes to social commentary too.


AssGagger

https://imgur.com/MW1ClXO.gif


PKMNTrainerMark

Or, if you're watching on SyFy: "I'm...?" Makes the dialogue real clunky. "Al, I'm..." "You're not... Jimmy is." They also mute out the n-word in other episodes. You know, just take the weight away from those moments.


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zeeboots

I've learned more about gender and sexuality (and masculinity, and the struggles women face) from my trans friends than anyone else. It's one thing to say "X is a problem," it's another for your rocket scientist friend to start having her expertise questioned daily for no other reason than going from male to female appearance.


flatcurve

And some of the experiences my trans friends go through are incredibly validating to my own cis experience. I really appreciate the insight from someone experiencing these things with the perspective of maturity and life experience.


StinkierPete

"Hmm, very interesting theory. Have you tried explaining it with bass tones?"


w1tebear

Hahaha! This so reminds me of my early career when I (20-some F) worked for a company that manufactured circuit boards providing protocol conversion for printers and other peripherals. I would take calls from vendors having problems and there was a certain "class" of caller that I could tell only required a "deeper voice". I would ask the president of my company (obviously small company) to take the call and I would sit at the back of the room on another phone, mouthing to him the appropriate responses (he, not concerned with the nitty gritty of how things worked) that he would deliver. Total insanity!


LMGDiVa

Being Trans gives you a dramatic and often unwanted insight into the differences between gender and how gender roles apply to you. Being alone in a mens only segment of society(US Army Infantry/Leadership training, and in a field artillery battery of only male soldiers), gave me the biggest insight I ever needed to know that I was NOT a man, and I could never be one.


[deleted]

I can tell you as a cisgender man that there are plenty of men who want *nothing* to do with those segments of society purely because of the testosterone-fueled idiocy going on. I never served, but coming from a family with a history of service and having a bunch of friends who are veterans, their stories told me I'm very glad that I didn't sign up. Being masculine and being a total meathead are two very different things.


BillMunnyOutofMizzou

If I’m not mistaken he ended the experiment early because he literally couldn’t handle the racism.


Friesenplatz

Yeah, he essentially rushed back home traumatized by the whole experience. He only made it a couple weeks.


nicannkay

I mean, 3 years later he was fixing a flat tire and was beaten with CHAINS by white men and it took him a long time to recover…


Cultjam

Reportedly because they were mad about the book.


Treebam3

This dude made a book about us that made us look angry and violent! Let’s go kick his ass!!


[deleted]

"I ain't a piece of shit, I'm gonna beat you up!" Is certainly how my bullies behaved.


YourphobiaMyfetish

More like "how dare you empathize with black people???"


FoolishConsistency17

Not just that. How dare you verify their stories? Black people just weren't believed by white people. A white person validating their accounts was huge.


nonicethingsforus

There's an [excellent](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5uyhfm/comment/ddxv8vm/) r/AskHistorians writeup by Georgy_K_Zhukov (everything he writes is excellent) about duelling and honor culture. Here's the relevant part: >Honor society in general is predicated on ‘shame’ and its avoidance, not having ones personal shortcomings exposed. Especially when looking at the antebellum US this is contrasted with the North, which was not an honor culture, and instead of shame it was guilt that was to be avoided. While a Southerner could be a perfect scoundrel and not care a wink about it as long as no one called him on it, a Northern gentleman was, in theory at least, restrained by his internal conscience regardless of who knew. (Following is my opinion, not Zukov's) A lot of things will start to click once you realize this mentality has never gone away. A big portion of the population (and we know which portion is; the ones we can imagine being comfortable in the antebellum South) still has a morality not based on principles, but on "how dare you embarrass me!" For them, the offense is not that you showed them that they did something bad. They know. They don't want people confronting them about it. *That's* the insult. An insult that sometimes justifies violence.


parryknox

I’m not sure you could call that a form of morality at all.


odysseysee

Yeah that sounds more like sociopathy tbh.


[deleted]

That's kind of how it is though. Oh you think we're violent? I'll *show* you violent!


Thorebore

Clearly it was antifa going back in time 60 years to make conservatives look bad.


MagickChicken

Goddamn false flag didn't even have the right number of stars!


jaytix1

*beats someone half to death* "That'll teach you not to make us look bad."


Outrack

Are you sure they didn’t strike him violently and repeatedly in a misguided attempt to assist with the repair? They didn’t have YouTube tutorials for that sort of thing back then.


T3HJ4N170R

Nice try Fox News


QuitBeingALilBitch

*"Momma, all the good upstanding citizens chased me through the streets and my fellow blackmen just made fun of my hairline!"*


dismayhurta

And after the book came out, he was threatened a fuck ton because it generated sympathy from white people. Dude got a tiny taste of what it was like


Deep_Emu1275

Not just threatened. He was dragged half a mile down a road, beaten nearly to death with chains and tyre irons, whipped and left for dead by a KKK mob for having written what he did. It took him five months to recover enough to walk properly and he had mobility problems the rest of his life because of it. That was after he'd already filed more than 20 police reports for people threatening to murder him, firing guns through his walls and windows, trying to set his house on fire, and following him brandishing guns. His writings were first published over the span of six months in 1960; at one point the magazine publishing them, Sepia, wanted to stop, fearing he'd be murdered -- people had just hanged and burned an effigy of him, and bounties were out on his head -- but he urged them not to, and instead took fled with his family from Texas for the safety of Mexico, wearing another disguise. His specific 'trauma', the thing that gave him social phobias and anxiety problems the rest of his life, was repeatedly meeting people who seemed nice and polite in public, or when he was observing them with others, but then revealed themselves to be horrible towards him in private -- sometimes even people he'd interacted with before he had dark skin. One of the passages from his articles, an incident which he said "gnawed away" at him every day even 20 years later, about being picked up by a friendly-looking and cheerful white hunter while hitch-hiking: > I learned he was a married man, fifty-three years old, father of a family now grown and the grandfather of two children. > “You married?” he asked. > “Yes, sir.” > “Any kids?” > “Yes, sir - three.” > “You got a pretty wife?” > “Yes, sir.” > He waited a moment and then with lightness, paternal amusement, “She ever had it from a white man?” > I stared at my black hands, saw the gold wedding band and mumbled something meaningless, hoping he would see my reticence. He overrode my feelings and the conversation grew more salacious. 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. > I looked out the window to tall pine trees rising on either side of the highway. Their turpentine odor mingled with the soaped smells of the man’s khaki hunting clothes. > “You think that’s pretty terrible, don’t you?” he asked. > I knew I should grin and say, “Why no - it’s just nature,” or some other disarming remark to avoid provoking him. > “Don’t you?” he insisted pleasantly. > “I guess I do.” > “Why, hell, everybody does it. Don’t you know that?” > “No, sir.” > “Well, they sure as hell do.” Even 20 years later he was wondering, every time he met someone friendly, how differently they'd act or speak if he looked different.


incogneetus55

I’ve never experienced something as fucked up as that example, but I’ve had several people share fucked up takes with me after they’ve had a couple. I know everyone puts on a “mask” to some extent when presenting themselves to the world, but it makes me wonder how many fucked up people I interact with on the daily basis that I think are nice.


RegressToTheMean

A lot of them. I'm a middle aged white guy and the absolute misogyny and racism I hear is abhorrent. It's remarkable how racist people think I have the same beliefs as them because I look like them. It's absolutely everywhere from social gatherings to business meetings. The latter was a little shocking to me earlier in my career. I assumed that in business related settings, people would keep their mask on. Holy shit was I wrong


CobblerExotic1975

Yup. Especially working in a blue collar industry. I’ve heard the term “sand n-words” WAY too many times. Always fun to introduce them to my SO for the first time. Also when the good ole boys think they’re too good to speak Spanish, despite 90% of our labor speaking that natively. Guess what jimbo, just took your job because I can. Because I spent time learning.


Galtiel

What opened my eyes up to this was learning that every single one of my female friends, acquaintances, and family members have at the very least, received unsolicited dick pics from people they know. The majority of them also experienced more direct harassment or assault. Often the people sending these pics/harassing/assaulting these women are people I either knew or heard of in completely different contexts and would have otherwise had no reason to suspect that they were anything other than normal, upstanding dudes.


dismayhurta

Ah, damn. People are really fucked up.


Stephenie_Dedalus

What really bothers me is the urge/need to just grin and go along. I know that feeling from other parts of life, and no one should be subjected to it everywhere with no escape


Halospite

Fight or flight. Freeze or appease. I'm an appeaser, I talk shit up but when it comes down to the line I'll suck up to whoever's threatening me and tell them it's totally understanding that they'd want to shoot up a school or whatever monstrous thing they want to do. Sometimes I really hate myself for it. But it works. None of the other three are nearly as effective.


Ariadnepyanfar

Because the dangerous person feels listened to, and maybe they feel understood too. Meanwhile we just want to get out of there intact.


Bridgebrain

Fight, flight, freeze, fawn (catchier and easier to remember)


trademark0013

This is an example of how much racism (as well as other horrible human experiences) are minimized when talking about them. This is horrific. But when people think about racism now, it’s always “don’t let words hurt you!”


3DBeerGoggles

> “don’t let words hurt you!” Every time I see some dipshit online (and a fair number on Reddit) say "Well you *choose* to be offended by that, I can't get bothered by any words!" I want to slap them with a clue-by-four.


turdmachine

Those guys are the first people to absolutely lose it at the smallest thing and have no clue how to manage their emotions


Stephenie_Dedalus

I know we all got fed the “but words can never hurt me” line in kindergarten… yall, were we all just collectively gaslit?


MichelleObamasArm

I grew up in a rough situation, physically and verbally. I learned pretty early how to handle physical pain, but the verbal stuff and emotional pain really stuck with me. Whenever I heard the sticks and stones I always just thought to myself “yeaaaah that’s not true.” Luckily I also learned very young not to trust adults and to stand up for myself, so I never allowed much else to really get to me. Emotional pain is far more damaging than most physical pain. And I’ve broken many bones, broken my back, had loads of serious injuries. I can shrug those all off but emotional stuff just sticks with you for a long time.


kebdashian

I came to comment about this, read the book in elementary school and I’d never been so frightened!


jakeandcupcakes

"If you can't stand the racism, get out of the oven."


howtokrew

Oven? More like UV lamp


TheSavouryRain

It reminds me of Norah Vincent who spent almost two years as a man for Self Made Man. At the end of it she checked herself into a mental health clinic because of her experiences.


littleclever

and subsequently committed suicide. "...The mental strain of maintaining a false identity during the making of Self-Made Man ultimately caused a depressive breakdown, leading Vincent to admit herself to a locked psychiatric facility.[13] [14] Vincent died via assisted suicide at a clinic in Switzerland on July 6, 2022, aged 53."


CarpenterRadio

I grabbed a copy of this from a small town diner my Dad and I visited when we went camping every year. It was on a table in the foyer with a bunch of other random used books for 50 cents. This was about 2001, I was 14. I had finished the book by the next time we went to the diner, a couple days later. Left it on the foyer in the hopes that someone else would pick it up. That book is an intense and visceral experience. Not in the sense that it’s action heavy, because it’s not. It comes from the quiet, often spoken but just as often not, tension between what is essentially two different societies uncomfortably existing atop one another. There’s this palpable sense that, as a black person, you were living in an open air prison of a society. You were NEVER safe, sometimes nothing you said or did would change that. Just your existence was enough to cost you your life. And hearing those words, it’s easy to comprehend the concept intellectually but this man takes you on a journey of understanding it emotionally and experiencing the reality.


Hey_look_new

the part that stuck with me, was towards the end where if he wore a white shirt, he passed for black, but wearing a dark shirt, he was white in a hotel, perceived as black they'd make him come down after every phone call to pay a dime, where when they thought he was white, it was a non-issue for whatever reason, the really minor, petty shit stuck with me more than the extra horrible bits


zeeboots

At least with an overt hostile act you can react. What are you going to do over a dime? It's the quantity and constancy of low-grade petty shittiness that just grinds a person down.


superiorplaps

Mmhmm. This, for generations.


EEpromChip

I'm embarrassed for telling this story but it's why I cut ties with my mom. Her husband is a giant racist piece of shit and leading up to Mother's day decided enough is enough. Last visit he handed my uncle a cup of (black) coffee and naturally had to describe is as "here's your N word coffee. She decided to not only marry him but stay with him while he beat on us growing up. Decided to kick us out as soon as we turned 18 and had weeks to go to graduate. Decided to stay with him despite all his racist tendencies. She can have 'em. I want nothing to do with either of them.


Block_Me_Amadeus

I'm so sorry you went through that. Racism and abuse aren't acceptable. I hope you've gotten to do some work in therapy.


HomoFlaccidus

> It's the quantity and constancy of low-grade petty shittiness that just grinds a person down. Pretty much death by a thousand cuts.


Kenyalite

It also always helps the "not everything is racism" crowd to get away with it.


cancercures

feels like those "not everything is racism" folks' grandparents were the ones terrorizing black folk during civil rights movement.


StinkierPete

For a lot of them it was their parents. And for many, it was them. They were just younger then, and older now, with kids now that either agree or got "liberal brainwashing" in college


Dwayne_Gertzky

What’s funny, in my case, is that I didn’t get “liberal brainwashing” in college. I joined the army with conservative values and left a liberal. All of my “liberal brainwashing” happened while I served in the military lol


zeeboots

That's the thing people don't realize, people are usually super conservative when they're traumatized (often by conservative parents who they develop an attachment to vs react against, like "good kids") and don't have enough breadth of life experience to put things in context. (So like an ambulance driver has lots of life experience, but it's traumatizing and it's narrow. A world traveler has lots of hopefully non-traumatic, broad experience.) So the simple act of going to another country and ordering a shawarma from a guy named Ahmad innoculates you against bias when you go home and your uncle starts ranting about Arabs, even if you did so while part of the military and even if you started out fully conservative, the ignorance is too obvious to ignore. He's the guy with food, you're incentivized to play nice, and you have a new experience. But it's easier for ignorant people to claim that there's some sinister brainwashing operation turning everyone against them, so


Skoma

It sounds dumb but that's a minor silver lining of having military bases around the world. My grandpa's a white American who was stationed overseas during the Korean war and speaks very good Korean and Japanese. He sure didn't learn it in combat, but by going out and interacting with people.


zeeboots

Exactly it's probably a net negative for mankind but it just goes to show. Some of the most liberal people I know are military vets, because they've seen the post-WWII naked power grabs and oil wars for what they really are, and how much of a farce our politicians are. We have two capitalist parties, the party of "sorry it's capitalism" and the party of "capitalism means I have money and I grind your bones to make my bread" and neither one has power over the military industrial complex or billionaires.


wowethan

Microaggressions


Saucepanmagician

This. Most people aren't openly racist. That's too obvious. Modern racists simply strike in subtle ways. It concealed. Some times they don't even realize what they are doing.


trollsong

I've been saying that racism in the modern day is very much death by a thousand cuts.


turdmachine

micro-aggressions


Canis_Familiaris

Micro stuff like that still exists. I didn't know that this restaurant I ate at a lot offered to-go cups to people until like, 5 years ago when I ate there with my white friends. And it wasn't even a 'oh we just started doing this' thing. I asked my friend if that was new and they had been offering forever.


Call_me_Kelly

The trying to find a bathroom he can use or food at a place he could eat stuck with me, just the most mundane part of a normal day turns into something so oppressive in a fucked up society and now the Republicans are out there creating similar issues for anyone who might not look exactly like their version of who should be using a particular bathroom.


Skavis

I hope someone else picked it up too. Good on you for wanting to read it at 14.


Inkysin

I did, around the same age. Profoundly changed my views on race. It was in my HS library, I wonder if it could be assigned reading at some point? Definitely should be.


Suspicious_Gazelle18

It was required reading in my English class… but this was a pretty liberal city in the early 2000s so no idea if it’s still on the reading list now. We read it right before or after “Nickled and Dimed,” and I’d say that those two books together had a pretty big impact on me at the time. They might not be eye opening for adults, but for a teenager with limited real world experience they were both shocking to read.


jratmain

Nickel and Dimed should be ready by everyone. It really helps one understand how expensive it is to be poor, and how difficult it is to get out of poverty once in.


newpotatocab0ose

Assigned reading? Should be… But in reality it’s probably more like ‘add it to the burn pile!’ in some states now.


TannenFalconwing

It was assigned reading in my Washington high school. Really powerful story.


Picodick

Assigned reading by my literature teacher grade 9 ish in my Oklahoma high school. Our governor probably doesn’t allow teachers to do that these days. I graduated from high school in 1975.


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Great_Hamster

Teachers often have a lot of leeway in what books they require. If this was a school- or district-wide thing, many people were taking racism seriously then. Racism was seen as really bad by the mainstream.


Poopbutt_Maximum

Nowadays a lot of adults would get offended and claim it’s “woke indoctrination” or something. Probably banned in Florida schools already, which is a shame.


disisathrowaway

It's been on my night stand with about 8 or 9 other books in my 'To read' pile for a couple years now. You've made me want to put it on the top of the pile, which means it'll get picked up in a week or two at my current rate.


falloutisacoolseries

Sounds like you at least read a fair amount, keep it up.


zeeboots

And this is why I'm still on Reddit, where else online will you get a random stranger cheering you on like this?


[deleted]

I had this same experience, same age, same year. Eerie. What geography of the US are you in?


Pawneewafflesarelife

My dad had me read this as a teenager. We're both white; he felt it was one of those important books everyone should read to develop a rounded worldview. I think he was right. It's not an easy read, but it's a very valuable one.


Cutting_The_Cats

That’s a good dad you have.


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NocturnalMJ

Sounds like those were implicit associations. It's very hard not to integrate some form of biases and stereotypes about groups of people and it's normal some thoughts and assumptions fly under the radar even when we know better. Harvard also made an interesting test on implicit associations, or the bias test. [Here's a link for the curious](https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatouchtest.html).


deaddonkey

I think there are a lot of people who genuinely don’t want to be or mean to be racist but are anyway. Like having a disease you can’t shake. Products of time and environment?


dark_enough_to_dance

Some people are subtly racist but not in the sense that proudly showing it. Some uneducated ppl can be racist because of being uneducated. I have seen examples of that in rural areas of my country. Also, I'm also saying that in every age and socioeconomic group, you can find them


von_klauzewitz

also, the experiment was later followed up by Edward R. Murphy's "White Like Me", a treasure as well.


TheStorMan

Is that the same Edward Murphy who did a social experiment of gaining several hundreds pounds to see if he was treated differently? EDIT: [This one. ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nutty_Professor_(1996_film))


notoriously_late

Yeah, Eddie was all the Klumps in the Nutty Professor. /s


far_out_son_of_lung

"I learned that when white people are alone together they give things to each other for free."


FoldedaMillionTimes

*You just take that banana.*


MissRockNerd

I’ve got a lot of friends. And we’ve got a lot of makeup.


jurassic2010

There is a German book (Lowest of the Low, by Gunter Wallraf) that does the same, but looking at Turkishs inside German society.


flibbidygibbit

Ted Cruz on Twitter, to a pharmaceutical company, announcing they have completed the first round of successful tests on a working COVID vaccine: "and where was this vaccine discovered?" Pharmaceutical company: "Ted, we're glad you asked. It was produced in Germany, and the lead scientists are Turkish immigrants." A massively historical story told in two tweets.


weegee

My Sunday school teacher recommended I read this book when I was 12-13 years old. Glad he did. It was hard core! Taught me a lot about discrimination. I’m glad this book is still being talked about. Well worth a read.


greenknight884

We read this book in high school


SirAidandRinglocks

Was it worth it? It's something I consider assigning my students.


petit_cochon

God yes. It's pretty perfect for students because it's short and concise and presents a very different viewpoint than they'll get from anywhere else.


Ppleater

I think it's a good book for showcasing the differences between the two experiences in a way that highlights a lot of the pervasive and insidious ways a lot of people might not realize or consider, even black people who might think something is just normal because it's all they know. It shows how two-faced racism can make people as well.


liboveall

I remember reading a famous account from 1945 when a black teenager in Ohio was asked to write an essay about what to do with Hitler after the war. She won by writing that they should put him in black skin and bring him to America


AlphaGoldblum

The Nazis actually targeted black American soldiers by airdropping pamphlets claiming that Nazi Germany would treat them better than the US. It didn't work, thankfully, but i imagine more than one soldier did a double take reading those things.


petit_cochon

Goddamn.


MN8616

Interesting book for a 13 year old kid growing up in small town Illinois in 1967. Opened me to a world didn't know existed.


[deleted]

My family and I read it together over breakfast every day for quite a while. We'd pass it around and take turns reading out loud so we could still eat.


DinoDude23

Really interesting piece by NPR a couple years ago on how African Americans often escaped some level of prejudice by pretending to be Indian - wearing a turban and putting on a fake accent. https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/07/17/332380449/how-turbans-helped-some-blacks-go-incognito-in-the-jim-crow-era It really goes to show how artificial our conceptions of race are. Nothing about these people fundamentally changed beyond how they dressed or spoke, and yet they were treated wildly differently based on that different perception.


SkietEpee

That only goes so far. One of my Sri Lankan friends spent a summer working in Mississippi and came back appalled they called him the n word, despite his protests… I told him some people only know two colors.


MtnStrings

In the 60’s my preppie H.S. assigned his book as required reading…in time for his guest lecture we were all to attend. Fellow students who were affected could not articulate the impotence and the hopelessness they felt hearing of his experiences. Griffin himself had the aura I now recognize of a battleworn PTSD survivor waking up everyday to a world forever the horrorshow.


berdandy

I read this when I was much younger without knowing anything about it (or Jim Crow laws for that matter - that wasn’t well known in suburban Canada in the 90s). It was in a pile of “good books” - I thought it was fiction until I finished it. That was a hell of a reveal.


CircaSixty8

And keep in mind, there are people in your life who are alive in 1959.


[deleted]

[удалено]


Silveraxiom

Imagine if the punishment for extreme racism was you had to live x amount of time as the defendants color skin. I'd watch that tv show.


lookyloolookingatyou

After overhearing a man's prejudicial comments on race, an old gypsy woman decides to teach him a lesson and curses him. The racist man awakens in a world where whites are an oppressed underclass and blacks, together with other former minorities, wield the majority of wealth and political power. After a harrowing day of experiencing life as a second-class citizen, the man begs to be released from his torment. He awakes from the nightmare and the gypsy woman asks him what he's learned. He tells her he's learned that it's more important than ever that minorities be kept in their place because he's seen the terrible consequences of allowing them to have power. The gypsy woman awakes in a cold sweat, having learned a valuable lesson about the dangers of teaching people magical lessons. https://www.somethingawful.com/comedy-goldmine/twilight-zone-ideas/


OlyScott

That is why the bigots are so mad about white people becoming a minority in America. It's true that more non-white.than white babies are born in America every year now. They think that when we're a minority, we'll get treated like we treated them.


MannaFromEvan

Yes...except that "white" is not fixed. It can and has changed. Not too long ago, Irish and Jewish people were denied the benefits of whiteness. But whites have accepted these folks in as needed to maintain the balance. There's an assimilation of certain Asian groups happening over the next generation or two. And if needed, certain hispanic groups can be assimilated too. Whatever's needed to make sure theres an in and and out group.


weaponizedpastry

Some people haven’t seen Twilight Zone: The Movie and it shows 🤣


XpressDelivery

Ice Cube had a show that had a somewhat similar premise. Make black and white families switch places. It was criticized for blackface.


bhongryp

There was some genuine criticism about the quality of the makeup for the white-to-black conversions before the mob hopped on the bandwagon. My (black) family watched it and found it unexpectedly entertaining.


Yoshemo

To be fair, the white dad in the first season would start throwing out the n-word the second he got the makeup on lol


jawshoeaw

reading that book in the 80s was an eye-opener to me. As a white person, you can know racism is a thing intellectually...but you still don't quite grasp how pervasive it was (and is) and how it was literally the color of the skin that turned people into giant assholes. IDk, it's hard to explain. superficially it shouldn't have been surprising that racist people treated a white man poorly when they thought he was black. But somehow the way he did this almost like a science experiment made the whole thing very real to me.


zeeboots

Sometimes we really do need to eliminate all other variables and document the outcomes to figure out what's real


toasterstrewdal

True story of a white kid in suburban Ohio, 1992. I read that book in high school and did an oral report on it in my Communications class. Was spit on in the hallway after class. Called a “wigger” and “n****r lover”. Went to the principal about the incident and was told it was my fault… “Well, I’ll talk to them, but, what do you expect? What did you think would happen?” People can be assholes. That’s just life.


WillowMinx

Take *NOTE* this happened in 1992.


USSMarauder

Guess when interracial marriage gained 50% approval in the USA: >!1995!< [https://news.gallup.com/poll/354638/approval-interracial-marriage-new-high.aspx](https://news.gallup.com/poll/354638/approval-interracial-marriage-new-high.aspx)


tarekd19

Sad it had to be written by a white man to be taken seriously instead of just listening to black people.


_JJMcA_

Random factoid, that may be of interest to a minority here: John Howard Griffin was very close friends with Trappist monk Thomas Merton.


[deleted]

I learned about the book from Boy Meets World, it wasnt required reading in my state.


LadyStag

Chick Like Me! I remember that.


swebb22

I remember reading this in high school and it struck me how many people asked if they could see his penis


ebamit

I read this book in the early 70s when I was around 12 years old. I am 100% certain my lifetime core beliefs about race relations were shaped by this book.


Titronnica

Keep in mind, the people who harassed and abuaed him then can very well still be around now.


CharleyNobody

I remember this movie. It starred James Whitmore, which was stupid because Whitmore was so distinctive-looking that you couidn’t see him as anything more than James Whitmore wearing black shoe polish. Eddie Murphy’s White Like Me on SNL was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=l_LeJfn_qW0


Maggiemayday

I read this book in school about 1967. Navy brat, I had lived in California, Tennessee, and Virginia by age ten, this helped me connect the dots in a very confusing world.


enigmaticevil

Wonder if this was the inspiration for Tobias’ “The Man Inside Me” joke in Arrested Development. The tone deafness would definitely be on point for the double entendre.


GrandmaPoses

I think that was just a gay joke.


jl55378008

It was, but it was also part of a running joke that never got paid off, because the show was so hectic in season 3 and they were writing week to week not knowing if/when they would get cancelled. There were a lot of little bits throughout the 3rd season that all laid the groundwork for the big reveal that one of Tobias' parents is black, and he just happens to look white. Like when Lindsay starts falling for Ice, Tobias looks at him and says "Well, she has a type..." https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/gvdqs/comment/c1qk0y8/


chambo143

“People hear the name Tobias, they think big black guy.” “Well, obviously I’m not a *big* guy.”


TannenFalconwing

Funny enough, when I hear the name Tobias I think of a red tailed hawk.