From Vincent at A Wayfarer’s Notes:
I suddenly remembered a piece I read long ago in Reader’s Digest, it must have been in the Sixties. I wondered if I might possibly track it down. It concerned a white man who disguised himself as black to try and find out how Blacks were treated in the latter days of segregation in America’s deep South. There’s been talk recently of white people’s inability to see beyond their own privilege. I’ve been having difficulty myself in understanding the widespread unrest arising from the Black Lives Matter movement, even in places where few Blacks are to be found, or aren’t noticeably discriminated against.
I was amazed how easy it was to discover the tale online, It’s very well-known, published in book and film as Black Like Me; reported as “required reading in schools and colleges in the United States”. Mostly, the author learned how others react to your skin. In this sense, it was literally a superficial investigation. His experiment lasted no more than six weeks, yet enough to start feeling the the hopelessness of being forever the underdog. He found his sense of self damaged, as if he were indeed unworthy.
What is it really like to be black—as opposed to being the product of European culture over several millennia, not merely white ?