A Canadian journalist is defending his decision to travel the U.S. in blackface and write a book about racism, after facing a storm of criticism online.
“Last summer, I disguised myself as a Black man and traveled throughout the United States to document how racism persists in American society,” Sam Forster, who is white, posted Tuesday on X, formerly Twitter. “Writing Seven Shoulders was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done as a journalist.”
The reaction was swift and brutal, with X users expressing anger, amusement and confusion, and telling Forster he should have simply spoken to Black people to understand their experiences.
“It’s hard to simultaneously draw the ire of black people, white people, conservatives, AND liberals… But I think you’ve just done it,” rapper and podcaster Zuby replied on X.
I question whether he really even did it or if he just lied and wrote what he imagined would happen. He would’ve been immediately identifiable as a white guy in blackface, and I’m guessing he would’ve just gotten his ass beat. He also claims he interviewed actual black people but doesn’t name any of them afaik. If it turns out he made the whole thing up to write the book, I wouldn’t be surprised at all.
Another major difference between him and Griffin. Griffin brought along a photographer, Don Rutlidge.
Here’s some of the photos. I personally don’t think Griffin looks like a black man other than his skin color, but I also don’t think he looks like he’s doing blackface. If I saw him, and pondered what he looked like, I’d probably think “that black guy has really European features.”
I’m more amazed that angelfire is still around! I had so many blink tags and under construction gifs hosted there in the late 90s.
It gets worse the more I read the article… This guy spent a few weeks in blackface, thinks that he ‘became a black man’. Then goes on to conclude that while it might be harder to thumb a ride as a person of colour, systemic racism is completely over?? We did it folks!
For self-ascribed supposedly strong people, African Americans certainly do get upset about every.damn.thing. If the intention was not to mock or harass, there’s nothing to be offended about. The author was merely attempting to “walk a mile” in their shoes to understand and write about the problems, first-hand. His only mistake was not anticipating the over-sensitivity of African Americans and SJWs.
In the book, he describes his disguise as consisting of coloured contact lenses, makeup and an afro wig. He said no one recognized his disguise during his reporting.
So not really what John Howard Griffin did:
In late 1959, John Howard Griffin went to a friend’s house in New Orleans, Louisiana. Once there, 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 for about a week. He was given regular blood tests to ensure that he was not suffering liver damage. The darkening of his skin was not perfect, so he touched it up with stain. He shaved his head bald to hide his straight brown hair. Satisfied that he could pass as an African-American, Griffin began a six-week journey in the South. Don Rutledge traveled with him, documenting the experience with photos.[2]
During his trip, Griffin abided by the rule that he would not change his name or alter his identity; if asked who he was or what he was doing, he would tell the truth.[3] In the beginning, he decided to talk as little as possible[4] to ease his transition into the social milieu of southern U.S. blacks. He became accustomed everywhere to the “hate stare” received from whites.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Like_Me
Of course, Griffin also did it in a place where it was far more dangerous to be black, or even to sympathize with the black experience in the South. In fact, a few years after the book came out, Griffin got pulled over and beaten in Mississippi because of the book.
Griffin risked his life and his health to tell the story of how black people in the American South risked their life and health on a daily basis.
This… is not that.
I came here to reference this book as well. It was required reading back in my elementary school (in the early '90s) and, as a white American male, opened my eyes to racism for the first time. I still have my original copy of the book; my school made us purchase a copy so we could highlight passages, take notes in the margins, then have our own personal copy to keep forever so we had a quick reference to grab. This was, of course, before the days of the Internet, so if you needed a reference, you had to go to the library and search for a book.
I guess he…Survived…
I think we need to heal as a society by all getting together to watch Soul Man (1986).
I don’t think I’ll ever understand why either Rae Dawn Chong or James Earl Jones agreed to be in that movie.
zuby
Really? We’re quoting that douchebag?
Okay, wow.
I came here to point out that this project has been done multiple times in the past, most popularly in black like me by Howard griffin, but the quotes that this new guy has written down and said are unbelievably hubristic and unaware.
I thought black like me was an interesting book because it came across more as a white guy trying to understand the black world so that he could personally better live in a world so shattered by adverse race relations, but he never insisted that people had to read it or made the type of self-agrandizing claims this new guy is making.
This forster guy! Yikes.
He goes on to write, “Nobody has an experiential barometer with respect to race, for that matter … nobody except for me,” concluding, “My barometer is better than anyone else’s.”
he stands by his statement in the book summary on Amazon, where he calls Seven Shoulders “the most important book on American race relations that has ever been written.”
“If I thought this would be the second best book, I wouldn’t put it out,” he said.
Doesn’t sound like forster has the right perspective to conduct this research or publish this book, even if he had less than insulting intentions. Which, maybe he didn’t, because those quotes are insane.
