Masquerade in Dixie

Black Like Me is a deep-dyed message fHm about a white man who passes for black. In it, James Whitmore conscientiously re-enacts the real life odyssey of John Howard Griffin, a Texas journalist who darkened his skin through the use of drugs, sun-lamp treatments and vegetable coloring, traveled through the South for a month or so, then summed up his experiences in a 1960 book that posed the question: "How else except by becoming a Negro could a white man hope to learn the truth?"

From that dubious starting point, Whitmore's journey runs a predictable course. He meets hate, violence, discrimination, segregation. He endures lurid encounters with whites eager to verify their surrealistic fantasies about Negro sexuality. Written and directed in sledgehammer style, the movie revels in its own righteousness, too often substituting good intentions for good work. And Whitmore's makeup merely makes him look like a dark, wet actor doing Gentleman's Agreement in blackface. What's really wrong with the film, however, stems from Griffin's original thesis. His discovery of the Negro world was a clever bit of behind-the-scenes journalism, not a blow for human rights, and his uniquely personal experience does little but reaffirm the existence of bigotry. Magnified on the screen, it suggests unintentionally that the public and private indignities suffered by the black man appear somehow more cogent, vivid and unjust when a white man has to bear them.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.