In the meantime, I read Faurisson's critique of The Diary of Anne Frank, in which Faurisson, through careful and critical reading of the text, was able to expose the "diary" as doctored and fraudulent. Little did I know Faurisson's skepticism was dissolving the fatty tissue holding this pill-question in place in my brain - I had not thought of Griffin's book for decades (I am now 41).
Finally, I watched 'Gentlemans Agreement', a 1947 film starring Gregory Peck, directed by Elia Kazan. Peck plays a man named Green, a Gentile reporter for a progressive newspaper. Assigned with writing a story on anti-Semitism, he casts about for an angle, and decides to "become" Jewish for a while. He begins telling people he is a Jew named Greenberg and suffers all sorts of troubles, oy vey. In the process he acquires insights which are accessible only to Jews (of course). He then writes his story - "I Was A Jew For Eight Weeks", to great critical acclaim (roll credits).
Hmmmm .... the movie was just a movie - it did not claim to be a True Story [tm]. But it sounded a lot like Griffin's story - or did Griffin's story sound like the movie? The flick was made in 1947, Griffin's stint as a psuedo-Negro came in 1959, or so he says. Coincidence? Life imitating art? If Griffin was inspired by the movie, he does not say so. Or is it art imitating art? The movie knocked loose my old memories about Griffin and his Magic Negro Pills(what was in those pills?). I began to wonder ... Anne Frank's diary was a Very True Story [tm] that actually was not so true after all. They made a movie of it, and it has been spooned into the open mouths of generations of squirming schoolchildren.
Griffin's journey is often used in classrooms to drive across the racism = antisemitism = Nazism = Holocaust syllogism that is central to New Left thinking. Griffin, in his many writings, is forever saying that he, with his special insights on The Race Problem, gained as a Jew-saver and temporary black man, has "become aware" that antisemitism and racism are the same thing.
This point is also driven across by 'Liberators:Fighting on Two Fronts in WW2', a "documentary" that ran on PBS. Those familiar with the film will recall that it told the tale of the brave young (black) lads who liberated Dachau and Buchenwald while "fighting the same enemy - racism" in Germany that they fought in the US. Problem was, the soldiers needed a race change to get *that* message across, because the first units into the camps were in fact white. That little miracle was done not with pills - what was in those pills again? - but with the filmmaker's arts, and a liberal application of deceit. You can read about it by Googling for 'Liberators fraud Weber' which will take you to the IHR web page.
Griffin's book has been translated into 13 languages, and has "sold" 10 million copies. It is used in coursework from middle school up to graduate school. A Google search on 'Black Like Me Griffin' turns up hundreds of hits, many on professor's web pages. The "cheater" websites have ready-made book reviews for scholars short of inspiration. One man, a Robert Bonazzi, has made a career out of Griffinology, and even married his widow! The book is widely cited in leftische/jewische academic circles as an examplar of enlightened progressive journalism. One gets the impression it (like Anne Frank's "diary") is cited more than it is actually read. Not to worry, it too has been made into a movie, also titled Black Like Me.
Griffin's whole life has been a sort of paragon of PC attitudes towards race and Jews. To recap his bio, he was born in Texas. At age 15, he moved alone to France to study in a lycee' there after the rector was moved by his offer to wash dishes and mop floors for an education. He graduated and began medical school, and was working in an insane asylum when France was invaded by the Germans. He became the acting director(!) at age 18 when the director was called up by the army. In that capacity, he used ambulances to smuggle Austrian Jews to the English Channel, thence to safety in England, a practice he ceased when it became too dangerous.
He travelled to the US and enlisted in the US Army Air Corps. Sent to the South Pacific, he volunteered for a dangerous mission living among the local islanders. He studied their culture and convinced them to side with the Americans. He wrote the first orthography (grammar) of their language, the Floridian tongue of the Solomon Islands.
Late in the war, he was guarding a radio antenna and listening to classical music :rolleyes: when the Japs bombed. He was knocked out by a near miss, and wound up in the hospital with some kind of wound that cost him his sight - but not until 1947! Delayed onset total blindness. Weird.
Well, he adapted to blindness well, writing books, breeding animals, getting married and learning to use a cane with such efficiency that "there were those who couldn't believe he was blind at all" (!)
, according to his biography.
I could go on - he did a lot of writing, mostly on Catholic philosophy and race relations, from a distinctly liberal viewpoint (we are told, by the way, that he converted to Catholicism, but from what faith, I do not know). Anyway, in 1957, he received the gift of a miracle - complete, spontaneous restoration of his sight! One day, he could just magically see just fine! Amazing!
This cleared the way for his sojourn into Negro-hood in 1959. He tells us he toyed with the idea for a bit, then told his wife, and headed for New Orleans. A quick scan of the phone book for dermatologists turned up a doc who would give him pills to turn his skin black :rolleyes: , which took just a few days (Wow! What kind of pills? He does not say). He then took off on his journey.
I have not reread the book lately - it's on my list - but I recall him moving through anonymous environments among people who did not know him, and who could not be recontacted. He was hitch-hiking, riding buses, having random encounters with black strangers who would fill him in with little liberal epiphanies on The Race Problem, which he passes on to his readership.
After a few weeks of this, he decides being black is just too hard. He stops taking the pills - what was in those pills again? - and washes the stain off, and is white again. He discards the remaining pills, disappointing those of us who would like to know more about them. He returns to his life to write what is at first some magazine articles, and later the book, 'Black Like Me'.
Shortly after publication, there was a terrific controversy over the articles and book, and Griffin and his family had to go to Mexico to lay low for some time. I don't know what the controversy was all about, but it gave Griffin more Heavy Thoughts and Deep Insights to mine for more of the mawkish philosophical written matter that was his stock-in-trade throughout his life.
So, to get to the point - I strongly suspect that at least part of Griffin's story is phony. His entire life story gives off tinny sounds and funky smells. I have skimmed his biography - Bonazzi wrote it - and am rereading Black Like Me. But I smell a rat. I don't think this man was ever black, and I am not too damn certain he was ever blind! There are too many miracles, too many gaps, too many unexplained coincidences, and too many places where sentiment is used where facts would be more helpful.
I have not dug into this in a big way, but I am interested in knowing what other readers of the book think, not of it's moral messages, but of it's credibility.
So what was in those pills? I think it was bull****.
What do you think?
Nomen Nescio
