Free English Literature Dissertations - The Passage In Mississippi Is Crucial In Describing The Effects Of Being
The passage in Mississippi is crucial in describing the effects of being ostracised from the dominant community. He is culturally isolated, and fears leaving the house. The aroma of barbecue tormented my empty insides, but I did not want to leave the room and go back into the mainstream of hell. So, as well as being socially ostracised, Griffin also gains an insight into the psychological effects of this alienation from fellow man:
The visual barrier imposed itself. The observing self saw the Negro, surrounded by the sounds and the smells of the ghetto, write Darling to a white woman. The chains of my blackness would not allow me to go on. Though I never understood and could analyse what was happening, I could not break through;
Never look at a white woman look down or the other way.
What do you mean, calling a white woman darling like that, boy?
This passage is important in describing the alienating conditions of blackness, and of how they affect and suppress the individual. According to this passage, eventually the black man begins to assume the psychological role of inferior, and thus lives in a constant state of inferiority to the dominant, white codes. He imagines voices in his head criticising him for writing to his wife. Importantly, it prevents him from doing so. The psychological effects are profound, in that it steals Griffin’s voice; his desire to communicate with people from his white life. The chains of his blackness prevent him from being anything other than the Other; cut off, ghettoised and subjugated to various, systemic forms of abuse by a society that remains (largely) intolerant of blackness. In Orientalism, Edward W. Said suggests that [i]n any instance of at least written languages there is no such thing as a delivered presence, but a re-presence, or a representation. The value, efficacy, strength, apparent veracity of a written statement about the Orient therefore relies very little, and cannot instrumentally depend on the Orient as such. If we substitute the Orient for the conception of the Other, then Said suggests that blackness is constructed not by the black community, but rather, exists in the shadows of whiteness. It is this particular form of cultural isolation that cuts off black culture, and, through psychological devastation, Griffin articulates this inability to communicate as a black person to a white person. The discourse between whiteness and blackness remains separate. It can be argued that, through the social experience of becoming black, Griffin does a great deal to break down these racial boundaries. It certainly extends and adds a complicity to the epistemological and ontological codifications of blackness and whiteness.
The assumptions that Griffin made about blackness and whiteness are constantly challenged in Black Like Me.
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