‘Black Like Me’ instructive

While attending the University of Texas, I was enrolled in a race relations class in spring semester 1963. Having moved to Texas from Minnesota, I was 18 years old and naïve about Jim Crow laws and the discrimination in the South. After all, I never knew any African Americans; they were in short supply in Edina, Minnesota.

I was appalled to learn that the dorms were not integrated, nor were Southwest Conference sports (who could imagine that today?). John Howard Griffon, author of “Black Like Me,” spoke to our class on his six weeks living as a black man in the South. His experience of ugly discrimination in the United States was difficult for me to understand.

Contrary to James Flynn’s June 24 attempt to conflate Griffon with Rachel Dolezal, there are no comparisons possible, with the exception of darkening one’s skin. I doubt Dolezal would have chosen to “identify black” then. It would not have been comfortable, nor furthered her ambitions. Times were extraordinarily different and difficult for dark-skinned people. Fortunately, much has changed.

Today, “Black Like Me” should be required reading in high schools so students can understand the black experience then, compared to the extraordinary progress achieved today.

Connie Zimmerman

Spokane