An eye-opening look at what happens when a white sociologist goes “undercover” by medically tinting his skin darker, undergoing UV tanning treatments, and then traveling around the Deep South of the USA in the mid 1950’s.
First of all, he gets the medal for bravery – there is racism everywhere. Naked, clear and aggressive – it is hard to imagine that this was what black people had to put up with in those days. Unfortunately it feels sometimes like even now the USA hasn’t come very far since then.
A lot of the events that happen in this book were hard to believe (in a good way). The sudden hatred and degrading comments out of nowhere, the dangers of walking alone through a white neighborhood, and not being allowed to use facilities because of the color of his skin. Luckily the author doesn’t get aggressive back, and calmly logs all of these things to report later.
But one criticism I had was that a lot of the events that happen in this book were hard to believe (in a bad way). The timing of things was always perfect – one right after another. The racists described show up at just the right time in his story, and do their evil deeds right when he needs to illustrate his points. I know these bad things happened – but it is hard to believe that they all happen in neat and orderly way that happens to fit nicely into his narrative. In the same way, the black people in this book are uniformly kind and seem to be 100% good people – full of kinship and good values. Things in this book just felt a little too black and white, if you’ll forgive the expression.
Regardless it was an interesting book to read, especially the afterwords and seeing the fallout from the publishing of the book. I wasn’t quite sure about the author’s methods, but he certainly was fighting the good fight here.
Next I am reading two books at the same time, Lanka Food by O Tama Carey, and There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura.
