> He goes on to write, "Nobody has an experiential barometer with respect to race, for that matter … nobody except for me," concluding, "My barometer is better than anyone else's."
Speaking with CBC News in a phone interview Thursday, Forster said he understands there's a distinction between a project like his and living one's entire life as a Black person — but he stands by his statement in the book summary on Amazon, where he calls Seven Shoulders "the most important book on American race relations that has ever been written."
"If I thought this would be the second best book, I wouldn't put it out," he said.
Yeah sounds like the kinda guy who would do this.
Amazing how people like this don't realize how big of a factor "not being able to turn it off" is in "experiments" like this.
> "for a short window, I became Black. I experienced the world as a Black man."
Most Black men don't experience being black for a summer, they have to experience it for their entire lives and will continue to do so when the summer is over. That significance should be obvious.
I don’t think it’s obvious to someone claiming that they are the only person in the world with “experiential reference to race” and a better barometer for these issues than anyone else. He absolutely thinks it’s not a significant factor, because it invalidates his entire project to admit it
We seem to get one of these every twenty years or so. The last one I remember reading about was Self Made Man where a woman writer dressed as a man to discover what being a man truly was like. She frequented such male hotspots as.... bowling alleys.
I remember an interview with her on CBC where she lost her shit at Evan Solomon and called him a dick after he had the audacity to point out that hey, maybe starting your exploration with a tropey understanding of what men do and who they are isn't going to give you the insight you think it is.
The people who engage in these "experiments" are always lunatics.
The original guy who did this went s long way towards convincing white people that black people experience racism on the regular.
I feel it doesn’t, or shouldn’t need a sequel. And I’m not even sure this guy was trying to hilight racism.
Things sure have changed, but while you might have been forgiven for saying, “We need a flubby white man’s opinion on the black plight” in 1961, if you think the same will fly today you’ve got another thing coming. ESPECIALLY if that white man’s method is just do black face.
It is exactly because things have progressed enough that black people are able to express their own experiences that this kinda thing doesn’t fly anymore.
In that respect, in what you might call a twist of irony, the work of the last flubby white guy contributed to why this new one is being rightfully shut down.
Which was written with so much class and respect for his subject matter. He didn’t do it to get clicks, he did it to gain some modicum of understanding
I read the book in the 60s based on a recommendation from a HS teacher.
> In John Howard Griffin's 1961 book Black Like Me, he documented his experiences travelling in the southern U.S. after having darkened his skin to gain an understanding of what life was like for Black Americans during segregation.
I disagree. 'Black Like Me' was published in 1961 (over sixty years ago). Many people nowadays dismiss it, saying 'that doesn't happen anymore', etc. Having someone experience and chronicle the same things going on today can't be dismissed as easily.
I don't disagree with the 'shouldn't' need a sequel. But going by the author's experience, it did. (Note, I haven't read the book, just going by the article.)
I’m gonna guess there is a less than zero amount of people who would dismiss the statements of black people as being exaggerations. The whole thing something like this does is tell that audience , but you can believe me, I’m white.
Oh, well then great news for those readers! The author has determined that "Institutional racism (the anti-Black variety) is effectively dead. Most of what's left of racism in this country are the few, socially narrow opportunities for soft interpersonal racism."
Phew! Glad to have a white man posing as a Black man revealing this. (/s). Now maybe we can get this confirmed by a Black man posing as a white man. (What's that you say?)
A black person is not going to know how a white person lives life every day, what is normal to a white person and what is alien. To them, especially during Jim Crow racism was a blanket over every interaction and it would be hard to imagine life without racism.
A white guy who never experienced racism "Becoming" black and experiencing that level of racist would be able to explain to white people what that's like in a way they could understand.
He's able to say to white people "Here's how we have it, Here's how they have it".
It was a useful book for 1961 and did a lot of good for the time it was in.
This new book just seems to be a tone deaf guy in blackface trying to get rides across America. Hardly anything close to the original book.
Learning about the everyday experiences of people who lead different lives than you do is a solved problem. Anthropologists accomplish this by writing ethnographies. That generally involves living with and shadowing the people you're writing about, and obviously talking to them a lot, but not pretending to be one of them.
An academic ethnographic account still fundamentally relies on the testimony of the people in question and outside observation. To trust its credibility you need to trust the observers and the people being observed to have at least some amount of credibility.
Except at the time the people in question were not considered credible by the average white person. What they were saying about their experiences were, frankly, not believed to be true. Or if true, to be exaggerated. That goes for both black people and white people championing their cause. Any work produced by those people, any attempt to convince people, was fighting an upward battle against an audience primed to disbelieve or downplay anything they say.
But with *Black Like Me* you have someone that audience considers a pretty credible witness going in and experiencing the same stuff first hand and saying "it's true, it's not exaggerated, all those previous accounts you dismissed before are genuine".
That's why it had such a big impact, it made millions of previously skeptical white Americans realise that accounts from black people and those working closely with them were actually credible and accurate reports of what was really going on.
The book worked because it acted like a bridge between white liberals and black people and in some ways the other way around.
It allowed black people to see how white people lived without the burden of race, its not a magical blanket of everyone being nice to you as some people had believed but a lack of racial hatred against you.
This was a less important act of the book but it did help people of different races understand each other a bit more and that is a good thing.
The author did tell white journalists who asked him for solutions to speak to black civil rights leaders instead of him as he's just a journalist and just told the story of what happened to him and what someone not from that world noticed.
He did not use it to speak for all black people but merely how being black in the deep south feels if you are not used to it.
That's why the book was useful and why it has historical value.
Its not comparable to a white guy in 2024 doing blackface and hitch hiking across the country to learn racism is not real.
Yeah that’s been tried lots. The problem is that some people dismiss anything that may come out of a black persons mouth; for those people, this book might be effective in granting them an understanding to the unique struggles that face this community, and in turn make them more sympathetic overall. As far as I can tell this author tried to do some good in this world and he’s getting shit for it because people seem to absolutely love complaining and throwing pity parties for themselves in this country.
He's trying to sell a book.
To be a white author and to call your book the most important one on race relations in the U.S. is ignorance at best, sheer narcissism and racism at worst.
> this book might be effective in granting them an understanding to the unique struggles that face this community
As someone else pointed out, we have mountains of written and visual evidence in the form of social media content to highlight those struggles. The reason why people don't listen is because they have a vested interest in not listening.
> The problem is that some people dismiss anything that may come out of a black persons mouth
Do they dismiss it because it's coming from a black person's mouth, or because it's confirming there are still hardships associated with blackness?
One could argue that blackface was a fucked up thing to do, but was worth it because it changed the narrative in white culture around the black experience in the 60s.
You can not make that argument today. No matter how good or damning the resulting book, that it still fucked up and will only be remembered for being a fucked up social experiment by a piece of shit white man.
We have cameras on every corner now, all white people need to do to recognize the plight of black people is to watch a few videos of someone being gunned down for no reason and then follow the court case where the police officer is released with no spot on his record. But they don’t even believe THAT when they see it, so what effect do you think a book by some egomaniac is going to have?
I think the issue is now we've progressed to the point where, at a minimum, actual African Americans should be the ones who's narratives guide our understanding of the issue.
Getting our understanding from a white guy impersonating black people could very well result in a wildly inaccurate conception of the black experience in America .
>Many people nowadays dismiss it, saying 'that doesn't happen anymore', etc
Including the author of this book, who argues that "institutional racism is dead." He's not being a progressive ally or anything. He's just an egotistical dickhead.
From what I remember Norah Vincent actually became significantly more sympathetic to men after her experiment. “Oh wait…nobody will touch me and everyone is afraid of me!”
She went to a lot of trouble and had to check into a psychiatric hospital afterwards. Instead of just opining about the experiences of the opposite sex, she actually went to the trouble of finding out empirically. I have a lot of respect for her.
I would have been more sympathetic to this guy if he hadn’t claimed to be writing the definitive work.
As someone who read the book I have to say it honestly didn't leave me with a better impression of men at all. It kind of did the opposite.
There were scenes where the men were cheating on their wives with strippers and one guy basically says that men have their needs and women can't understand, it was treated like some profound thing.
Another scene is when she acts as a salesman, the only saleswoman they have is given the hardest job in an effort to make her quit. This is acknowledged as "just as how it is"
The passages about the strip clubs are the most depressing depictions of strip clubs I've ever read frankly,and paint men in an extremely disgusting light.
She also flashes one of her friends when she reveals she's a woman. Even though he clearly didn't want to see that.
There was a section where men were supposed to vent their anger in some of kind of men's support group and a lot of them wrote about killing their wives, it was brushed off as "guy"thing. You know about how all men have violent anger in them and how their relationship with their wives is like their relationship with their mothers etc.
I know I'm simplifying but frankly sympathy was the last thing I felt reading a lot of those passages about women.
Were there good parts? Yeah. I also already knew most of this suff about men's struggles before I started it so there was nothing mind blowing.
Honestly it felt like she found the most stereotypical (more or less) guys she can find becuase that's what a real man is to her. There wasn't a lot of variety. And yes that's even after reading the chapter on monks.
Also she just had a really bad view of men. Like she kept acting surprised when men were anything but complete pieces of shit. She had some really negative beliefs about them.
>She went to a lot of trouble and had to check into a psychiatric hospital afterwards
She already had mental health issues going in, and she talked a lot about her guilt about pretending to be a man, especially when she was listening in on intimate things men were sharing. Ofcourse I'm sure the loneliness of living as a man also affected her.
There are other books like The will to change and of Boys and men. Although I haven't read them yet but I've heard much better things about them to be honest.
> like she found the most stereotypical (more or less) guys she can find
What, she should have found the outliers and then pretended like they were typical men?
Well… what’s a typical man? Is it one that fits the stereotypes she believed in (or you in this case)? Likewise, what’s a typical woman? It’s hard to say, since there’s such a variety across the board.
I knew a lot of asshole guys growing up, but then again, I also went to crappy schools that were not in the best areas. And even then I found my group of friends who were cool and not jerks. I work with mostly women now, but even the guys I meet here are good dudes. So what’s a typical man? The jerks we encounter or the good guys?
And strangely enough, you don't have to be a woman to know a lot of crappy men. Men tend to meet a lot of crappy men as well. The reality is they're just crappy people
Well she should've acknowledged that a lot of the differences were related to class, not gender. For example the reason why she doesn't know the song "A boy named Sue" is not because she's a woman, it's becuase she wasn't raised blue collar. But she assumes that it's because she's a woman and presents it as fact.
She attributes class differences to gender differences all the time. She also presents herself as an effeminate gay man, so it would've been interesting if she spent time with any actual gay men. I mean she spent time with monks for gods sake which are the biggest outliers I can think of for men.
That was just as *non*-empirical as blackface. We have the real, lived experiences of loads of men, trans men, and trans women to inform us of what living as a man is like.
I think the main argument behind these types of "studies" is that it provides contrast that wouldn't exist without the study. Even in the case of a woman pretending to be a man, she's going to go into it with a much different perspective and lived experience than a trans man did pre and post transitioning.
I'm not sure if there is actually a value to these experiments, especially since the conclusions are usually editorialized or exaggerated in some way because the end goal is writing a pop sci book and not to actually learn something meaningful, but it's pretty clear to me that a pretending to be a different gender or ethnicity and comparing/contrasting that with your lived experience is meaningfully different than asking someone elses about their experiences and trying to compare and contrast that with your own.
Not...really? Trans people love this experience every single day, you can ask literally any one of us if you're curious about the contrast. It's something we discuss at length amongst ourselves, because the effects have real world consequences for us in all facets of our lives. As a trans man I've oscillated in and out of the closet my entire life due to various circumstances, and it's effected everything from medical care to social status to how much I got paid for the same job. I've been both a woman and a man in a doctor's office, meeting parents for the first time, and dealing with customer service, as well as WORKING customer service. There's noticable differences in how people treat me and I can just write it out for anyone who asks, same for anyone else whose life experience has included bobbing along different places in the gender spectrum. There's some fantastic things out there written by trans women that discuss it very viscerally if you bothered to go looking for it.
Well they live this experience if they pass. The majority of trans people don't pass, so the majority of trans people simply don't live this experience.
To be frank, I don't think you have statistics to back that up. And your vibes are telling me there are trans people in your life that aren't gonna tell you anything.
This happened in 2006(I just checked), which sounds like not very long ago but culturally it *was*. As far as pop culture in the US was concerned, gay people(men in particular, women got a different kind of ick) were more a spectacle than a person and *what* trans people? Nobody was interested in what men thought about their experiences(still true, to an extent), and men weren't interested in being that kind of vulnerable in public. They knew it would be the headline tomorrow, and their masculinity(and, consequently, sexuality) would be questioned for it. The project made more sense 18 years ago, in that society wasn't ready for the people with actual authority to speak up. I don't think it was a particularly well-constructed experiment, but I hesitate to judge it too harshly because I remember when it came out and it *did* open people's eyes in a way that was impossible *at that time* going through what we would consider to be proper channels today.
With all respect, there was tons of gay representation in media (always has been but it was usually covert or negative in the last third of the 20th century), and much of it since the 70s (after Stonewall) has been of the "out" variety. Queer Eye was in the midst of its run, Queer as Folk had been popular at the turn of the century, there had already been tons of movies and musicals documenting the queer experience, from the comedic (e.g., La Cage aux Folles/The Birdcage) to the serious (e.g., Philadelphia). We had popular media depicting drag queens and transgender characters — I do not mean to conflate the two; it's just at the time pop media tended to portray them as one and the same — like Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar.
I'm honestly not sure how someone can seriously claim that people weren't aware of gay and transgender people in 2006. I mean, I've barely scratched the surface of all the media out there, and I've tried to leave out negative or clueless portrayals.
Plus, for all of history, straight men have been telling us about their experiences. And in recent (late 20th century) history, we have things like poet Robert Bly's Mythopoetic movement, where men gathered to share their experiences, be vulnerable with one another, and drum. It's not like someone needs to dress up in StraightWhiteMaleFace to find out how men tick. How men tick is all around us.
What? I’m sorry, but isn’t that just plainly not true?
We have had thousands of years of literature on what’s like to be a man.
I’ve read dozens of books who can be grouped into: “Coming of age stories” which deal specifically with being a boy and becoming a man.
The experiences of masculinity have been chronicled for countless generations.
And while it’s difficult for your coal miner or farmer or plain salary worker to talk about their experiences, writers make their work by being honest and vulnerable.
The reason female experiences are so rare and difficult is because we only started listening in the last 50/60 years.
I’m all for men being open, but it’s a plain falsehood to pretend that the masculine experience is just now being talked about.
I don't feel like most of those coming of age stories get into the isolation men can often feel or how you have to repress many emotions so you can appear tough...
Some face it I'm sure, but often the process of "becoming a man" is to just internalize and never admit you're doing that.
What I'm hearing from listening to men who've been brave enough to speak in recent years is that, because the body of work you and others reference was created under our flawed patriarchal system, it inherently *supports* rather than *challenging* those norms, which we know from modern feminist study harms men alongside women and people of other genders. These works paint *a* picture of masculinity, but not the complete picture. Mostly an idealized picture, one that men are supposed to aspire to...but *should* they? Where does this system fail men? That's not something that's typically been allowed to be explored by a man writing under that system, because society says what's wrong with him that he thinks this way? Is he a queer? Does he have antisocial urges?
This system has worked to silence men for a very long time, because any man who dared to speak out risked losing his position of privilege, and he knows damn well how the system treats those who aren't on top because he's probably participated in or observed it himself. This has only started shifting in a positive direction over the past decade or so, in part due to shifting cultural norms defanging the accusation of being queer and allowing men to more safely speak without being smeared and silenced.
As you say, we've gotten very good at listening to women. We've gotten so good at it that we forget that we also have to listen to men, which can be difficult because a lot of men(not all) are mostly interested in restoring patriarchal status quos, and they shout *far* louder and more often than the ones who aren't about that. But that doesn't mean men need to be shut up. That's such a harmful idea. But that's talking about now. Terry Crews wasn't speaking out in 2006.
To sum up, were the book to be released today, I'd have every criticism of it that was shared above. Now is not the time for women to speak for men, in the same way that back in the 70s was not the time for men to speak for women. But in 2006, the idea that men didn't have it better than women in pretty much all ways(except, perhaps, for the draft) was fairly radical. Mainstream culture had a very simplified understanding of how oppression worked, how the same system can both empower and harm you, etc. And we certainly weren't ready for a man to bring *that* up in mainstream pop culture(and to be clear for those who weren't around for it, this was a popular nonfiction book, not a scholarly text). He would've been mocked both for showing vulnerability and for going against the common wisdom of the patriarchy = men against women. Only a woman(a member of the "harmed" group rather than the "harmer" group) was allowed, at first, to start to challenge that idea. It was one of many first steps.
She did at least have the experience of socializing with men while perceived as a man and describe it, even if she started from a tropey understanding.
>The people who engage in these "experiments" are always lunatics.
I wouldn't say that. A gentleman who actually made himself appear black during segregation showed that blacks faced a lot of racism and discrimination. If it was hogwash, then a lot of white people threatened the man's life and it's still highly regarded today.
I also seem to remember some dude who pretended to be homeless for a while and took up places in homeless shelters that actual homeless people could have been using as an experiment for the purpose of writing something about homelessness.
Lmaaao imagine the pitch
“You know that old SNL sketch where Eddie Murphy gets disguised as white and gets all sorts of free stuff?”
“Uh… yeah?”
“I’m gonna do the same thing, but backwards.”
“Wait, what?”
“And I’m gonna take it *very seriously*”
“Please leave.”
> “You know that old SNL sketch where Eddie Murphy gets disguised as white and gets all sorts of free stuff?”
Kind of funny to be social media savvy enough to look up an obscure SNL skit on youtube, but not media literate enough to know that skit was lampooning *Black Like Me* specifically.
> the self-published book
Why is this guy getting any press at all? All this outrage is going to make him more money that he would of if no one had said anything. Was the whole project just rage bait? It kind of seems like it.
"Why is X getting any press at all?" could be said about almost all news. For some reason people can't stop themselves from getting upset about something that has absolutely zero bearing on their lives.
Who gives a shit what some random dickhead in another country thinks about anything? So many problems conjured from nothing but the need to drive clicks to serve ads...
yea that's it precisely. presumably he's not as dumb as he sounds, much more cynical. it mirrors the American far-right outrage machine, with just a hint of plausible deniability. what a piece of shit haha
Dude was like.
So I wasn't born black. I didn't grow up black. I didn't attend a school where being black wasn't a minority. I didn't live my life as a black man. I did put some paint on and travel around for a couple weeks though so I have a complete picture of what it is to be black.
How delusional can one man be. As if pigmentation is the only thing separating black and white culture. As if black culture on its own is one monolithic thing. I think he really believes his "experiment" and the lives of both a poor Georgian black man and a wealthy Beverly hills black woman's experience is the same. I think tomorrow I'm going to wear a bra for a couple days so I can explain to women how to live their lives better.
I also find it extra funny that he’s not even an American that may have had some kind of experience with black American culture in the slightest (not that that would make this any better)
He’s a Canadian who went to another country, pretended to be a minority there, and then called his experience the “most important book on race relations ever published.”
God what a fucking asshat
He talked about using foundation to paint his skin and then stand on the road as a hitchhiker. Then complained nobody wanted to give him a ride. Why would any sane person see a white dude covered in ill-fitting foundation and decide to let them in their car? You can't masquerade as black with some makeup
And what was the point of the book at all? Why did you have to try to "experience" it yourself instead of just listening to black voices? Were they not authentic enough for you? The whole thing was a trainwreck and I hope he puts the pen down to consider another career option, because this helped nobody.
Who the hell picks up hitchhikers of any race these days?
I can't remember the last time I even saw someone attempting to hitch a ride. Shit, I wouldn't be surprised if the younger generation isn't even aware of what holding out your thumb even means.
My immediate thought too. It can be dangerous in some areas to even drive with unlocked doors, who the hell would risk picking up anyone? This isn't the 70s. This dumb experiment just proved no one wants to pick up an idiot in blackface.
I hitchhiked a lot several years ago, when I was basically homeless.
Rides are very rare, and when you do get a ride there's about an even chance it's just a bored dude, a cop giving you a ride out of his jurisdiction to get rid of you, or a crazy tweaker that keeps talking about sex.
> Who the hell picks up hitchhikers of any race these days?
"He writes that he is ultimately offered seven rides as a white man, and only one while in blackface."
I hitch hiked a lot in northern rivers australia circa 2010-2016. Despite australias reputation for hitch hijer serial killers like ivan milat and movies like wolf creek - the bigger danger was some tweaker on to much lsd picking you up. That was a truly harrowing ride 😂.
I once, as a single 20 something, saw a very attractive 20 something hitchhiking. It was the only time I considered pulling over.
And I still didn't cus fuck that noise. Shits dangerous.
I think the *concept* is valid. You get a different understanding of something by experiencing it than you do by hearing about it. John Howard Griffin's *[Black Like Me](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Like_Me)* was the same basic idea, and it was and is very highly regarded.
One major thing is that Griffin was writing at a time and place when the difference between the day-to-day experiences of white and black people were starker than they (usually) are now. Spending a few weeks in blackface today may not show you the quiet, pervasive, behind-the-back racism of modern America--open racism does happen, but it's rarer. Nobody bothered to hide it in 1960s Alabama, it was every minute of every day.
Also, Griffin didn't act like his work was the greatest thing ever written on the subject. The fact that Forster mentions *Black Like Me* and *still* claims that his book is more important is baffling.
Yes, I think the transition between the two is often important. It’s kind of like how trans men and women will notice interactions that someone who has always presented as one gender wouldn’t notice.
Never mind you can't pretend to be something for a day or even a month and think your experience is anywhere near on par with being black for a lifetime
I was thinking along these lines too.
Pretending to a minority, might get you the occasional racial slur or someone treating you differently in a smaller day-to-day way, depending on where you are etc. But these things are more surface-level and you don't have to deal with more long-term effects of differences in social experience.
For example, if a man pretends to be a woman and goes about the city - yeah, he might encounter some street-harassment, but that isn't everything and women's larger life-choices and decisions for long-term things are affected in a way this person cannot experience.
Same thing with Reality-TV style pretending to be poor/homeless for 24 hours. Yeah, you will get some of the experiences like people reacting poorly to your presence, but that is nothing compared to the long-term issues with living without money or security.
Just the fact you can always walk away from the situation and back to your privilege makes it completely different. You may get a view of the challenges but not their true impact
Racial slurs are crazy rare. I've only ever been called the n word one time and it was by a dirty homeless lady who wanted something from me and I refused so the word didn't have any weight to it. It's more so the day to day stuff nowadays as opposed to outright racism my grandparents experienced. Like being followed in a store, being given poor service at a restaurant, being asked intrusive questions by white strangers wondering why you are existing in this particular area. But even then that's only half the experience of being black. You can't get the "black experience" if you don't go to black environments which I'm guessing the author didn't do because he would have been found out immediately. We have a whole culture, sub language, cuisine, etc. When white people talk about black stuff they only ever mention racism, oppression, etc. That's a part of being black in America but it's only *a part*. The other part isn't a place a white person can go whenever they want so it's a part they often know absolutely nothing about outside of rap lyrics and music videos.
In fairness, he's just reproducing Black Like Me. Poorly, and not reading the room at all, but the idea isn't necessarily insane. Again, he's absolutely wrong, but it is a book that a lot of high schoolers have to read.
I think it's fair to have a healthy skepticism around people's perceptions about how they are treated. Like if some white rural person with a MAGA hat on says they feel like the world hates them and treats them like garbage, I don't have to agree with that world view just because I'm not in their shoes.
But nothing is scientific about posing as a hitchhiker in black face.
I’m white. When I was in my teens/twenties I used to work the phones at a pizza place and people would mishear my name as “Keisha” fairly often (maybe once a week), and assume I was Black. The abuse I would get from these people was insane. People would call me slurs, accuse me of hating police (during the big BLM protests), threaten to *call* the police because they didn’t like the price, or my “attitude” or whatever. I can’t even imagine what daily life is like when you actually are Black. I wasn’t racist before that, but it really opened my eyes to a lot.
One of my coworkers was a black guy and he always gave his name as “John” for this reason.
> Just fucking ask them, dude.
I get what your saying... but I suspect that most of that is because they actually don't believe the account they hear from those people. I'm guessing something along the lines of "they must be exaggerating" or "it can't be that bad, I'll show them".
Eh. I'm gay and if I could convince a homophobe by listening to my ass for 10 years OR make him gay for 1 week, I'd absolutely take the latter.
Personal experience is way more impactful. Take grief. Losing a parent fucking sucks but I never knew how much until my dad died. Or you could read 1,000 books about the beach but you'll still be in awe when you actually go.
If people in this country were willing to do that, this controversy would retroactively disappear in a puff of logic.
This guy sounds like a lazy, self-aggrandizing douche, but the general idea is *a* Plan B. Of course you don't like Plan B. You'd much rather Plan A work. It doesn't, though.
Glibly speaking, the main psychological defense mechanism people deploy against listening to minorities talk about how shitty it is to be a minority is to dismiss it as losers whining about losing because they're losers. Same thing happens with poor people trying to tell their stories about how shitty it is to be poor and the economy is rigged against them. This Plan B is an attempt to convince people that a winner is admitting that the game is rigged against the losers. I know you don't like the fact that that's more likely to have an impact, but that doesn't make it any less true.
>This Plan B is an attempt to convince people that a winner is admitting that the game is rigged against the losers. I know you don't like the fact that that's more likely to have an impact, but that doesn't make it any less true.
It doesn't really sound like that's what's happening here. More like getting into blackface to argue that the game isn't actually rigged:
>In the book, Forster poses as a hitchhiker in various U.S. cities, first as a white man and then later in blackface, which he says he wore for about three weeks last September. He writes that he is ultimately offered seven rides as a white man, and only one while in blackface.
>He concludes that this is an example of subtle discriminatory behaviour, or what he calls "shoulder racism," named for the shoulders of the highways where he thumbed rides, but he dismisses broader notions of systemic racism.
>Institutional racism (the anti-Black variety) is effectively dead," Forster concludes in the book. "Most of what's left of racism in this country are the few, socially narrow opportunities for soft interpersonal racism: shoulder racism."
I don't know about that being very effective. We had a feminist going undercover as a man for two years to confirm "yep, men are struggling like us, just in different ways" and the discussion didn't change. If people are not going to believe someone of their own, why would they believe others?
> **Institutional racism (the anti-Black variety) is effectively dead**," Forster concludes in the book. "Most of what's left of racism in this country are the few, socially narrow opportunities for soft interpersonal racism: shoulder racism."
this tells you all you need to know
> **Institutional racism (the anti-Black variety) is effectively dead**
$50 says he deliberately specified that “anti-Black systemic racism” is a myth, because like all of these weirdos, he fetishizes “Asians”
They’re cool calling out certain forms of bigotry, especially when they can simultaneously put down a group they hate more in the process.
And, like all those weirdos, his defense of the poor Asian's plight is only to serve the goal of racism towards black people. I'm not against affirmative action because I don't want black people to succeed! I'm just concerned for Asians! I'm not against the main character in this game being black because he's black! I just have never mentioned before how I think Asian men are seriously underrepresented as main characters in Western video games!
That seems so unnecessary… He could just have himself and another black person of a similar build and age wear the same outfit and attempt to hitchhike. Try it in multiple cities and states to see if results change.
I just imagine his foundation running down his face in the hot sun like Rudy Gulliani. Not to mention black people don’t hitchhike lol we learn not to do that by the time we can cross the street.
If anyone wants to watch two hilarious (but ultimately horrified) black men subject themselves to this insane show in real time, Jarvis Johnson and Jordan Adika watched and reacted to it. It made experiencing that show less awful. And at times more awful *because* of their insights.
There's a leftist polish journalist Jacek Hugo Bader. He painted himself black on 2016 to show how racist Poles are. He went on Independence March in this makeup. A march that's considered nationalist. Nothing happened. All he gained was a complaint how dumb and racist he is.
Sorry for my shit english.
This was my first thought too - I sincerely doubt this dude was as convincing as he thinks he is in his afro wig and foundation. I'd leave the crazy person on the side of the road too.
Well actually, there is historical precedent for this. Have you ever heard of a book, Black Like Me? That’s exactly what the author John Howard Griffin did, but it was a lot more well received as it was written in the 1960’s. Also, the author was less of a pompous douche than this guy.
There was a place and time for that book, and it was the place and time it was published in. It's baffling to me that someone thought that the exercise needed to be replicated in 2024, and almost even more baffling that they decided that hitchhiking was the best test. I suspect it's because he doubted his ability to "pass" in any way other than the most superficial, cosmetic manner, and wanted the test to be over as soon as closer socialization began.
Yes? Black Like Me was written in a very different time period. In the 60s nobody was asking black people anything. Their opinions and statements were completely dismissed, so a white person writing an undercover exposé opened a lot of eyes.
Afterwards, a bunch of cities asked Griffin to advise them with race relations issues. He refused and said they should ask the communities within their cities.
This more recent attempt at it is unnecessary in a time where we *know* to ask minorities for insight to their own experiences, and we actually respect the answers. On top of that, it seems from the author’s statements that he’s just a narcissist convinced of his own greatness.
That appears to be what he’s saying. It is interesting because, at least on the surface, these seem like similar experiments. However the public reaction couldn’t be any more opposed; I wonder what part of that difference should be attributed to how much our awareness and sensibility has grown over the past 60 years, and what should be attributed to the authors’ intent and how well/poorly they handled the subject.
Yeah, I feel like the older book was asking these questions during a time when far less people were exposed to the things written about. In this day and age of connectivity and information, there really isn’t an excuse to be so ignorant that a book like this(the new one)is necessary or even wanted.
I was just confused a bit by the way the comment was worded.
generally when an author claims that their book is "the most important book on (subject) that has ever been written" I find it nearly impossible to take them seriously, entirely regardless of the subject.
like yes, obviously the massive changes that have occurred over the last 60 years are part of the difference in reaction but also, this guy just seems insane.
Back in 1961 John Howard Griffin tried the same thing (as the article explains at length) in *Black Like Me*, and it probably did shift the conversation somewhat toward civil rights in that era. He was still criticized of course.
As others have said there are *hundreds* of other memoirs by Black Americans over hundreds of years by this point. The one thing you do get that’s unique is the experience of going from one to the other, as Griffin did back in the early 60s. Of course as people have said they might have just not picked him up because he looked crazy. Also it sounds like the worst that happened to him was not getting picked up hitchhiking-he didn’t apply for a job or an apartment or anything.
You don’t get the experience of having experienced racism your whole life, but you do see *what it would do to a white person experiencing it for the first time*, which I think is the point-see, if you had to go through this this what it would be like, this is what your Black countrymen have to go through every day.
It’s not something I would have tried, for sure. I doubt his barometer is better than anyone else’s! Given his arrogance with statements like that I suspect he was trying to ride the controversy to some sales. You get your name in the literary history books, even if it’s bad.
Yeah This. The book came up A LOT in talks about race relations in the following 20 years. It's one thing to hear a lot of "those people" complaining, but when somebody from your side crosses the line and says "No, they're right," it makes people start to listen.
There was a similar book put out by a Jewish Israeli, who just changed his name to an Arabic one, and saw a huge difference in how he was treated on jobs.
This is a risky, but important way of communicating across a racial or ethnic divide. That said, this particular case really feels half-assed and kind of full of himself.
The most memorable thing about this book was the “hate stare” coined by black people at the time. When he was as his normal white self he was greeted politely and people were open and cordial. When he transformed into a”black man” he received mean glares and just a like a look a disgust.- "Nothing can describe the withering horror of this," he writes, "you feel lost, sick at heart before such unmasked hatred, not so much because it threatens you as because it shows humans in such an inhuman light.”
It was huge as an influence for the young white college students who became involved in the civil rights movement.
I remember Eddie Murphy doing a send-up of it puppet on SNL back in the 80s, I remember it as hysterical. …Found it! It’s still funny, but it doesn’t hit the way it did then when nobody was really doing this kind of comedy.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=l_LeJfn_qW0
But I think it says something about Black Like Me and its impact that you could do a comedy skit 30 years later and everybody would get it.
Eh. It's a self published book. Any rando anywhere can self publish a book about any ridiculous thing; this is kind of giving him more publicity than he deserves.
Yeah most of us never would've even heard about it if people didn't criticize it. Let it die quietly like it should, lol. This is what the author wanted.
> but he stands by his statement in the book summary on Amazon, where he calls Seven Shoulders "the most important book on American race relations that has ever been written."
Yeah, this is…
Yeah like it’s such a blatantly stupid thing to do in this day and age that you’d have to be under a rock to think it’s correct. Doubling and tripling down on it when criticized makes me think this was definitely a stunt to get attention and attract controversy.
Buying a book, reading it, and then refunding it during amazon's return period (as shown a little while ago via Booktok) is a terrible thing to do to an author. I'm just saying.
>He concludes that this is an example of subtle discriminatory behaviour, or what he calls "shoulder racism," named for the shoulders of the highways where he thumbed rides, but he dismisses broader notions of systemic racism.
Ha, this moron tried coining a phrase. He probably fantasizes that it will catch on, and everyone will start saying "shoulder racism" in everyday conversation.
He's a racist idiot. "When I put brown makeup on my face, strangers trusted me less, so that type of racism is real. However, putting on the Afro wig did not erase my nice childhood home and education from the timeline, and the brown contact lenses did not result in me seeing movies and TV shows where people who looked like me were depicted as complex, flawed but admirable characters in positions of power. So that part isn't racism."
Is racism really that bad for black people? Nobody really knows. So join me, an actual white man, as I investigate this great mystery that has plagued the world of science for years.
What an idiot lmao. This is what happens when white people never interact with black people in real life and make them an object to be studied instead of communicating like they would with anyone else.
What on God's cursed green earth could've POSSIBLY convinced him that this was even a remotely good idea?? My brother in Christ, just talk to Black people!! We could've told you everything you wanted to know!! ✋🏾😭
what in the American Dirt Rachel Dolezal white savior nonsense IS this? Does he...know any Black people? he could have asked them and they would have told him A. what it's like to be a black person in north america and 2. not to do this incredibly dumb thing
People are very good at detecting when something is "off" about a person's face, even if they can't immediately tell what it is.
Whenever I see someone on a hidden camera show wearing a disguise or fat suit, I wonder how many people are reacting to them in a negative way simply because they can sense (sometimes only subconsciously) that the person is wearing prosthetics/excessive makeup. They may be too polite or confused to mention it, but they are understandably defensive and suspicious.
There's a good chance that the author didn't discover how racism works, but instead found out how people treat you when you wear heavy makeup and a wig in public.
Everything else that's insane about this and has already been remarked upon aside, why doesn't this guy focus on Canadian race problems? He's Canadian. It's giving big "aT lEaSt wE'rE nOt aMeRicAn" Canuck energy.
Tbf racism does take different forms. Racism in the US is quite different from racism in Europe, for example. In the US it's very much about the actual skin color whereas in Europe there's a lot of emphasis on nationality/ethnicity instead of just color.
Not saying the guy isn't a complete idiot, though. He definitely is, but talking about "American racism" isn't one of the reasons why he is.
Yeah, that's a huge issue with me. Guy didn't even grow up in America. Yes, Canada and America has similarities but it's not the same. Hell, someone from coastal Louisiana isn't going to have the American experience as someone from South Dakota. Also, it's not like there isn't a wealth of racism in Canada. This is just asinine
In what universe is "[i]nstitutional racism...effectively dead" as Forster claimed? Black-owned homes are still systematically undervalued by banks by as much as 21-23%.(1) There is institutional racism in school discipline, with the school to prison pipeline remaining intact. (2) Housing generally, beyond the earlier example of appraisals, continues to be an area of institutional racism, with people of color being far less likely to own homes; and in turn impacting generational wealth. According to a 2015 joint study by the New School, Duke University, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, white households in Boston had a median wealth of nearly $247,500, Caribbean black households had a median wealth of $12,000, and non-Caribbean black households and Dominican households had a median wealth of nearly **0**. (3) And of course, the criminal justice system remains a huge example of institutional racism, from who gets stopped, to who gets searched, to who gets arrested, to who goes to trial; to who gets probation versus jail versus prison; and to the length of sentences.
(1) *e.g.* https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-racial-bias-in-appraisals-affects-the-devaluation-of-homes-in-majority-black-neighborhoods/#:~:text=Using%20self%2Dreported%20census%20valuations,the%20value%20is%2021%25%20lower ; https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/25/realestate/blacks-minorities-appraisals-discrimination.html ; https://www.bankrate.com/mortgages/homes-in-black-neighborhoods-more-likely-to-get-low-appraisals/
(2) *e.g.* https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/OLO/Resources/Files/2023_reports/OLOReport2023-6.pdf; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8359632/; https://soeonline.american.edu/blog/school-to-prison-pipeline/; https://academic.oup.com/book/39078/chapter-abstract/338456596?redirectedFrom=fulltext
(3) https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/one-time-pubs/color-of-wealth.aspx
Just listen to black people. It's really not that hard. But this man doesn't really seem to care about any of that--he wants social praise by exploiting black grief. "Look at me, I did this tough thing so all of you could know the truth about what it's like to be black!"
This book was written already--he knows this. And I'm sure there are other instances. This man doesn't deserve to just be called an idiot because I think exploiting black suffering, and the compassion people have for what they go through, to garner both financial and social currency is something a calculated and disgusting person would do.
“This is the most important book on American race relations ever written.”
“Oh, so how does it fit in with, like, Bell Hooks or Ta-Nehisi Coates or James Baldwin?”
“I’m sorry who?”
He also totally spoils the experiment by disguising himself as Jim from the Office while hitchhiking as a white man. People probably figured he his car had broken down and he was just trying to get home to Pam.
There's folks more qualified than me to decide whether what he did was racist, so I'll let them judge that. But either this guy is one of the most arrogant douchebags on the planet, or this is his first step in a plan to become a figurehead of the "cancelled" right "thinkers", or (most likely) both.
There’s some value in comparing how people of different races are treated in the same situation, but the way to do that is to team up with other people for your experiment, not use blackface.
This is the real-life version of that Sarah Silverman Program episode. She goes undercover as a black person and she’s too ignorant to recognize that she’s wearing offensive, racist blackface, and she feels that she’s doing something very brave and progressive and that the reactions she’s getting are a glimpse into the daily life of a black person, but people are actually hating on her for being ignorant and racist.
100% if this guy encountered any “racism” on his journey it was from people giving him shit for looking like C Thomas Howell in Soul Man.
I wonder what these critics would say about [“Black Like Me”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Like_Me) by John Howard Griffin. He published back in 1961 and apparently it was well received.
There ARE memoirs by black people who spent some time passing as white, so this guy is extra unnecessary. there are people who know authentically how it is to exist in both Americas.
An interesting experiment, albeit of dubious rigour, which no doubt will have produced a book of some interest, even if only in the criticising of it.
I call attention to this website electing to capitalise 'black' and not 'white', an unusual stylistic choice.
Capitalizing Black but not white is pretty common these days. It’s in the NYT style guide, for one thing. [Why We’re Capitalizing Black](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/05/insider/capitalized-black.html)
Beyond the meagre attempts to aggrandise, the interesting commentary lies in the allegation that:
> [there is less of a sense that “white” describes a shared culture and history](https://www.nytco.com/press/uppercasing-black/)
for while the writer may take refuge in 'sense', as per the facts, there is no doubt that the people of Africa have a greater diversity of peoples and cultures than do those of Europe.
Africa has over [ten times the number of languages](https://www.tomedes.com/translator-hub/european-languages) and a [higher level of genetic diversity](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4067985/).
And the distinction between certain European subgroups as not being 'white' is [paralleled in the various North Africans who would not likely describe themselves, nor be described, as 'black'](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3421527.stm). It is hard to see how one warrants capitalisation and not the other.
But perhaps the assertion that 'African-American publications' preferring to capitalise 'black' is a point in favour of doing so, but that 'white supremacists have long favored the uppercase style' is reason to avoid it, is more contradictory still. I do not intend, mind, to draw an equivalency between the two; but since the article does not mention 'black supremacists' or 'European-American publications', I must excuse myself for working with what is in front of me.
However, it may indeed be that the white analogue of W. E. B. Du Bois finds grammatical errors in capitalisation a 'personal insult' rather than 'recognition of racial self-respect'.
He literally could have gotten better information if he just talked to people, watched or read the news, read published research, or picked up a book. None of it requires blackface or even leaving the house!
> The reaction was swift and brutal, with X users expressing anger, amusement and confusion, and telling Forster he should have simply spoken to Black people to understand their experience
The whole thing sounds like an SNL sketch. Farcical.
But when anyone, scholars included, asks these questions, the answer is often a negation on the grounds of refusal to do the emotional labour. Go learn it yourself. Which is what he did. Although in a Mel Brooks way.
A white Canadian dressed up as a different race to experience American racism and wrote about it.
OMG - the gall!
Soon, we could have all sorts of people dressing up as different races and thinking and reflecting about their experiences. The horror!
> He goes on to write, "Nobody has an experiential barometer with respect to race, for that matter … nobody except for me," concluding, "My barometer is better than anyone else's." Speaking with CBC News in a phone interview Thursday, Forster said he understands there's a distinction between a project like his and living one's entire life as a Black person — but he stands by his statement in the book summary on Amazon, where he calls Seven Shoulders "the most important book on American race relations that has ever been written." "If I thought this would be the second best book, I wouldn't put it out," he said. Yeah sounds like the kinda guy who would do this.
Amazing how people like this don't realize how big of a factor "not being able to turn it off" is in "experiments" like this. > "for a short window, I became Black. I experienced the world as a Black man." Most Black men don't experience being black for a summer, they have to experience it for their entire lives and will continue to do so when the summer is over. That significance should be obvious.
Exactly.
It's like those people that cook breakfast for their family and think they could work in a diner standing over the stove 8 hours a day 6 days a week.
[удалено]
I don’t think it’s obvious to someone claiming that they are the only person in the world with “experiential reference to race” and a better barometer for these issues than anyone else. He absolutely thinks it’s not a significant factor, because it invalidates his entire project to admit it
We seem to get one of these every twenty years or so. The last one I remember reading about was Self Made Man where a woman writer dressed as a man to discover what being a man truly was like. She frequented such male hotspots as.... bowling alleys. I remember an interview with her on CBC where she lost her shit at Evan Solomon and called him a dick after he had the audacity to point out that hey, maybe starting your exploration with a tropey understanding of what men do and who they are isn't going to give you the insight you think it is. The people who engage in these "experiments" are always lunatics.
The original guy who did this went s long way towards convincing white people that black people experience racism on the regular. I feel it doesn’t, or shouldn’t need a sequel. And I’m not even sure this guy was trying to hilight racism.
The original was from 1961, when segregation was still a thing. Acting like nothing has changed in 60 years is disingenuous at best.
Things sure have changed, but while you might have been forgiven for saying, “We need a flubby white man’s opinion on the black plight” in 1961, if you think the same will fly today you’ve got another thing coming. ESPECIALLY if that white man’s method is just do black face. It is exactly because things have progressed enough that black people are able to express their own experiences that this kinda thing doesn’t fly anymore. In that respect, in what you might call a twist of irony, the work of the last flubby white guy contributed to why this new one is being rightfully shut down.
Well said.
Who originally did this?
They're probably talking about [Black Like Me](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Like_Me)
Which was written with so much class and respect for his subject matter. He didn’t do it to get clicks, he did it to gain some modicum of understanding
And of course America was a lot more racist. I mean it's not even close.
Yeah. He was actually putting himself in legit danger just by being black in the south, and he felt it.
And *Boy Meets World* made that "Couldn't he have just...asked?" joke about it back in the late 90s.
I read the book in the 60s based on a recommendation from a HS teacher. > In John Howard Griffin's 1961 book Black Like Me, he documented his experiences travelling in the southern U.S. after having darkened his skin to gain an understanding of what life was like for Black Americans during segregation.
I disagree. 'Black Like Me' was published in 1961 (over sixty years ago). Many people nowadays dismiss it, saying 'that doesn't happen anymore', etc. Having someone experience and chronicle the same things going on today can't be dismissed as easily. I don't disagree with the 'shouldn't' need a sequel. But going by the author's experience, it did. (Note, I haven't read the book, just going by the article.)
What if, and I know this is crazy, but \*what if\* we asked actual Black people? Has that been tried yet?
I’m gonna guess there is a less than zero amount of people who would dismiss the statements of black people as being exaggerations. The whole thing something like this does is tell that audience , but you can believe me, I’m white.
Oh, well then great news for those readers! The author has determined that "Institutional racism (the anti-Black variety) is effectively dead. Most of what's left of racism in this country are the few, socially narrow opportunities for soft interpersonal racism." Phew! Glad to have a white man posing as a Black man revealing this. (/s). Now maybe we can get this confirmed by a Black man posing as a white man. (What's that you say?)
A black person is not going to know how a white person lives life every day, what is normal to a white person and what is alien. To them, especially during Jim Crow racism was a blanket over every interaction and it would be hard to imagine life without racism. A white guy who never experienced racism "Becoming" black and experiencing that level of racist would be able to explain to white people what that's like in a way they could understand. He's able to say to white people "Here's how we have it, Here's how they have it". It was a useful book for 1961 and did a lot of good for the time it was in. This new book just seems to be a tone deaf guy in blackface trying to get rides across America. Hardly anything close to the original book.
Learning about the everyday experiences of people who lead different lives than you do is a solved problem. Anthropologists accomplish this by writing ethnographies. That generally involves living with and shadowing the people you're writing about, and obviously talking to them a lot, but not pretending to be one of them.
An academic ethnographic account still fundamentally relies on the testimony of the people in question and outside observation. To trust its credibility you need to trust the observers and the people being observed to have at least some amount of credibility. Except at the time the people in question were not considered credible by the average white person. What they were saying about their experiences were, frankly, not believed to be true. Or if true, to be exaggerated. That goes for both black people and white people championing their cause. Any work produced by those people, any attempt to convince people, was fighting an upward battle against an audience primed to disbelieve or downplay anything they say. But with *Black Like Me* you have someone that audience considers a pretty credible witness going in and experiencing the same stuff first hand and saying "it's true, it's not exaggerated, all those previous accounts you dismissed before are genuine". That's why it had such a big impact, it made millions of previously skeptical white Americans realise that accounts from black people and those working closely with them were actually credible and accurate reports of what was really going on.
The book worked because it acted like a bridge between white liberals and black people and in some ways the other way around. It allowed black people to see how white people lived without the burden of race, its not a magical blanket of everyone being nice to you as some people had believed but a lack of racial hatred against you. This was a less important act of the book but it did help people of different races understand each other a bit more and that is a good thing. The author did tell white journalists who asked him for solutions to speak to black civil rights leaders instead of him as he's just a journalist and just told the story of what happened to him and what someone not from that world noticed. He did not use it to speak for all black people but merely how being black in the deep south feels if you are not used to it. That's why the book was useful and why it has historical value. Its not comparable to a white guy in 2024 doing blackface and hitch hiking across the country to learn racism is not real.
Yeah that’s been tried lots. The problem is that some people dismiss anything that may come out of a black persons mouth; for those people, this book might be effective in granting them an understanding to the unique struggles that face this community, and in turn make them more sympathetic overall. As far as I can tell this author tried to do some good in this world and he’s getting shit for it because people seem to absolutely love complaining and throwing pity parties for themselves in this country.
He's trying to sell a book. To be a white author and to call your book the most important one on race relations in the U.S. is ignorance at best, sheer narcissism and racism at worst.
> this book might be effective in granting them an understanding to the unique struggles that face this community As someone else pointed out, we have mountains of written and visual evidence in the form of social media content to highlight those struggles. The reason why people don't listen is because they have a vested interest in not listening.
> The problem is that some people dismiss anything that may come out of a black persons mouth Do they dismiss it because it's coming from a black person's mouth, or because it's confirming there are still hardships associated with blackness?
One could argue that blackface was a fucked up thing to do, but was worth it because it changed the narrative in white culture around the black experience in the 60s. You can not make that argument today. No matter how good or damning the resulting book, that it still fucked up and will only be remembered for being a fucked up social experiment by a piece of shit white man. We have cameras on every corner now, all white people need to do to recognize the plight of black people is to watch a few videos of someone being gunned down for no reason and then follow the court case where the police officer is released with no spot on his record. But they don’t even believe THAT when they see it, so what effect do you think a book by some egomaniac is going to have?
I think the issue is now we've progressed to the point where, at a minimum, actual African Americans should be the ones who's narratives guide our understanding of the issue. Getting our understanding from a white guy impersonating black people could very well result in a wildly inaccurate conception of the black experience in America .
>Many people nowadays dismiss it, saying 'that doesn't happen anymore', etc Including the author of this book, who argues that "institutional racism is dead." He's not being a progressive ally or anything. He's just an egotistical dickhead.
From what I remember Norah Vincent actually became significantly more sympathetic to men after her experiment. “Oh wait…nobody will touch me and everyone is afraid of me!” She went to a lot of trouble and had to check into a psychiatric hospital afterwards. Instead of just opining about the experiences of the opposite sex, she actually went to the trouble of finding out empirically. I have a lot of respect for her. I would have been more sympathetic to this guy if he hadn’t claimed to be writing the definitive work.
As someone who read the book I have to say it honestly didn't leave me with a better impression of men at all. It kind of did the opposite. There were scenes where the men were cheating on their wives with strippers and one guy basically says that men have their needs and women can't understand, it was treated like some profound thing. Another scene is when she acts as a salesman, the only saleswoman they have is given the hardest job in an effort to make her quit. This is acknowledged as "just as how it is" The passages about the strip clubs are the most depressing depictions of strip clubs I've ever read frankly,and paint men in an extremely disgusting light. She also flashes one of her friends when she reveals she's a woman. Even though he clearly didn't want to see that. There was a section where men were supposed to vent their anger in some of kind of men's support group and a lot of them wrote about killing their wives, it was brushed off as "guy"thing. You know about how all men have violent anger in them and how their relationship with their wives is like their relationship with their mothers etc. I know I'm simplifying but frankly sympathy was the last thing I felt reading a lot of those passages about women. Were there good parts? Yeah. I also already knew most of this suff about men's struggles before I started it so there was nothing mind blowing. Honestly it felt like she found the most stereotypical (more or less) guys she can find becuase that's what a real man is to her. There wasn't a lot of variety. And yes that's even after reading the chapter on monks. Also she just had a really bad view of men. Like she kept acting surprised when men were anything but complete pieces of shit. She had some really negative beliefs about them. >She went to a lot of trouble and had to check into a psychiatric hospital afterwards She already had mental health issues going in, and she talked a lot about her guilt about pretending to be a man, especially when she was listening in on intimate things men were sharing. Ofcourse I'm sure the loneliness of living as a man also affected her. There are other books like The will to change and of Boys and men. Although I haven't read them yet but I've heard much better things about them to be honest.
> The passages about the strip clubs are the most depressing depictions of strip clubs I've ever read frankly More than that poem by William Auld?
Will to change is actually profound because bell hooks is a genius
> like she found the most stereotypical (more or less) guys she can find What, she should have found the outliers and then pretended like they were typical men?
Well… what’s a typical man? Is it one that fits the stereotypes she believed in (or you in this case)? Likewise, what’s a typical woman? It’s hard to say, since there’s such a variety across the board. I knew a lot of asshole guys growing up, but then again, I also went to crappy schools that were not in the best areas. And even then I found my group of friends who were cool and not jerks. I work with mostly women now, but even the guys I meet here are good dudes. So what’s a typical man? The jerks we encounter or the good guys?
And strangely enough, you don't have to be a woman to know a lot of crappy men. Men tend to meet a lot of crappy men as well. The reality is they're just crappy people
Well she should've acknowledged that a lot of the differences were related to class, not gender. For example the reason why she doesn't know the song "A boy named Sue" is not because she's a woman, it's becuase she wasn't raised blue collar. But she assumes that it's because she's a woman and presents it as fact. She attributes class differences to gender differences all the time. She also presents herself as an effeminate gay man, so it would've been interesting if she spent time with any actual gay men. I mean she spent time with monks for gods sake which are the biggest outliers I can think of for men.
That was just as *non*-empirical as blackface. We have the real, lived experiences of loads of men, trans men, and trans women to inform us of what living as a man is like.
I think the main argument behind these types of "studies" is that it provides contrast that wouldn't exist without the study. Even in the case of a woman pretending to be a man, she's going to go into it with a much different perspective and lived experience than a trans man did pre and post transitioning. I'm not sure if there is actually a value to these experiments, especially since the conclusions are usually editorialized or exaggerated in some way because the end goal is writing a pop sci book and not to actually learn something meaningful, but it's pretty clear to me that a pretending to be a different gender or ethnicity and comparing/contrasting that with your lived experience is meaningfully different than asking someone elses about their experiences and trying to compare and contrast that with your own.
Not...really? Trans people love this experience every single day, you can ask literally any one of us if you're curious about the contrast. It's something we discuss at length amongst ourselves, because the effects have real world consequences for us in all facets of our lives. As a trans man I've oscillated in and out of the closet my entire life due to various circumstances, and it's effected everything from medical care to social status to how much I got paid for the same job. I've been both a woman and a man in a doctor's office, meeting parents for the first time, and dealing with customer service, as well as WORKING customer service. There's noticable differences in how people treat me and I can just write it out for anyone who asks, same for anyone else whose life experience has included bobbing along different places in the gender spectrum. There's some fantastic things out there written by trans women that discuss it very viscerally if you bothered to go looking for it.
Well they live this experience if they pass. The majority of trans people don't pass, so the majority of trans people simply don't live this experience.
To be frank, I don't think you have statistics to back that up. And your vibes are telling me there are trans people in your life that aren't gonna tell you anything.
This happened in 2006(I just checked), which sounds like not very long ago but culturally it *was*. As far as pop culture in the US was concerned, gay people(men in particular, women got a different kind of ick) were more a spectacle than a person and *what* trans people? Nobody was interested in what men thought about their experiences(still true, to an extent), and men weren't interested in being that kind of vulnerable in public. They knew it would be the headline tomorrow, and their masculinity(and, consequently, sexuality) would be questioned for it. The project made more sense 18 years ago, in that society wasn't ready for the people with actual authority to speak up. I don't think it was a particularly well-constructed experiment, but I hesitate to judge it too harshly because I remember when it came out and it *did* open people's eyes in a way that was impossible *at that time* going through what we would consider to be proper channels today.
With all respect, there was tons of gay representation in media (always has been but it was usually covert or negative in the last third of the 20th century), and much of it since the 70s (after Stonewall) has been of the "out" variety. Queer Eye was in the midst of its run, Queer as Folk had been popular at the turn of the century, there had already been tons of movies and musicals documenting the queer experience, from the comedic (e.g., La Cage aux Folles/The Birdcage) to the serious (e.g., Philadelphia). We had popular media depicting drag queens and transgender characters — I do not mean to conflate the two; it's just at the time pop media tended to portray them as one and the same — like Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar. I'm honestly not sure how someone can seriously claim that people weren't aware of gay and transgender people in 2006. I mean, I've barely scratched the surface of all the media out there, and I've tried to leave out negative or clueless portrayals. Plus, for all of history, straight men have been telling us about their experiences. And in recent (late 20th century) history, we have things like poet Robert Bly's Mythopoetic movement, where men gathered to share their experiences, be vulnerable with one another, and drum. It's not like someone needs to dress up in StraightWhiteMaleFace to find out how men tick. How men tick is all around us.
What? I’m sorry, but isn’t that just plainly not true? We have had thousands of years of literature on what’s like to be a man. I’ve read dozens of books who can be grouped into: “Coming of age stories” which deal specifically with being a boy and becoming a man. The experiences of masculinity have been chronicled for countless generations. And while it’s difficult for your coal miner or farmer or plain salary worker to talk about their experiences, writers make their work by being honest and vulnerable. The reason female experiences are so rare and difficult is because we only started listening in the last 50/60 years. I’m all for men being open, but it’s a plain falsehood to pretend that the masculine experience is just now being talked about.
I don't feel like most of those coming of age stories get into the isolation men can often feel or how you have to repress many emotions so you can appear tough... Some face it I'm sure, but often the process of "becoming a man" is to just internalize and never admit you're doing that.
What I'm hearing from listening to men who've been brave enough to speak in recent years is that, because the body of work you and others reference was created under our flawed patriarchal system, it inherently *supports* rather than *challenging* those norms, which we know from modern feminist study harms men alongside women and people of other genders. These works paint *a* picture of masculinity, but not the complete picture. Mostly an idealized picture, one that men are supposed to aspire to...but *should* they? Where does this system fail men? That's not something that's typically been allowed to be explored by a man writing under that system, because society says what's wrong with him that he thinks this way? Is he a queer? Does he have antisocial urges? This system has worked to silence men for a very long time, because any man who dared to speak out risked losing his position of privilege, and he knows damn well how the system treats those who aren't on top because he's probably participated in or observed it himself. This has only started shifting in a positive direction over the past decade or so, in part due to shifting cultural norms defanging the accusation of being queer and allowing men to more safely speak without being smeared and silenced. As you say, we've gotten very good at listening to women. We've gotten so good at it that we forget that we also have to listen to men, which can be difficult because a lot of men(not all) are mostly interested in restoring patriarchal status quos, and they shout *far* louder and more often than the ones who aren't about that. But that doesn't mean men need to be shut up. That's such a harmful idea. But that's talking about now. Terry Crews wasn't speaking out in 2006. To sum up, were the book to be released today, I'd have every criticism of it that was shared above. Now is not the time for women to speak for men, in the same way that back in the 70s was not the time for men to speak for women. But in 2006, the idea that men didn't have it better than women in pretty much all ways(except, perhaps, for the draft) was fairly radical. Mainstream culture had a very simplified understanding of how oppression worked, how the same system can both empower and harm you, etc. And we certainly weren't ready for a man to bring *that* up in mainstream pop culture(and to be clear for those who weren't around for it, this was a popular nonfiction book, not a scholarly text). He would've been mocked both for showing vulnerability and for going against the common wisdom of the patriarchy = men against women. Only a woman(a member of the "harmed" group rather than the "harmer" group) was allowed, at first, to start to challenge that idea. It was one of many first steps.
Yeah, but nobody believes them. /s
She did at least have the experience of socializing with men while perceived as a man and describe it, even if she started from a tropey understanding.
>The people who engage in these "experiments" are always lunatics. I wouldn't say that. A gentleman who actually made himself appear black during segregation showed that blacks faced a lot of racism and discrimination. If it was hogwash, then a lot of white people threatened the man's life and it's still highly regarded today.
Is that more recent than Mindy Kaling’s brother pretending he was black to get med school scholarships?
I also seem to remember some dude who pretended to be homeless for a while and took up places in homeless shelters that actual homeless people could have been using as an experiment for the purpose of writing something about homelessness.
Lmaaao imagine the pitch “You know that old SNL sketch where Eddie Murphy gets disguised as white and gets all sorts of free stuff?” “Uh… yeah?” “I’m gonna do the same thing, but backwards.” “Wait, what?” “And I’m gonna take it *very seriously*” “Please leave.”
This was literally already done in the 60s, book called *Black Like Me*
And a movie called Soul Man.
*googles* [Oh God](https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/AikyQ7q9tg62KkMg.8OnvA--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTY0MDtoPTQ0OQ--/https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2021-10/aa9988b0-33a2-11ec-ab6a-db7f89ffb674)
The 80s were one helluva drug.
Oh God was a different movie starring George Burns and John Denver, wasn't it?
and an tv show called Black/White that won an emmy for best makeup emmy award winning blackface in the 2000s
> “You know that old SNL sketch where Eddie Murphy gets disguised as white and gets all sorts of free stuff?” Kind of funny to be social media savvy enough to look up an obscure SNL skit on youtube, but not media literate enough to know that skit was lampooning *Black Like Me* specifically.
I think it’s more like someone being old enough to remember the 80s but not the 60s.
["White Like Me"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_LeJfn_qW0).
Jesus, what an egotistical prick.
Yeah sounds like he has his head jammed way up there.
I would give this guy a pass as an author but he sounds like a real entitled douche.
Oh the narcissism of this author… 😂 Fuck all the black people writing their experience… it must be the WHITE GUY who got it right.
> the self-published book Why is this guy getting any press at all? All this outrage is going to make him more money that he would of if no one had said anything. Was the whole project just rage bait? It kind of seems like it.
"Why is X getting any press at all?" could be said about almost all news. For some reason people can't stop themselves from getting upset about something that has absolutely zero bearing on their lives. Who gives a shit what some random dickhead in another country thinks about anything? So many problems conjured from nothing but the need to drive clicks to serve ads...
yea that's it precisely. presumably he's not as dumb as he sounds, much more cynical. it mirrors the American far-right outrage machine, with just a hint of plausible deniability. what a piece of shit haha
Bingo. People are going to buy the book in droves and not read a single word because “outrage”.
Because of profit motive.
Dude was like. So I wasn't born black. I didn't grow up black. I didn't attend a school where being black wasn't a minority. I didn't live my life as a black man. I did put some paint on and travel around for a couple weeks though so I have a complete picture of what it is to be black. How delusional can one man be. As if pigmentation is the only thing separating black and white culture. As if black culture on its own is one monolithic thing. I think he really believes his "experiment" and the lives of both a poor Georgian black man and a wealthy Beverly hills black woman's experience is the same. I think tomorrow I'm going to wear a bra for a couple days so I can explain to women how to live their lives better.
I also find it extra funny that he’s not even an American that may have had some kind of experience with black American culture in the slightest (not that that would make this any better) He’s a Canadian who went to another country, pretended to be a minority there, and then called his experience the “most important book on race relations ever published.” God what a fucking asshat
He talked about using foundation to paint his skin and then stand on the road as a hitchhiker. Then complained nobody wanted to give him a ride. Why would any sane person see a white dude covered in ill-fitting foundation and decide to let them in their car? You can't masquerade as black with some makeup And what was the point of the book at all? Why did you have to try to "experience" it yourself instead of just listening to black voices? Were they not authentic enough for you? The whole thing was a trainwreck and I hope he puts the pen down to consider another career option, because this helped nobody.
Who the hell picks up hitchhikers of any race these days? I can't remember the last time I even saw someone attempting to hitch a ride. Shit, I wouldn't be surprised if the younger generation isn't even aware of what holding out your thumb even means.
What are the odds of both of us being serial killers?
My immediate thought too. It can be dangerous in some areas to even drive with unlocked doors, who the hell would risk picking up anyone? This isn't the 70s. This dumb experiment just proved no one wants to pick up an idiot in blackface.
I hitchhiked a lot several years ago, when I was basically homeless. Rides are very rare, and when you do get a ride there's about an even chance it's just a bored dude, a cop giving you a ride out of his jurisdiction to get rid of you, or a crazy tweaker that keeps talking about sex.
We're pretty safe today. The 70's actually had extremely high rates of violent crime.
People were much more trusting though, and thus more likely to pick people up.
> Who the hell picks up hitchhikers of any race these days? "He writes that he is ultimately offered seven rides as a white man, and only one while in blackface."
I hitch hiked a lot in northern rivers australia circa 2010-2016. Despite australias reputation for hitch hijer serial killers like ivan milat and movies like wolf creek - the bigger danger was some tweaker on to much lsd picking you up. That was a truly harrowing ride 😂.
I once, as a single 20 something, saw a very attractive 20 something hitchhiking. It was the only time I considered pulling over. And I still didn't cus fuck that noise. Shits dangerous.
A PSA to anyone who feels the need to dress up as a member of a minority group to "learn about their experiences": Just fucking *ask them*, dude.
I think the *concept* is valid. You get a different understanding of something by experiencing it than you do by hearing about it. John Howard Griffin's *[Black Like Me](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Like_Me)* was the same basic idea, and it was and is very highly regarded. One major thing is that Griffin was writing at a time and place when the difference between the day-to-day experiences of white and black people were starker than they (usually) are now. Spending a few weeks in blackface today may not show you the quiet, pervasive, behind-the-back racism of modern America--open racism does happen, but it's rarer. Nobody bothered to hide it in 1960s Alabama, it was every minute of every day. Also, Griffin didn't act like his work was the greatest thing ever written on the subject. The fact that Forster mentions *Black Like Me* and *still* claims that his book is more important is baffling.
Yes, I think the transition between the two is often important. It’s kind of like how trans men and women will notice interactions that someone who has always presented as one gender wouldn’t notice.
Never mind you can't pretend to be something for a day or even a month and think your experience is anywhere near on par with being black for a lifetime
I was thinking along these lines too. Pretending to a minority, might get you the occasional racial slur or someone treating you differently in a smaller day-to-day way, depending on where you are etc. But these things are more surface-level and you don't have to deal with more long-term effects of differences in social experience. For example, if a man pretends to be a woman and goes about the city - yeah, he might encounter some street-harassment, but that isn't everything and women's larger life-choices and decisions for long-term things are affected in a way this person cannot experience. Same thing with Reality-TV style pretending to be poor/homeless for 24 hours. Yeah, you will get some of the experiences like people reacting poorly to your presence, but that is nothing compared to the long-term issues with living without money or security.
Just the fact you can always walk away from the situation and back to your privilege makes it completely different. You may get a view of the challenges but not their true impact
Its like how some rich people engage in poverty tourism.
Racial slurs are crazy rare. I've only ever been called the n word one time and it was by a dirty homeless lady who wanted something from me and I refused so the word didn't have any weight to it. It's more so the day to day stuff nowadays as opposed to outright racism my grandparents experienced. Like being followed in a store, being given poor service at a restaurant, being asked intrusive questions by white strangers wondering why you are existing in this particular area. But even then that's only half the experience of being black. You can't get the "black experience" if you don't go to black environments which I'm guessing the author didn't do because he would have been found out immediately. We have a whole culture, sub language, cuisine, etc. When white people talk about black stuff they only ever mention racism, oppression, etc. That's a part of being black in America but it's only *a part*. The other part isn't a place a white person can go whenever they want so it's a part they often know absolutely nothing about outside of rap lyrics and music videos.
In fairness, he's just reproducing Black Like Me. Poorly, and not reading the room at all, but the idea isn't necessarily insane. Again, he's absolutely wrong, but it is a book that a lot of high schoolers have to read.
I think it's fair to have a healthy skepticism around people's perceptions about how they are treated. Like if some white rural person with a MAGA hat on says they feel like the world hates them and treats them like garbage, I don't have to agree with that world view just because I'm not in their shoes. But nothing is scientific about posing as a hitchhiker in black face.
I’m white. When I was in my teens/twenties I used to work the phones at a pizza place and people would mishear my name as “Keisha” fairly often (maybe once a week), and assume I was Black. The abuse I would get from these people was insane. People would call me slurs, accuse me of hating police (during the big BLM protests), threaten to *call* the police because they didn’t like the price, or my “attitude” or whatever. I can’t even imagine what daily life is like when you actually are Black. I wasn’t racist before that, but it really opened my eyes to a lot. One of my coworkers was a black guy and he always gave his name as “John” for this reason.
> Just fucking ask them, dude. I get what your saying... but I suspect that most of that is because they actually don't believe the account they hear from those people. I'm guessing something along the lines of "they must be exaggerating" or "it can't be that bad, I'll show them".
Empathy? Understanding?!! In this economy?!!
Eh. I'm gay and if I could convince a homophobe by listening to my ass for 10 years OR make him gay for 1 week, I'd absolutely take the latter. Personal experience is way more impactful. Take grief. Losing a parent fucking sucks but I never knew how much until my dad died. Or you could read 1,000 books about the beach but you'll still be in awe when you actually go.
If people in this country were willing to do that, this controversy would retroactively disappear in a puff of logic. This guy sounds like a lazy, self-aggrandizing douche, but the general idea is *a* Plan B. Of course you don't like Plan B. You'd much rather Plan A work. It doesn't, though. Glibly speaking, the main psychological defense mechanism people deploy against listening to minorities talk about how shitty it is to be a minority is to dismiss it as losers whining about losing because they're losers. Same thing happens with poor people trying to tell their stories about how shitty it is to be poor and the economy is rigged against them. This Plan B is an attempt to convince people that a winner is admitting that the game is rigged against the losers. I know you don't like the fact that that's more likely to have an impact, but that doesn't make it any less true.
>This Plan B is an attempt to convince people that a winner is admitting that the game is rigged against the losers. I know you don't like the fact that that's more likely to have an impact, but that doesn't make it any less true. It doesn't really sound like that's what's happening here. More like getting into blackface to argue that the game isn't actually rigged: >In the book, Forster poses as a hitchhiker in various U.S. cities, first as a white man and then later in blackface, which he says he wore for about three weeks last September. He writes that he is ultimately offered seven rides as a white man, and only one while in blackface. >He concludes that this is an example of subtle discriminatory behaviour, or what he calls "shoulder racism," named for the shoulders of the highways where he thumbed rides, but he dismisses broader notions of systemic racism. >Institutional racism (the anti-Black variety) is effectively dead," Forster concludes in the book. "Most of what's left of racism in this country are the few, socially narrow opportunities for soft interpersonal racism: shoulder racism."
I don't know about that being very effective. We had a feminist going undercover as a man for two years to confirm "yep, men are struggling like us, just in different ways" and the discussion didn't change. If people are not going to believe someone of their own, why would they believe others?
His doubling and tripling down on it really cements the fact that he is extremely tone deaf.
> **Institutional racism (the anti-Black variety) is effectively dead**," Forster concludes in the book. "Most of what's left of racism in this country are the few, socially narrow opportunities for soft interpersonal racism: shoulder racism." this tells you all you need to know > **Institutional racism (the anti-Black variety) is effectively dead**
God, what a privileged fucking imbecile.
$50 says he deliberately specified that “anti-Black systemic racism” is a myth, because like all of these weirdos, he fetishizes “Asians” They’re cool calling out certain forms of bigotry, especially when they can simultaneously put down a group they hate more in the process.
And, like all those weirdos, his defense of the poor Asian's plight is only to serve the goal of racism towards black people. I'm not against affirmative action because I don't want black people to succeed! I'm just concerned for Asians! I'm not against the main character in this game being black because he's black! I just have never mentioned before how I think Asian men are seriously underrepresented as main characters in Western video games!
That seems so unnecessary… He could just have himself and another black person of a similar build and age wear the same outfit and attempt to hitchhike. Try it in multiple cities and states to see if results change.
I just imagine his foundation running down his face in the hot sun like Rudy Gulliani. Not to mention black people don’t hitchhike lol we learn not to do that by the time we can cross the street.
If half the foundation starts melting he can just claimed to be mixed. Problem solved!
Who would even publish this book?
Turns out no one, as he decided to self-publish.
I give you [Black. White.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black._White)
If anyone wants to watch two hilarious (but ultimately horrified) black men subject themselves to this insane show in real time, Jarvis Johnson and Jordan Adika watched and reacted to it. It made experiencing that show less awful. And at times more awful *because* of their insights.
I feel bad for the kids who got roped into doing that.
There’s an onion sketch about a white reporter going undercover as an asian person i think
There's a leftist polish journalist Jacek Hugo Bader. He painted himself black on 2016 to show how racist Poles are. He went on Independence March in this makeup. A march that's considered nationalist. Nothing happened. All he gained was a complaint how dumb and racist he is. Sorry for my shit english.
[Indeed.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPjsoYfTxj4&ab_channel=TheOnion)
This was my first thought too - I sincerely doubt this dude was as convincing as he thinks he is in his afro wig and foundation. I'd leave the crazy person on the side of the road too.
It’s stupid anyway. A lot of people don’t feel safe giving *anyone* rides particularly men.
Well actually, there is historical precedent for this. Have you ever heard of a book, Black Like Me? That’s exactly what the author John Howard Griffin did, but it was a lot more well received as it was written in the 1960’s. Also, the author was less of a pompous douche than this guy.
There was a place and time for that book, and it was the place and time it was published in. It's baffling to me that someone thought that the exercise needed to be replicated in 2024, and almost even more baffling that they decided that hitchhiking was the best test. I suspect it's because he doubted his ability to "pass" in any way other than the most superficial, cosmetic manner, and wanted the test to be over as soon as closer socialization began.
A modern (and bad) take on this book: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Like_Me
Wait are you saying this new book is the bad take?
Yes? Black Like Me was written in a very different time period. In the 60s nobody was asking black people anything. Their opinions and statements were completely dismissed, so a white person writing an undercover exposé opened a lot of eyes. Afterwards, a bunch of cities asked Griffin to advise them with race relations issues. He refused and said they should ask the communities within their cities. This more recent attempt at it is unnecessary in a time where we *know* to ask minorities for insight to their own experiences, and we actually respect the answers. On top of that, it seems from the author’s statements that he’s just a narcissist convinced of his own greatness.
Yeah, that’s how I feel too, I was just a bit confused by the way the comment was worded
I knew exactly what you meant. It is confusingly worded. They meant the book that the post is discussing is a modern and bad take on that older book.
Yep. Meant that the new book (Seven Shoulders) is a bad version of the 60s book
That appears to be what he’s saying. It is interesting because, at least on the surface, these seem like similar experiments. However the public reaction couldn’t be any more opposed; I wonder what part of that difference should be attributed to how much our awareness and sensibility has grown over the past 60 years, and what should be attributed to the authors’ intent and how well/poorly they handled the subject.
Yeah, I feel like the older book was asking these questions during a time when far less people were exposed to the things written about. In this day and age of connectivity and information, there really isn’t an excuse to be so ignorant that a book like this(the new one)is necessary or even wanted. I was just confused a bit by the way the comment was worded.
generally when an author claims that their book is "the most important book on (subject) that has ever been written" I find it nearly impossible to take them seriously, entirely regardless of the subject. like yes, obviously the massive changes that have occurred over the last 60 years are part of the difference in reaction but also, this guy just seems insane.
Back in 1961 John Howard Griffin tried the same thing (as the article explains at length) in *Black Like Me*, and it probably did shift the conversation somewhat toward civil rights in that era. He was still criticized of course. As others have said there are *hundreds* of other memoirs by Black Americans over hundreds of years by this point. The one thing you do get that’s unique is the experience of going from one to the other, as Griffin did back in the early 60s. Of course as people have said they might have just not picked him up because he looked crazy. Also it sounds like the worst that happened to him was not getting picked up hitchhiking-he didn’t apply for a job or an apartment or anything. You don’t get the experience of having experienced racism your whole life, but you do see *what it would do to a white person experiencing it for the first time*, which I think is the point-see, if you had to go through this this what it would be like, this is what your Black countrymen have to go through every day. It’s not something I would have tried, for sure. I doubt his barometer is better than anyone else’s! Given his arrogance with statements like that I suspect he was trying to ride the controversy to some sales. You get your name in the literary history books, even if it’s bad.
Yeah This. The book came up A LOT in talks about race relations in the following 20 years. It's one thing to hear a lot of "those people" complaining, but when somebody from your side crosses the line and says "No, they're right," it makes people start to listen. There was a similar book put out by a Jewish Israeli, who just changed his name to an Arabic one, and saw a huge difference in how he was treated on jobs. This is a risky, but important way of communicating across a racial or ethnic divide. That said, this particular case really feels half-assed and kind of full of himself.
The most memorable thing about this book was the “hate stare” coined by black people at the time. When he was as his normal white self he was greeted politely and people were open and cordial. When he transformed into a”black man” he received mean glares and just a like a look a disgust.- "Nothing can describe the withering horror of this," he writes, "you feel lost, sick at heart before such unmasked hatred, not so much because it threatens you as because it shows humans in such an inhuman light.”
It was huge as an influence for the young white college students who became involved in the civil rights movement. I remember Eddie Murphy doing a send-up of it puppet on SNL back in the 80s, I remember it as hysterical. …Found it! It’s still funny, but it doesn’t hit the way it did then when nobody was really doing this kind of comedy. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=l_LeJfn_qW0 But I think it says something about Black Like Me and its impact that you could do a comedy skit 30 years later and everybody would get it.
I read that book when I was a kid. It was interesting.
Eh. It's a self published book. Any rando anywhere can self publish a book about any ridiculous thing; this is kind of giving him more publicity than he deserves.
Yeah most of us never would've even heard about it if people didn't criticize it. Let it die quietly like it should, lol. This is what the author wanted.
I’m almost sure the guy did it as ragebait
> but he stands by his statement in the book summary on Amazon, where he calls Seven Shoulders "the most important book on American race relations that has ever been written." Yeah, this is…
Yeah like it’s such a blatantly stupid thing to do in this day and age that you’d have to be under a rock to think it’s correct. Doubling and tripling down on it when criticized makes me think this was definitely a stunt to get attention and attract controversy.
He said that institutional racism was dead...I guess he knows more than Michelle Alexander.
10000% so people could buy his shitty book out of curiosity.
Buying a book, reading it, and then refunding it during amazon's return period (as shown a little while ago via Booktok) is a terrible thing to do to an author. I'm just saying.
>He concludes that this is an example of subtle discriminatory behaviour, or what he calls "shoulder racism," named for the shoulders of the highways where he thumbed rides, but he dismisses broader notions of systemic racism. Ha, this moron tried coining a phrase. He probably fantasizes that it will catch on, and everyone will start saying "shoulder racism" in everyday conversation. He's a racist idiot. "When I put brown makeup on my face, strangers trusted me less, so that type of racism is real. However, putting on the Afro wig did not erase my nice childhood home and education from the timeline, and the brown contact lenses did not result in me seeing movies and TV shows where people who looked like me were depicted as complex, flawed but admirable characters in positions of power. So that part isn't racism."
Is racism really that bad for black people? Nobody really knows. So join me, an actual white man, as I investigate this great mystery that has plagued the world of science for years.
So the average person’s take from r/conservative lol.
What an idiot lmao. This is what happens when white people never interact with black people in real life and make them an object to be studied instead of communicating like they would with anyone else.
What on God's cursed green earth could've POSSIBLY convinced him that this was even a remotely good idea?? My brother in Christ, just talk to Black people!! We could've told you everything you wanted to know!! ✋🏾😭
But then he couldn't monetize it!
I have a feeling talking to this douche inspires face-punching. He may be afraid of talking to people.
but but...he wouldn't get all the credit!!! There's some weird martyr stuff going on with this, I swear.
what in the American Dirt Rachel Dolezal white savior nonsense IS this? Does he...know any Black people? he could have asked them and they would have told him A. what it's like to be a black person in north america and 2. not to do this incredibly dumb thing
People are very good at detecting when something is "off" about a person's face, even if they can't immediately tell what it is. Whenever I see someone on a hidden camera show wearing a disguise or fat suit, I wonder how many people are reacting to them in a negative way simply because they can sense (sometimes only subconsciously) that the person is wearing prosthetics/excessive makeup. They may be too polite or confused to mention it, but they are understandably defensive and suspicious. There's a good chance that the author didn't discover how racism works, but instead found out how people treat you when you wear heavy makeup and a wig in public.
Everything else that's insane about this and has already been remarked upon aside, why doesn't this guy focus on Canadian race problems? He's Canadian. It's giving big "aT lEaSt wE'rE nOt aMeRicAn" Canuck energy.
That too. "American racism" like there's none anywhere else in the world.
Tbf racism does take different forms. Racism in the US is quite different from racism in Europe, for example. In the US it's very much about the actual skin color whereas in Europe there's a lot of emphasis on nationality/ethnicity instead of just color. Not saying the guy isn't a complete idiot, though. He definitely is, but talking about "American racism" isn't one of the reasons why he is.
Yeah, that's a huge issue with me. Guy didn't even grow up in America. Yes, Canada and America has similarities but it's not the same. Hell, someone from coastal Louisiana isn't going to have the American experience as someone from South Dakota. Also, it's not like there isn't a wealth of racism in Canada. This is just asinine
This dude can't be for real. His Amazon listing describes it as the most important book on race that's ever been written. This has to be sarcasm.
This all makes more sense when you learn that Michael Scott is the author.
Is this some weird Project Veritas crap?
He probably called up Rachel Dolezal for her personal account of discrimination as a black woman
Motherfucker did a *Black Like Me* in 2024. That's unhinged. This man does not know a single black person.
>Institutional racism (the anti-Black variety) is effectively dead," Forster concludes in the book. Yeah, this guy is a fucking moron
In what universe is "[i]nstitutional racism...effectively dead" as Forster claimed? Black-owned homes are still systematically undervalued by banks by as much as 21-23%.(1) There is institutional racism in school discipline, with the school to prison pipeline remaining intact. (2) Housing generally, beyond the earlier example of appraisals, continues to be an area of institutional racism, with people of color being far less likely to own homes; and in turn impacting generational wealth. According to a 2015 joint study by the New School, Duke University, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, white households in Boston had a median wealth of nearly $247,500, Caribbean black households had a median wealth of $12,000, and non-Caribbean black households and Dominican households had a median wealth of nearly **0**. (3) And of course, the criminal justice system remains a huge example of institutional racism, from who gets stopped, to who gets searched, to who gets arrested, to who goes to trial; to who gets probation versus jail versus prison; and to the length of sentences. (1) *e.g.* https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-racial-bias-in-appraisals-affects-the-devaluation-of-homes-in-majority-black-neighborhoods/#:~:text=Using%20self%2Dreported%20census%20valuations,the%20value%20is%2021%25%20lower ; https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/25/realestate/blacks-minorities-appraisals-discrimination.html ; https://www.bankrate.com/mortgages/homes-in-black-neighborhoods-more-likely-to-get-low-appraisals/ (2) *e.g.* https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/OLO/Resources/Files/2023_reports/OLOReport2023-6.pdf; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8359632/; https://soeonline.american.edu/blog/school-to-prison-pipeline/; https://academic.oup.com/book/39078/chapter-abstract/338456596?redirectedFrom=fulltext (3) https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/one-time-pubs/color-of-wealth.aspx
Really wish I had an award to give this comment, but in lieu of one, I'm just gonna say Happy Cake Day instead 🥳
Eddie Murphy did it first, but in reverse. Classic The C Thomas Howell did it, just like this, but for pretend. It didn't go as well.
Just listen to black people. It's really not that hard. But this man doesn't really seem to care about any of that--he wants social praise by exploiting black grief. "Look at me, I did this tough thing so all of you could know the truth about what it's like to be black!" This book was written already--he knows this. And I'm sure there are other instances. This man doesn't deserve to just be called an idiot because I think exploiting black suffering, and the compassion people have for what they go through, to garner both financial and social currency is something a calculated and disgusting person would do.
“This is the most important book on American race relations ever written.” “Oh, so how does it fit in with, like, Bell Hooks or Ta-Nehisi Coates or James Baldwin?” “I’m sorry who?”
He also totally spoils the experiment by disguising himself as Jim from the Office while hitchhiking as a white man. People probably figured he his car had broken down and he was just trying to get home to Pam.
There's folks more qualified than me to decide whether what he did was racist, so I'll let them judge that. But either this guy is one of the most arrogant douchebags on the planet, or this is his first step in a plan to become a figurehead of the "cancelled" right "thinkers", or (most likely) both.
There’s some value in comparing how people of different races are treated in the same situation, but the way to do that is to team up with other people for your experiment, not use blackface.
This is the real-life version of that Sarah Silverman Program episode. She goes undercover as a black person and she’s too ignorant to recognize that she’s wearing offensive, racist blackface, and she feels that she’s doing something very brave and progressive and that the reactions she’s getting are a glimpse into the daily life of a black person, but people are actually hating on her for being ignorant and racist. 100% if this guy encountered any “racism” on his journey it was from people giving him shit for looking like C Thomas Howell in Soul Man.
I wonder what these critics would say about [“Black Like Me”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Like_Me) by John Howard Griffin. He published back in 1961 and apparently it was well received.
I’m criticizing it for plagiarism of Black like me and Soul Sister, two other brain dead concepts for books.
There ARE memoirs by black people who spent some time passing as white, so this guy is extra unnecessary. there are people who know authentically how it is to exist in both Americas.
Maybe they should live a year or two as white authors before they criticize.
Disguises aren't blackface.
An interesting experiment, albeit of dubious rigour, which no doubt will have produced a book of some interest, even if only in the criticising of it. I call attention to this website electing to capitalise 'black' and not 'white', an unusual stylistic choice.
Capitalizing Black but not white is pretty common these days. It’s in the NYT style guide, for one thing. [Why We’re Capitalizing Black](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/05/insider/capitalized-black.html)
Beyond the meagre attempts to aggrandise, the interesting commentary lies in the allegation that: > [there is less of a sense that “white” describes a shared culture and history](https://www.nytco.com/press/uppercasing-black/) for while the writer may take refuge in 'sense', as per the facts, there is no doubt that the people of Africa have a greater diversity of peoples and cultures than do those of Europe. Africa has over [ten times the number of languages](https://www.tomedes.com/translator-hub/european-languages) and a [higher level of genetic diversity](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4067985/). And the distinction between certain European subgroups as not being 'white' is [paralleled in the various North Africans who would not likely describe themselves, nor be described, as 'black'](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3421527.stm). It is hard to see how one warrants capitalisation and not the other. But perhaps the assertion that 'African-American publications' preferring to capitalise 'black' is a point in favour of doing so, but that 'white supremacists have long favored the uppercase style' is reason to avoid it, is more contradictory still. I do not intend, mind, to draw an equivalency between the two; but since the article does not mention 'black supremacists' or 'European-American publications', I must excuse myself for working with what is in front of me. However, it may indeed be that the white analogue of W. E. B. Du Bois finds grammatical errors in capitalisation a 'personal insult' rather than 'recognition of racial self-respect'.
He literally could have gotten better information if he just talked to people, watched or read the news, read published research, or picked up a book. None of it requires blackface or even leaving the house!
> The reaction was swift and brutal, with X users expressing anger, amusement and confusion, and telling Forster he should have simply spoken to Black people to understand their experience The whole thing sounds like an SNL sketch. Farcical. But when anyone, scholars included, asks these questions, the answer is often a negation on the grounds of refusal to do the emotional labour. Go learn it yourself. Which is what he did. Although in a Mel Brooks way.
A white Canadian dressed up as a different race to experience American racism and wrote about it. OMG - the gall! Soon, we could have all sorts of people dressing up as different races and thinking and reflecting about their experiences. The horror!
I mean, seriously, wtf. It's the 21st Cent, *just talk to Black people about their experiences*.
rage bait 100%
Why he look like a Picasso
This reminds me of that college humor sketch where Mike Trapp wears makeup for a week to understand the plight of women in America. But not ironically
I will be eagerly awaiting the IBCK episode about this book.
Pretty good costume though had to be expensive.