The order of presentation is as follows:
1. Josh Solomon. ..white teenager who changes his skin color to “black” like Griffin.. .travels in the South.
2. Oprah hired two young black men to become “white for a day” in Chicago. . videotape of their experiences.
3. Young white man, Peter Anderson, who went to South Africa, disguised as a black man
4. White woman. Grace, who has gone undercover as a black girl, a Mexican girl, and a Native American
5. 3Oish black man who is a Wall Street lawyer...Harvard educated...tries to get a job as a waiter in Connecticut country clubs. . got one as a busboy. Very intelligent guy who knows what he was doing.
6. White male minister who worked for a year as a black librarian...very short coverage of this one.
This is an empathetic look at racism, just like Griffin’s experience. The methodology isn’t really an experiment, but rather, a Participant Observation...a very popular qualitative method which is, almost by definition, hard to replicate because of the uniqueness of situations. Nevertheless, these are fruitful researches that give insight and reveal patterns which are significant in developing theory about a given subject. Some of the issues you should look for are:
---not being able to “see” the racism from a white perspective. . its constant bombardment
---being treated like a suspect all the time. ..no matter what you wear or what you do or who you are
---the privilege that goes with being white in a white society
---how white people take for granted their own whiteness and what it means psychologically and sociologically
---how internalized the hatred of blackness is. .self-hatred most often not recognized
---how hypocrisy is an integral part of any stereotypical hatred
---the power of the definition of the situation...how men define something to be real and live as if it were and produces consequences for others to live with.
