Amongst Color (Black Like Me Response)

I heard my voice, as though it belonged to someone else "...why are you crying?" Hollow, in the empty room. As they say so many times, "It's just not right." "What sickness has taken them?" I turned away from the mirror, my revulsion turned to grief my own people could give the hate stare could whither mans souls- a half a dozen film negatives each negative was blank- masterpieces of human ingenuity, wasted. Music from the jukebox, fragile and high pitched, above the other noise. I didn't want to leave the room and go back, back into the mainstream of hell The negatives... I attempted to write anything to escape the death dance out there in the Mississippi night; It was maddening. I tried to write my wife but she did not belong to this life nothing to do with the African American who I had changed into. I started my letter "My darling,..." The observing self saw the ***** writing to a white woman. The visual barrier imposed itself. The change of my skin color would not allow me to go on I began to understand Lionel Trillings remarks that culture learned behavior patterns so deeply engraved is a prison. a/n: the above was written in a response to the book Black Like Me which we are reading in class, about a white man who tans his skin to look black to discover what life is really like for the african american in the south.