How we cite our quotes: (Entry. Paragraph)
Quote #4
"Why, I just started reading that. My lawyer friend lent it to me," he said. He gazed at me and I had no doubt he thought I was either a tremendous liar for claiming authorship of a white man's book or that I was confessing something to him.
"I promise you I wrote it," I said. "I can't tell you more, but read the book, and the piece in last September's Reader's Digest and you'll know who I really am." (8.168)
For all his talk about fully becoming a black person, we can see what Griffin really thinks about his identity. His identity as a white person is who he really is, according to what he tells this guy he meets at a YMCA Café.
Quote #5
For an instant I imagined the expression on some police officer's face as he looked at my black body and read my identification papers: JOHN HOWARD GRIFFIN MANSFIELD, TEXAS Weight: 196 Hair: Brown Race: White Sex: Male Height: 6" Would he think I had merely stolen the papers from some white man? (8.199)
We kind of like this idea, that your identity is just a bunch of numbers and facts written on a piece of paper. But even here, it's kind of problematic. His body and his papers don't match. So which one is telling the truth?
Quote #6
"I'm not pure Negro," he said proudly. "My mother was French, my father Indian." "I see…" "She was Portuguese, my mother -- a lovely woman," Christophe sighed. "I see…" The man across the aisle smiled broadly at the obvious admission of a lie from Christophe. I gave him a warning glance and he did not challenge our friend's French-Portuguese-Indian background. (10.111)
Earlier on in the book, Griffin hears about self-hating black people. Christophe is the self-hating black person incarnate. The cool thing about him is that he makes up his own identity as he goes along. The not-so-cool thing? It's a lie that tries to make him whiter than he is.