I remember reading the 1960’s book “Black Like Me”. It was by a white man (reporter), who decided to become black, and travel the American South. He wanted to understand what black people were facing, in their daily lives.
As I recall, he undertook a program of intense ultraviolet irradiation, plus skin dye, and pills, which turned his skin dark.
The end result was that he was able to pass (convincingly), as a black man.
My question-could this be done (today) more easily? Could someone actually change the color of their skin (for several months, at least)?
Or is this still a dangerous thing to do (as I recall, the medicines he used were fairly toxic-long term).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black._White.
That was back in 2006. As a makeup artist, I was THRILLED to find this show, and really wish they had spent more time on the details of the makeup work.
Really excellent job done with the family members, but I thought that the white-to-black transition was a little more believable than the opposite. Being white, I am fully prepared to hear from African Americans that I must be smoking crack to think that, but from years of makeup work, it appears to me that there is much wider range of “acceptable” face shapes, skin and eye tones, skin tones, and hair textures accepted as “black” as long as the person sporting them presents as such. White people are more restrictive about what counts as “white” even if someone claims to be such.
I have to say, I really wish they would do it again, now that we’re in 2011 - we have some really great HD makeup products and application tricks that I think would really make things more believable and possibly quicker.
This sort of thing has been done recently. The journalist Günter Wallraff did it in 2009. He seemed to be able to pass fairly convincingly using just makeup and a wig; no need for dyes and radiation.
Some years ago Josh Solomon did this. You can imagine that with a little darker skin, he’d probably look a little like Obama.
But what I most remember about his experiment in the footage they showed was that he was wearing a flannel shirt, which reminded me of the Susan Smith case, in which she alleged a Black man wearing a flannel shirt kidnapped her kids.
Even in the winter, it’s pretty uncommon to see Blacks wearing flannel in these parts. May not be the case everywhere, but Smith didn’t live that far away from me.
John Howard Griffin, of Black Like Me, was living closely and for extended periods of time among people among people who didn’t know he was disguised. It seems like that would be hard to do with makeup.
According to Wikipedia, he did not suffer any long-term ill effects from the skin-darkening treatments.
I’m sorry, but James Whitmore was really unconvincing in that role.
I agree with this, I look like a younger version of the actor who plays Severus Snape and have a US accent and it astounds me the variety of races, ethnicities, and nationalities I am identified as. I’ve been called hispanic, chinese, syrian, jewish, and everything else.
Even when I identify as white I am not believed, I’ve had people insist my hair must be dyed because it is black(white people don’t have black hair!) etc.
Steve Martin was pretty convincing in “The Jerk.”
What?