White Canadian Man Ripped By Twitter For Donning Blackface To Write American Racism Book

A man browses through books at the Cecil H. Green on the Stanford University Campus December 17, 2004 in Stanford, California. Google, the internet search engine, has announced a long-term project to put 15 million books from seven of the world’s most prestigious libraries online and make them searchable. Included will be the libraries of Harvard, Stanford, the University of Michigan, the New York Public Library and the University of Oxford, including the Bodleian. Books and periodicals will be scanned and project is expected to take six years and cost more than $100 million.

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A white Canadian man has admitted to using Blackface to write about American racism. And no, Rick Ross, we’re not referencing Drake. Good one, though.

No, we’re talking about Sam Forster, the white journalist in question, who took to X/Twitter to promote his new book called Seven Shoulders: Taxonomizing Racism in Modern America. In his promotional xweet, Forster briefly detailed the background behind his new book and what he did to conceive the literature while also giving out a release date.

“Last summer, I disguised myself as a Black man and traveled throughout the United States to document how racism persists in American society,” he typed. “Writing Seven Shoulders was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done as a journalist. It’s out on May 30th.”

No other detail was given regarding Forster’s “disguise.”

Last summer, I disguised myself as a Black man and traveled throughout the United States to document how racism persists in American society.

Writing Seven Shoulders was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done as a journalist.

It’s out on May 30th:https://t.co/jK2kvIPh1H pic.twitter.com/TE8mEfOiHi

— Sam Forster (@ForsterSam) May 28, 2024

A deeper inspection found that the book appears to be self-published, with a paperback version arriving on Thursday (May 30). The book also carries a self-published synopsis from the Canadian man on Amazon, which shamelessly describes the book as “the most important book on American race relations that has ever been written.”

However, X/Twitter didn’t let Mr. Sam Forster off that easily, as several people called him out for his Black man “disguise.” Some accounts immediately shamed the journalist for choosing not to interview actual Black Americans about their experiences. “You could have spoken with Black Americans… I have serious questions as to WHY and HOW you disguised yourself as a Black American to write this book!” one account said. “You’re a journalist. You could have just interviewed some Black Americans. This is wild especially considering some other white dude already did this and there’s no way your book is the most important book ever written on race relations. That’s a comical statement,” another shot back.

Other people opted to respond to Forster’s admission with comedy to digest his claims of transforming into a Black man, with one person joking, “He did a black face across America tour.” Another quip hilariously thanked the white man for not wanting to write about mass murderers. “Thank God you didn’t want to document the journey of a mass murderer,” they typed. “Don’t journalists usually interview real people with real lives? Why would you think faking being black would be remotely similar to the real experiences of real black people? Very odd.”

Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time a white person “disguised” themselves as a Black person to experience racism. A white man named John Howard Griffin wrote a book called Black Like Me, which was published in 1961. The book explored Griffin’s journey through the Deep South during a time when African Americans were targeted and greatly mistreated for the color of their skin under the tortuous confines of racial segregation in the Jim Crow era.

Griffin stated that he temporarily darkened his skin and embarked on a six-week tour through Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, and Georgia. The book’s point was to explore American life through the eyes of “the other side” and literally take a walk in the shoes of a Black person for more perspective. During his time, Griffin took note of his experiences and interactions with white and Black people throughout the South.

It’s like actual BLACK PEOPLE haven’t made this point numerous times themselves…but you went ahead and put on the ‘blackface’ to ‘help’ us.

Real ‘Black Like Me’ face ass clown. I’ll never read this because it has already been done and it was tasteless back then. https://t.co/plLNs6LrjM pic.twitter.com/3btrpwc6SX

— Rusty Redenbacher (@rustymk2) May 28, 2024

“I need to tell the story of being a black man in America. I can do it best because I’m a white guy.”

— Magills (@magills_) May 28, 2024

There’s no way that you believe that you could experience the full spectrum of racism without also having been condition by the systemic nature of it. It’s not just that we LIVE IT, we are conditioned to live in it, with it, accept it, etc. Your conclusion has to be that simply…

— Butter Queen (@lawgurrl) May 28, 2024

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