While one must admire Tobar's commitment to understanding the totality of the immigrant experience, Tobar's infiltration of this underground economy was certainly not as ground-breaking as when white journalist John Howard Griffin darkened his skin to pass as a black man and understand black culture in the late 1950s and wrote Black Like Me to describe that experience. Griffin literally could have been lynched while disguised as a black man, or killed as a white sympathizer. Tobar did not face those same consequences. In fact, his probably worst consequence would have been to be caught in an INS raid, and he would have been able to provide appropriate documentation to end that problem. Because he was not in actual jeopardy, one must question whether Tobar could really understand the feelings of immigrants who worked in fear of deportation, thus accepting substantially substandard working conditions, every day, and had to do...
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