Name: Black Skin, White Masks
ISBN: 9780802150844

Frantz Fanon

A major influence on civil rights, anti-colonial, and black consciousness movements around the world, Black Skin, White Masks is the unsurpassed study of the black psyche in a white world. Hailed for its scientific analysis and poetic grace when it was first published in 1952, the book remains a vital force today. “[Fanon] demonstrates how insidiously the problem of race, of color, connects with a whole range of words and images.” — Robert Coles, The New York Times Book Review

Black Skin, White Masks

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If the person who speaks to a man of color or an Arab in pidgin does not see that there is a flaw or a defect in his behavior, then he has never paused to reflect. At a personal level, during certain consultations, I have felt myself lapsing.

In the company of this seventy-three-year-old peasant afflicted with senile dementia I suddenly feel I am losing my touch. The very fact of adopting a language suitable for dementia and the mentally retarded, the fact of “leaning over” to address this poor seventy-three-year-old woman, the fact of my reaching down to her for a diagnosis are the signs of a weakening in my relations with other people.

As we have seen, we are not mistaken in thinking that a study of the Antillean’s language can reveal several characteristics of his world. As we said at the beginning, there are mutual supports between language and the community.

To speak a language is to appropriate its world and culture. 

When a black man speaks of Marx, the first reaction is the following: “We educated you and now you are turning against your benefactors. Ungrateful wretches! You’ll always be a disappointment.” And then there’s that sledgehammer argument from the plantation owners in Africa: our enemy is the elementary-school teacher.

It is because the black woman feels inferior that she aspires to gain admittance to the white world. 

A marvelous description that fits perfectly the character of Jean Veneuse, for he tells us:

All it took for me was to come of age and go and serve my adopted motherland in the country of my ancestors to make me wonder whether I hadn’t been betrayed by everything around me, white folk refusing to accept me as one of their own and black folk virtually repudiating me. That is precisely where I stand.

We shall see that another solution is possible. It implies restructuring the world.

He speaks of phenomenology, of psychoanalysis, of human brotherhood, but we would like him to consider these aspects in more concrete terms. All forms of exploitation are alike. They all seek to justify their existence by citing some biblical decree. All forms of exploitation are identical, since they apply to the same “object”: man. By considering the structure of such and such an exploitation from an abstract point of view we are closing our eyes to the fundamentally important problem of restoring man to his rightful place.

Colonial racism is no different from other racisms.

Inferiorization is the native correlative to the European’s feeling of superiority. Let us have the courage to say: It is the racist who creates the inferiorized.

With this conclusion we agree with Sartre: “The Jew is one whom other men consider a Jew: that is the simple truth from which we must start. . . . It is the anti-Semite who makes the Jew.

Every time there was a rebellion, the military authorities sent only the colored soldiers to the front line. It is the “peoples of color” who annihilated the attempts at liberation by other “peoples of color,” proof that there were no grounds for universalizing the process: if those good-for-nothings, the Arabs, got it into their heads to rebel, it was not in the name of reputable principles, but quite simply to get their “towelhead” unconscious out of their system.

It was my philosophy teacher from the Antilles who reminded me one day: “When you hear someone insulting the Jews, pay attention; he is talking about you.” And I believed at the time he was universally right, meaning that I was responsible in my body and soul for the fate reserved for my brother. Since then, I have understood that what he meant quite simply was that the anti-Semite is inevitably a negrophobe. 

For us the body is not in opposition to what you call the soul. We are in the world. And long live the bond between Man and the Earth! Moreover, our writers have helped me to convince you that your white civilization lacks a wealth of subtleness and sensitivity. 

I embrace the world! I am the world! The white man has never understood this magical substitution. The white man wants the world; he wants it for himself. He discovers he is the predestined master of the world. He enslaves it. His relationship with the world is one of appropriation. 

They’ll tell us it’s not that important, precisely because they haven’t given any thought to the role of these comics. Here is what G. Legman says of them:

With only very rare exceptions, the average American child who was six in 1938 has now seen at least eighteen thousand scenes of violent torture and bloody violence. The Americans are the only modern nation, except for the Boers, in living memory who have totally eliminated the native population from the territory where they have settled.6 Only America, then, could have the need to appease the national conscience by forging the myth of the “Bad Injun” so as to later introduce the historical figure of the noble Redskin unsuccessfully defending his territory against the invaders armed with Bibles and rifles; the punishment we deserve can be averted only by denying responsibility for the wrong and throwing the blame on the victim: by proving—at least in our own eyes—that striking the first and only blow we are simply acting in legitimate defense.

It was only with Aimé Césaire that we witnessed the birth and acceptance of negritude and its demands. The most visible proof of this is the impression the young generations of students get when they arrive in Paris: it takes a few weeks for them to realize that their contact with Europe compels them to face a number of problems which up till then had never crossed their mind. And yet these problems were not exactly invisible.

Quite simply that when Blacks make contact with the white world a certain sensitizing action takes place. If the psychic structure is fragile, we observe a collapse of the ego. The black man stops behaving as an actional person. His actions are destined for “the Other” (in the guise of the white man), since only “the Other” can enhance his status and give him self-esteem at the ethical level. 

Jung locates the collective unconscious in the inherited cerebral matter. But there is no need to resort to the genes; the collective unconscious is quite simply the repository of prejudices, myths, and collective attitudes of a particular group.

This is why Jung is an innovator: he wants to reach out to the childhood of the world. But he makes a big mistake: he reaches out only to the childhood of Europe.

Jung regularly assimilates the outsider with darkness and baser instincts. He is quite right. This mechanism of projection or, if you prefer, transitivity, has been described in conventional psychoanalysis. Whenever I discover something out of the ordinary, something reprehensible in me, I have no other alternative but to get rid of it and attribute its paternity to someone else. Thereby I put an end to a circuit of high tension that threatened to compromise my equilibrium. 

The collective unconscious is not governed by cerebral heredity: it is the consequence of what I shall call an impulsive cultural imposition. It is not surprising, then, that when an Antillean is subjected to waking-dream therapy he relives the same fantasies as the European. The fact is that the Antillean has the same collective unconscious as the European.

If it is a group of intellectuals, rest assured the black man will try to assert himself. He is asking them to pay attention not to the color of his skin, but to his intellectual powers. Many twenty-or thirty-year-olds in Martinique go to work on Montesquieu or Claudel for the sole purpose of being able to quote him. The reason is that they hope their blackness will be forgotten if they become experts on such writers.

Insightful read. Not modern, and its insights are particularly useful to its time and age. Some references went over my head and not all of what is discussed is applicable today. However, it ultimately does carry a lot of useful, foundational information and perspective for understanding social relations through the lens of race. Good read for anyone looking to delve further in this domain (and this book’s particular writing context).

Kay so Queso

I enjoyed this it was a quick read, I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite of he’s work 

Fanon work on the psychological effects on racism on racial relations between black and white people

I won’t lie the homophobia and misogyny threw me off

When a bachelor of philosophy from the Antilles refuses to apply for certification as a teacher on the ground of his color, I say that philosophy has never saved anyone. When someone else strives and strains to prove to me that black men are as intelligent as white men, I say that intelligence has never saved anyone; and that is true, for, if philosophy and intelligence are invoked to proclaim the equality of men, they have also been employed to justify the extermination of men.

Marion

I enjoyed this it was a quick read, I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite of he’s work 

Fanon work on the psychological effects on racism on racial relations between black and white people

I won’t lie the homophobia and misogyny threw me off

Favorite quote

“When a bachelor of philosophy from the Antilles refuses to apply for certification as a teacher on the ground of his color, I say that philosophy has never saved anyone. When someone else strives and strains to prove to me that black men are as intelligent as white men, I say that intelligence has never saved anyone; and that is true, for, if philosophy and intelligence are invoked to proclaim the equality of men, they have also been employed to justify the extermination of men.”

Winona 

A mostly excellent analysis of race relations, how racism distorts both colonized and colonizer, how racism fosters depersonalisation within Black men. However, it largely ignores Black women, and at one point it even actively reviles them. Fanon seemed to see Black women in terms of their relations with other men -- as an appendix to Black men's masculinity, in many ways. This definitely hampered my experience of the book, whilst also weakening his wider political theory.

solitones

Ciara Renaud

Mikre 

Martha F.

yasi

Amelia Lang 

akira

Kristina

Ezra Alie

An updated translation of the author's seminal work on black identity and race theory offers insight into its influence on civil rights, anti-colonial, and black consciousness movements throughout the world. Original.

Eva Talmadge

Lindsay Cronk

Few modern voices have had as profound an impact as Frantz Fanon. A major influence on civil rights, anti-colonial, and black consciousness movements around the world, Black Skin, White Masks is an unsurpassed study of the black psyche in a white world. Hailed for its scientific analysis and poetic grace when it was first published in 1952, it established Fanon as a revolutionary thinker and remains just as relevant and powerful today.

Black Skin, White Masks

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