Frantz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks

“I am black; I am in total fusion with the world, in sympathetic affinity with the earth, losing my ID in the heart of the cosmos -- and the white man, however intelligent he may be, is incapable of understanding Louis Armstrong or songs from the Congo. I am black, not because of a curse, but because my skin has been able to capture all the cosmic effluvia. I am truly a drop of sun under the earth.” NB to reference your quote, even if you do attribute it in your next line. Excellent choice for opening. These are the words of Frantz Fanon, a Martinique-born Afro-French psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary and writer. He is most commonly known for his first book ‘Black Skin, White Masks’ in which he analyses and questions the identity of

That constantly in his othering, he can no longer be amused by the words: “Mama, see the Negro. I’m frightened!” He is reduced to tom-toms, cannibalism, intellectual deficiency, fetichism, racial defects and slave ships concealed under the euphemism that is “ethnicity, culture and history” (1952: 85). He carries the racial burdens and bigotry of his ancestors. Fanon shares his profound displacement when he says:
“Completely dislocated, unable to be abroad with the other, the white man, who unmercifully imprisoned me, I took myself far off from my own presence, far indeed and made myself an object. What else could it be for me but an amputation, an excision, a haemorrhage that splattered my whole body with black blood? But I did not want this revision, this thematization. All I wanted was to be a man among other men. I wanted to come lithe and young into a world that was ours and to help build it together” (1953: 85).
He acknowledges that this is not a struggle of his own, but that of many black men, identified with their enslaved ancestors. On all corners of the earth, they are the face of the inferior: segregated in America; whipped in South America; cut down by machine-guns. In West Africa, he is just another animal. “The Negro is bad, the Negro is mean, the Negro is ugly” (1952: 86). The white world has the negro barred from privilege and

He says: “Conscientization of the masses is seen even by socialist governments as a rival of its own programmes and perspectives.” (Mda, Z. 19). Conscientization refers to a critical consciousness and in-depth understanding of the world, allowing for an elevated perception and exposure to social and political contradictions. It allows for action to be taken against oppressive elements which are illuminated by understanding. Social governments can be viewed as the white man stifling the growth of the other- the progress of the inferior- communities in this particular instance. Similar to the ideas of Fanon, the understanding is that we do not and should not operate as individuals but a representation of the masses, for the