Frantz Fanon-Black Skin White Masks-Notes

Goal-Thesis. Colonialism and anti-black racism has negative psychological effects on the
black and by extension African American individual.

I shall say the black man is not a man. There is a zone of nonbeing, an extraordinary sterile
and arid region, an incline stripped bare of every essential from which a genuine new
departure can emerge. In most cases, the black man cannot take advantage of this descent
into veritable hell. PPVIII

Blacks are men who are black: in other words, owing to a series of affective disorders they
have settled into a universie form which we have to extricate them. PPVIII

The black man wants to be white. The white man is desperately trying to achieve the rank
of man. However, the black man is trapped in his blackness. PPIX-X

Whites consider themselves superior to blacks, and some blacks want to prove at all costs
the wealth of a black man’s intellect and equal intelligence. PPX

There is one destiny for the black man and it is white. PPX

This analysis is psyhchologocial. The inferiority complex can be ascribed to a double

process. First economic, and second internalisation of this inferiority. ppx

Fanon says genuine disalienation can only be achieved when things in the most material
sense have achieved their rightful place. ppx

White civilisation and European culture have imposed and existential deviation on he black
man. Furthermore the black soul is a construction by white folk. XIV

The black man posseses two dimensions: one with his fellow blacks and the other with the
whites. A black man behaves differently with a white man than he does with another black
man. PP21

The whiter the black man gets the closer he comes to becoming a true human being. Fanon
explains by stating that all colonized people in other words, people whom an inferioty
complex has taken root, whose locl cultural originality has been commited to the grave-
positin themselves to in relation to the civilising language, i.e. the metroplitcan culture. The
more colonised has assimilated the cultral values of the metropolis, the more he will have
esaceped the bush. The more he rejects his blackness and the bush, the whiter he will
become. PP2

He further comments on the consequences on the psychology of the black person in a

colonial context; we said rather quickly that the black man feels inferior. The truth is that he
is made to feel inferior. The young Antillean is a Frenchman required to live every moment fo
his life with his white compatriots. The Anitelliean family, however, has no ties with the
French or European national structure. The Antillean, then has to choose between his family
and European society; in other words, the individual who climbs up into white, civilised
society tends to reject his black uncivilised family at the level of the imagination.pp 127

The black man is unaware of it as long as he lives among his own people; but at the first
white gaze, he feels the weight fo his melanin. PP128

The black is A “phobogenic” object provoking anxiety. PP129

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
mans stops behavinf as an actional person. His actions are destined for “the other” in the
gaze of the white man. Since only the other can enhance his status and give him self-esteem
at the ethical elvel. But there is something else. The black man arouses fear and repulsion.
PP129

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
mans stops behaving like an actual person. His actions are destined for the other ie the
white man. Since only the other can enhance his status and give him self-esteem at the
ethical level. PP132

Since I realize that the black man is the symbol of sin, I start hating the black man. But I
realize that I am the black man I have two ways of escaping the problem. Either I ask people
not to pay attention to the colour of my skin; or else the contrary. I want people to notice it.
I then try to esteem what is bad, since, without thinking, I admitted the black man was the
colour of evil. In order to put an end to this nuerotic situation where I am forced to choose
an unhealthy, conflictual solution, nurtured with fantasies, that is antagonistic and inhuman
in short. Pp174

The black problem is not just about blacks living among white, but about the black man
exploited, enslaved, and despised by a colonialist and capitalist society that happens to be
white. Pp178

In the united states the black man fights and is fought against pp196