Black Skin, White Masks is psychologist Frantz Fanon’s analysis of the BlackSkinWhiteMaskspsychological pathologies produced by colonialism, in the West in general and in the French Antilles, in particular. Fanon’s main thesis is that colonialism and racism corrupt the psyche of both blacks and whites, albeit in different ways: “the Negro enslaved by his inferiority [and] the white man enslaved by his superiority alike behave in accordance with a neurotic orientation.”

An essential analysis of the psychosocial nature of blackness in the context of colonialism. Fanon is perhaps only hampered by his reliance on case studies representing the extremes of psychological conditions to explain and justify his more universal arguments about reactions to blackness. However, the phenomenological nature of the book allows for narrative to lend powerful support to the central thesis of double consciousness and tension that exists in the world he inhabits. It is impossible to ignore the lived experience of the Antillean as presented by Fanon. It calls us to challenge our perceptions, recognize our failings, and most importantly to allow a dialectical process to reimagine our relation to the other. ( )

Fanon, nascido na Martinica e educado na França, é geralmente considerado o principal pensador anticolonial do século XX. Seu primeiro livro é uma análise do impacto da subjugação colonial na psique negra. É um relato muito pessoal da experiência de Fanon sendo negro: como homem, intelectual e partidário de uma educação francesa.--Adaptado de wikipedia.org. ( )

I really enjoyed Fanon’s psychoanalytical take on racism and postcolonialism, even though it did sometimes delve into the problematic. One shocking passage was when Fanon shares how contemporaneous scientific theory postulated that “the black man is inherently inferior…[because he is] the missing link between ape and man” (13). I had forgotten how emerging Darwinian science attempted to justify white superiority and authority by using evolution to explain racial differences (and conveniently always elevating the White to the superior evolutionary pedestal). In spite of Fanon’s problematic moments, which we can perhaps forgive/understand him for due to his historical time period’s beliefs, Fanon’s analysis of how Black people have internalized racism as a defense mechanism is an interesting psychological approach to racism. In addition to the external suffering racism causes, we often forget how racism becomes internalized by both Whites and Blacks, and while White people can successfully navigate a society biased toward their skin color, Black people must navigate both the explicit and implicit racial bias and their mind’s desire to put on a “white mask” and thus allow that racist society’s structure to continue (4). I think this is why Kehinde Andrews in his book "Back to Black" so strongly urges for a complete revolutionary response to Western imperialist systems: not only will a revolutionary change of Western societies stop racist systems, but it will also to protect the physical and mental health of Blacks in the Diaspora, especially since the system not only attacks Black bodies (i.e. police brutality) but also Black minds (i.e. through internalizing racism).

I've often heard that Black Americans feel that they have to “act white” around White people in business settings so that they will be more respected (i.e. respected in a white-dominated community that views “whiteness” as respectability). This line of thinking connects to Fanon’s point that the fracturing of black identity “is a direct consequence of the colonial undertaking” (1) and that we must “liberate the black man from himself” (xii). I think this liberation involves “endlessly creating yourself” as Fanon concludes (204). He desires that “the subjugation of man by man—that is to say, of me by another—cease. May I be allowed to discover and desire man wherever he may be” (206). I think, for Fanon, if Black people “endlessly create” themselves, they are actively fighting the racist society that attempts to conform them into whiteness and force Black people to wear a white mask. Fanon explains, “It is through self-consciousness and renunciation, through a permanent tension of his freedom, that man can create the ideal conditions of existence” (206). I think Fanon advocates for self-actualization, and this self-actualization involves Black people embracing (and perhaps even celebrating, as Aimé Césaire does in the Négritude movement) their blackness and seeing it as a part of their identities, while also developing all other aspects of their identities. I agree with Fanon that the first step in resisting a racist society is freeing one’s self from society’s racist shackles through self-realization, which I interpret to be “endlessly creating yourself.” However, I think Andrews corrects and extends Fanon’s argument: while Fanon does not explicitly advocate for a revolutionary change in Western systems, Andrews underscores that one must radically overthrow a racist society if that society’s foundations are also racist…there is no way to resuscitate this broken system. ( )

Black Skin, White Masks offers an acute analysis of the formation of black identity in a white world. The central phenomenon Fanon attempts to scrutinise is: how the Martiniquan society (and by extension every colonised peoples) has come to abhor anything relating to its identity (e.g. skin color and language) as a result of the hegemony embodied by the 'western values' that demonised the 'other', i.e the colonised. In this regard, while "white" would be equivalent to morality, rationality, goodness and civilisation, "black" would symbolise evil, nature, savagery and the supernatural.
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