Black Skin, White Masks Blog Post

Jummy Ha,

After reading Black Skin, White Masks, the part that I am invested in most are first the use of pidgin language toward the ‘other’–the inferior blacks, and second, the mulatto. The idea of making language simpler and blunt not only creates the inferiority complex, it also emphasizes that black society is primal, with simpler animalistic morals. Fanon talks about a priests remark of pidgin language and how “knowing how to talk to them, [is] the key” (Fanon 4). The degraded language suggests even childlike qualities. i also couldn’t help being reminded of the masks ‘white men’ professor Hendricks was lecturing about. Her term of white neurosis suggests while black men are slaves to their inferiority, so are the white men to their superiority. I also want to raise the term mulatto because I think it would explore the idea of masks further–especially in chapters 2 and 3 of the book. Because of this I am curious to know how white is white. Fanon stresses: the black women being with the white man and the black man with the white women. To me, as Fanon compares Black life to Jew life quite often, I’d like to know when, and if ever this purity will be satiated. How white must the black me to go unnoticed? How white must he/she be for the world of white men? From speaking historically, compared to Germany, where a quarter Jew under the Nuremberg laws was questionable. But does it really matter? Because a Jew was a Jew if it came from a Nazi. I believe that this would apply to the white-black relationship Fanon speaks about.