Focused principally on the 20th and 21st centuries, this course will study the legacies and implications of the massive migration, forced and otherwise, from the African continent to the Caribbean, Latin America, and North America. Topics will range from the creation of racial categories in the contexts of slavery and colonialism to the making of transnational and transracial families to the recent cultural politics of “blackness” with emphasis on the ways that different kinds of archives produce multiple and often conflicting narratives. Students will produce as well as consume history. In addition to scholarly monographs and articles, course material will include film, sound, and fiction.
I’m very excited to be teaching this course, and looking forward to working with you all semester. Please take a moment to familiarize yourself with the website and read the syllabus. We will use this site extensively for announcements, postings, and virtual conversations. You should feel free to treat it as your own, and post links, images, videos, or anything else of interest to the class.
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Written more than thirty years apart, Black Skin, White Masks and Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza both wrestle with what is means to be opposite to white society through the lens of a black man and a queer Latinx woman. What struck me in both readings was the use of the word bleach.
In Black Skin, White Masks Fanon describes Mayotte who loves a white man and sees her as demanding nothing “except a bit of whiteness in her life.” Fanon continues to say “since she could no longer try to blacken, to negrify the world, she was going to try, in her own body and in her own mind, to bleach it.” He describes her motives as whiteness at any price to win admittance to the white world. Bleach is used to remove identity to fit it. Through this example, Fanon shows how cultural assimilation is racist because colonial subjects needed to forfeit their own culture to take on a colonial identity.
In Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza Gloria Anzaldua writes “We count the days the weeks the year the centuries the eons until the white laws and commerce and customs will rot in the deserts they’ve created, lie bleached… yet we, the mestizas will remain.” Anzaldua uses the term bleached to empower mestiza identity and show that a white, bleached identity leads nowhere and to an ultimate end. Anzaldua continues to express resistance to assimilation when she says “I seek an exoneration, a seeing through the fictions of white supremacy, a seeing of ourselves in our true guises and not as the false racial personality that has been given to us and that we have given to ourselves.”
Together, these two texts and these two uses of the word bleach show the psychology of the different paths non-white people have within a white-dominated society. What do you think of these two uses of the word bleach in these two texts? How do you see understandings of assimilation and resistance in the two pieces?
Hi Rachel, I also found it interesting how Fanon and Anzaldua began their pieces describing how there was a strong sense that assimilation was a necessary or worse, destined, path for ascendency or admittance into anglo-male dominated culture. This idea that “bleaching” was a possible solvent to racism. How colored bodies and accented tongues could escape an imposed foreign judgment of “inferiority” by “bleaching” or ridding oneself of an accent or blackness.
To answer your question, how I understood resistance in these two pieces was how for both authors, resistance is achieved in steps. They wrote how individuals have first, take a psychological step of self-acceptance prior to the collective social step of anglo-suspicion.
The first step of resistance would be to escape what authors described as psychic or psychological alienation. From what I recall, what really prompted Anzaldua was from seeing “tex-mex” and “chicano” literature. Published pieces she identified with and could use to legitimize her tongue. The literature also stood as evidence of public existence of these dialects, empowering her use of the language as well, as we’ve experienced reading her piece. The second step of resistance is to actively suspect anglo dominance. I found Fanon encouraging suspicion of anglos in a way that was not outrightly evident. Fanon tells stories about women who were disgusted by their blackness and Anzaldua tells stories about being ashamed of Chicano tongue. Both authors suggest to their audience to be suspicious of self disgust and shame. They suggest avoiding neurotic behaviour that would lead to self-imposed cultural surveillance or as they’d say, assimilation.
Borderlands/La Frontera:
This was my main focus, although the jumping between languages was a bit tough I appreciated some parts and at the same time others not so much. One of my favourite lines is “So, if you want to really hurt me, talk badly about my language. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity-I am my language.” This was very powerful, as I had never really thought about this, taking a step back and think about a lot, I felt a great sadness for not appreciating the language throughout the story rather than being frustrated it was not all in English I need to see the beauty in it. In class we gave a lot of adjectives to describe race, but I don’t believe language was one, and I know we are talking about more than just race in this argument, Gloria Anzaldúa talks about culture and identity, but I would argue that it can all be brought back to race and how people identify themselves. As we continue to read through on pages 106 and 107 there are a couple of paragraphs that I do not agree with, for example when Gloria Anzaldúa says “Many women and men of colour do not want to have dealings with white people” I believe this is the same argument Gloria Anzaldúa is trying to argue against. Not dealing with, and trying to not appreciate other cultures is what Gloria Anzaldúa would like to change she wants to see change and acceptance.
Both Fanon and Anzaldua examine a space between the polarization between Whiteness and Blackness. Fanon mentions this while discussing the “psychoexistential complex between black and white races,” and through analyzing, “hope[s] to destroy it” (12). He goes on to assert that “white and black represent the two poles of a world, two poles in perpetual conflict,”, which further probes into the societal (mis)conception that race exists within these binary oppositions, and acts to separate and divide (Fanon 44). He critiques the attitude that whiteness equates “beauty and virtue, which has never been black” (45). This shows how Whiteness has been constructed in opposition from being Black, and used as a self-identification for Whiteness through the negation of being Black. Fanon is able to highlight how this false dichotomy of Whiteness/Blackness is set up, and showcase how certain qualities are ascribed to said races, and are viewed as inherent.
Anzaldua examines this space by also rejecting a system of binary system oppositions to analyze her experience as a Chicana lesbian woman – rather, she positions her theory of mestiza consciousness to work as a breakdown [of] the subject-object duality. She provides the example of “switch[ing] back and forth from English to Spanish in the same sentence or in the same word,” which illustrates the duality of identity (Anzaldua 78). This sort of “synergy of two cultures,” as she puts it, would not be able to exist in a traditional binary opposition of Whiteness/Blackness (85). Anzaldúa asserts that we must reconcile the “split between” the multiple identities of ourselves, which she equates to standing on two opposite sides of a river bank. Thus, we must either exist on both shores at once, or “decide to disengage from the dominant culture, write it off altogether as a lost cause, and cross the border into a wholly new and separate territory” (Anzaldua).
Both Fanon and Anzaldua engage with and critique the construction of this binary opposition. Perhaps resistance, then, comes from breaking apart, unpacking, and/or opting out of this narrative completely. The importance of language, of hybridity of culture, and the need to recognize, legitimize and make space for dialogue around these issues is imperative. But what do you folks thing? What are some ways practical ways to do this?
Hi Missy Martin! Thank you for sharing your ideas with the class. I also agree with you that both Fanon and Anzaldua critique on the perceived polarization of whiteness and blackness. I will try to unpack your question of practical ways of embracing hybridity, fluidity, and the spatial concept of race. I believe it is crucial to have writers like Anzaldua that writes in a way that embraces the fluidity of cultures and dismantles the perceived notion of oppositional race and culture. In other words, it is by having more scholars who are in this hybrid of cultures who can speak of their multiple intersecting identities and their unique experiences.
I contend that linguistic identity is powerful in the sense that it has the power to bridge between races and identities. Thus, authors like Anzaldua who writes and speaks in pidgin language demonstrates resistance and their unique identity and experience of having multiple identities. The intersection of cultural values and the synergy of two cultures have the power to dismantle the perceived need of fixity, borders, and categorization. In history there is a tendency to over-simply the past, but with scholars like Fanon and Anzaldua, they have the power to cast a unique positionality that demonstrates the struggle and fluidity of identities in the past and present.
I see both Fanon and Anzaldua’s work as pieces that refuses to be co-opted to categorization that is not theirs, and to embrace the beauty of fluidity and mixture. For example, Fanon’s idea of the “mulatto’s experience” of constantly struggling with their identities of never truly being fully white or fully black demonstrates the complexity of black history. It becomes problematic when the mulatto internalizes the notion that marrying a white partner will save him/her “from the class of slaves to that of masters” whereas, contrary to that marrying someone black is seen as unspeakable because one is perceived as downgrading from their half-white identity (1987, pg. 58). This internalization in many ways demonstrate the oppression and the racism that is forced on the black person or the mullato to believe that to escape this experience is to become white which equates power and privilege.
My main focus and interest were cast on the first chapter of Black Skin, White Mask, where Frantz Fanon focused on the discourse of the impact of racial prejudices and stereotypes had on the way people perceived an individual’s ability of diction. It is interesting to see how much resentment that people who speak Antillean creole would receive, even when the language itself was French based. But on the other hand, just like how Fanon compared a black man as a being situated somewhere between an ape and a man, the creole language is perceived to be something closer to the so called “bad” French. Fanon also discussed about how the white men tend to approach the black men with certain pidgin calls, that automatically put emphasis on their inferiority and inability to comprehend the white man’s language. By speaking to black men or an Arab with ultimate contempt and condescendence, or completely disregard the fact that they had civilizations of their own.
Fanon’s argument about the fact that foreigners of non-colour backgrounds are treated with respect and consideration to their own culture and language, while people generally assumed that the coloured people had no civilization or any sort of historical past and therefore had to accept the fabric of story that the white men had portrayed for them. Whether it was in films or literature, coloured people who excelled in them were regarded to be closer to the possibility of becoming a white man. Fanon even mentioned his experience of being called a white man when he presented his expertise in European poetry. This reminds me of the fact that Asians are often presumed to be more capable in the fields of science or mathematics, when people like me who studies history and political science, we could be called “white washed”. In the past , I was always confused with the term, of what exactly constituted being “white washed”. Do Asians all have to be genius in physics or geometry, while knowing nothing about the American civil war or the Roman Gods? What are the fine lines that blocked individuals of certain race from studying culture of another race? Or is it because of the lack of knowledge one knows about the other race’s culture and civilization, lead them to assume that the others have no culture or civilization similar to their own? The answers to those questions may well come from the fact that the white men has not yet solved the racial myth and singled themselves out of the discourse.
In Black Skin, White Masks, author Frantz Fanon examines the psychology of racism. The book breaks down both the minds of blacks and whites by depicting how each race reacts during certain social circumstances. For example, in his second chapter, Fanon discusses the relationship between women of color and white men, and in chapter three, Fanon discusses the relationship between men of color and white women. In these two chapters, he is dealing with the modern colored man; portraying their attitudes and relationships towards the white world. Both psychiatric perspectives, given by Fanon, are very intriguing and eye opening to the deeper meaning behind interracial relationships during this time period. Fanon gives us an understanding to what is going through the minds of both races in their attractiveness to other race—why colored women seek white men and why men of color seek white women—whether this love is authentic. Do colored women wish to marry white men for love or for race? This is questioned when we hear Mayotte say: “I loved him because he had blue eyes, blond hair, and a light skin.” (43) Fanon makes us question the reasons why colored women seek white men—is this because they wish to be white (is it about race) or is it actual love? For example, in chapter three, Fanon opens the chapter with this quote: “I wish to be acknowledged not as black but as white… who but a white can do this for me? By loving me she proves that I am worthy of white love. I am loved like a white man.” (63) Essentially Fanon is saying that if colored men could be loved by a white women than in their eyes they are the same as a white man. There was this idea that being loved by the opposite race would give colored people some certainty that they were equal to whites. Fanon questions these intentions to be with another race for these reasons and not for love. Fanon’s book, and him being a psychiatrist, makes it very challenging to decipher exact meaning of his text and his perception on the psychology of racism.
Both Fanon and Anzaldua explore the corrupting effects of assimilation in their work. The idea of control stood out very strongly to me when reading these pieces – Anzaldua discusses resisting control and assimilation, while Fanon examines the internalization of that control through his descriptions of Mayotte Capécia. One of the things that really struck me in Anzaldua’s piece is how closely language is linked to identity. What I found interesting about that discussion was the mention of the term “agringado/a”; a foreigner or anglicized person. Anzaldua claims that she has been caught in a double bind many times in regards to language. She and fellow Chicanx use English as a neutral language, but fear that they will be seen as agringados by their peers. Anzaldua writes “If a person, Chicana or Latina, has a low estimation of my native language, she also has a low estimation of me”. Identity and self-worth is so clearly linked not only to one’s language but the context in which they use their language. For Anzaldua, her Chicano Spanish is seen as a mutilation, while her accented English is seen as inadequate and a barrier to success. The policy of assimilation is being forced upon her, but it is also being made unachievable.
Fanon makes mention of a similar kind of assimilation taking place with Mayotte Capécia. Unlike Anzaldua, she does not question the psychological processes that have been undertaken in order to convince her of her own inferiority, an inferiority that Fanon claims has been internalized in a number of ways. If Anzaldua is discussing resistance to assimilation and control, then Fanon is looking at the other end of the spectrum by examining a subject who has accepted assimilation. Approaching it from a psychoanalytical standpoint, Fanon outlines how being white has come to mean prosperity, wealth and opportunity, while being black has meant that one must constantly aspire to “a form of assimilation that consists of magically turning white”. Mayotte appears to love André for his whiteness, and this represents a path to happiness and stability, while the idea of marrying a black man is unthinkable for Mayotte and many other Martinican women. Both Mayotte and Anzaldua exist in male-dominated racialized cultures, but they respond to these cultures in vastly different ways. Mayotte is complicit in colluding with a culture that seeks to control her, while Anzaldua consistently resists the process of assimilation, carving out her own identity.
The harmful effects of assimilation and the role of control, with regard to Black Skin, White Masks, stood out to me as well. You bring up the case in chapter two of Mayotte Capécia and her internalization of inferiority. In that same chapter this idea of control and the forces that cause the internalization of inferiority come up again with the concept of “a wide grin,” which is explained in footnote seven (p. 32). Fanon reiterates a story in which a black man gives a large smile and a submissive reply in response to the question, “What do you want most in this world?” The description of the black man’s smile is explained in the footnote as being an example of the demands that white people exert over black people. It is a way of forcing black people to internalize a stance of inferiority by thrusting various portrayals of a master-slave dynamic onto them and into society. The smile is not only kind and courteous, it is a gift and it is expected. The footnote explains that black people are kept in such boxes by force and fear. Through this footnote Fanon further delves into the role played by control and how different modes of depiction or imagery force the internalization of inferiority.
This idea comes up again in chapter three (p. 53) when Fanon refers to the stories of Uncle Remus. Fanon notes that the tales are, “All told by a jovial, easy-going, laughing Negro, the ingratiating, grinning Negro,” (p. 53). The image of the grin again appears as a device for oppression and a means for white people to demand submissive, pleasant behaviour from black people. In the last class before break we were discussing the crows in the movie “Dumbo” and what was wrong with them as representations of black men (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzhDbAiWRRs). In class we discussed how the portrayal is not superficially negative, but we still find it problematic. Fanon’s argument about “a wide grin” and the stories of Uncle Remus show that although the crows come across as quick-witted and well-humoured, the deeper, and troublesome aspect of this depiction is that it promotes control and force by perpetuating the archetype of the helpful, attentive, and grinning black man. All of these depictions define black people in terms of service and their relation to white people. They ignore the realities of human interaction, while furthering narratives that force the internalization of inferiority onto black people.
Both Fanon and Anzaldua draw attention to the dangers of losing one’s identity and culture through the act of assimilating. In her work, Anzaldua expresses the view that her language is closely tied to her identity. She states that Chicano Spanish developed as the result of a need for Chicanos to identify themselves as a distinct people. Thus, those who consider Chicano Spanish to be an illegitimate form of Spanish, directly insult Anzaldua. She states, ‘Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity – I am my language. Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself.’ In this way she directly rejects the overwhelming pressure she faces from society to assimilate, to choose to speak American English, or Latino Spanish. Anzaldua takes pride in the range of cultures that have formed her identity – the Indian, the Mexican, the American. In doing so, she has learnt the importance of developing a tolerance to contradictions, and an ability to ‘juggle cultures’.
This contrasts to Mayotte Capécia, who is spoken about in Fanon’s work. Rather than embracing her culture, she seeks to ‘whiten her body and mind’. The desire to ‘whiten’ oneself came from the perception that whiteness represented wealth, and opportunity, while blackness represented the ‘savage’ – although not in ‘the cannibal sense’, rather due to ‘lack of refinement’. Mayotte, a mulatto girl, marries the white man, equating to the acceptance and recognition into a community that seemed out of reach. Fanon writes, ‘overnight the mulatto girl had one form the rank of slave to that of master.’ In this way, Mayotte fails to ‘juggle cultures’, establishing a unique identity in the way that Anzaldua manifests. Rather, her identity as a mulatto woman is replaced, she is now white, and was ‘entering the white world’. This interpretation of identity and race is rigid, lacking the fluidity of race that has become more apparent today.
This week’s readings about race were both confrontational and honest — Fanon’s “Black Skins, White Masks” (Chapter 2) explored the experience of black women living in a white society. Anzaldua’s “Borderlands, La Frontera” explored the role of language in shaping one’s culture and racial identity.
There is one line in particular in Fanon’s introduction that stood out to me: “the Negro is enslaved by his inferiority, the white by his superiority”. To me, this appeared to suggest that the experiences of both white and black individuals was largely psychological — and, as Fanon put it, due to an “internalization of [this] inferiority” (pg. 11). Of course, Fanon also argued that economic events played a role in the alienation of black individuals. That being said, I found it much more interesting to focus on the concept of the internalization of values that are associated with race.
Fanon was not the only individual to focus on the role internalizing inferiority. Anzaldua also discussed this concept in much detail, especially in her section about Chicanas.
Clearly, this phenomenon is relevant among all races and intersecting identities; it is not confined to black or Chicano individuals only.
I would like to pass on a question to you guys: even though it would be hard to admit, how much of a role do you really think this internalization of values plays in today’s society? Are certain people the way they are because they believe it and refuse to see themselves in a different way from which society sees them (this applies to not only race, but for other identities as well)?
This week’s readings covered the issue of inclusion based on identity. As a personal observation I was intrigued by the Fanon’s Antilles perception that it was better for black women to marry white spouses as early as 1952. Today we would consider marriage across racial lines more common place, but during the 1950s, it would have been taboo in other parts of the world for white people to marry non-whites, for example. Despite the fact that such marriages were not attempted to celebrate both races who may have composed them, I still found this interesting. It shows how social pressures and necessities really shape individual thinking.
A quotation that I found particularly powerful can be found on page four of Fanon’s introduction, where it is stated “the fact I feel a foreigner in the worlds of the schizophrenic or the sexual cripple in now way diminishes their reality.” I think that whilst it was used to refer to Black/White differences in the Antilles context, it can be applied to a broad array of social divisions which are becoming more prevalent in the current political climate, and really stood out to me for this reason. In conjunction with the general tone of Fanon’s work (one I read as quite forceful in the chapters), it represents the point of persecution from which Fanon is trying to defend his way of life, despite the fact others are trying to whiten it. Whilst both Fanon and Anzaldua vigorously defend their black and Chicano groups, Anzaldua appears to celebrate hers more positively than Fanon, who writes in such a way that it seems desperate and often condemning of some Antilles people, notably Black women.
As someone who grew-up predominantly in southern Spain, I was intrigued to see parallels between the place of Andalusians (southern Spaniards), in that country and Chicanos in the US/Mexican borderlands. Despite speaking the same language, the regional differences which Andalusians speak make their Spanish distinct to the ‘proper’ version spoken in Madrid. Together with socio-economic differences predominantly based on the south’s agrarian economy, this creates a specific perception of the south in the eyes of the rest of the country. Whilst this happens in many countries (Nova Scotia in Canada, or the North/South divide in the UK), Anzaldua’s article reminded me of the perceived laziness of Andalusian Spanish, where letters are frequently dropped to make words easier to pronounce.
On a personal level, as someone who was raised in a Spanish society by English parents, the question of where I come from used to be difficult to answer. Despite sounding English based on my accent, I never really resonated with typically English customs prior to coming to UBC, but came to feel more British as I was defined it this way by others. I think it is an interesting point to make in relation to this week’s readings based on identity.
Before talking about Anzaldua and Fanon, I think I want to talk more about the conversation from last class and expand on the ideas of sound, race, and claiming legibility in blackness through sound. After class I thought about the different conversations the class had surrounding accents, appropriation, intersectionality, etc., (all to say that last class there were a lot of carrying opinions, and it was great to hear what people had to say) The examples that stood out to me were of Louise Bennett and Edward K Brathwaite who used their voice (and voice training) as a tool to not only assert the sound of their voice, but to also understand it as a part of their racialized identity. We have already established ideologies of racial hierarchies, and if so I think it’s also important to note that sound is an integral part of racialized identities and how you speak becomes a signifier to these racialized categories.
In class, it was noted that Louise Bennett grew up as middle-class, educated woman who later went on to become an actress, poet, writer, and educator. She used the sound of a Jamaican Patois voice as a part of her theatre practice, and legitimized Jamaican Patois as a language in and of itself. I think Bennett is a wonderful example of using voice and sound as a way to assert the legibility of blackness and its different sonic qualities, rather than to continue the theatre traditions that portrayed blackness in incredibly racist ways (blackface and minstrel come into mind). I think what’s important to be conscious of in Bennett’s work is that legitimacy can sound like a Jamaican Patois; that legibility and integrity of one’s racial identity can have different and varied sonic qualities. This is similar to Brathwaite’s work, and how it is important to not only read but to hear and listen to modes and sounds of voices as not only a part of a racialized identity, but as a claim for legitimacy without having to assimilate to the sonic qualities associated with whiteness. (Perhaps this can lead into a larger conversation about the politics and performance and politeness, but that’s another conversation).
So when I think about the form of writing that Anzaldua and Fanon take on in their works, respectively, I think about how grammar, language, and the form of writing is significant to their works. Anzaldua and Fanon are creating news forms of legibility through writing, arguing that the form of writing is just as essential to the content itself when talking about race. Admittedly, when I first started reading Fanon and Anzaldua, I found it difficult to follow their arguments because it felt like they weren’t writing in a linear sequential fashion. And, arguably, these writers aren’t. Their mode of writing and approach to critical literature is poetic in many ways (more noticeable in Anzaldua’s work), and requires a different method of reading. What these writers are underpinning is the assumption that legibility and legitimacy is written and read in one way. These writers have challenged the assumptions of literacy and have asserted a style of writing that is intimately tied to their racialized experiences.
It’s not just about undoing the five-paragraph-argumentative-essay, it’s about undoing larger epistemological work that have created standards of what writing and argumentation looks like. To read Fanon and Anzaldua’s works requires a different way of reading and thinking about literature; it requires the process of undoing the expectations of what it may mean to read philosophy or critical essays, and it has to do with relearning the different and varied forms of literacy. Both of their works are challenging to read in form, and that process shows how readers must undo and relearn literature in order to understand different modes of literacy and its relationship to racialized identities.
I understand Frantz Fanon’s point of view on the black racial inferiority complex as an issue that can only be solved by both parties, white and black, working together to destroy their own notions, that is, to destroy characteristics that are believed to be inherent to them by their skin colors. The following passage was particularly striking to me: “I am white: that is to say that I possess beauty and virtue, which have never been black. […] I am black: […] and no white man, no matter how intelligent he may be, can ever understand Louis Armstrong and the music of the Congo”. Here Fanon is trying to represent the ideas that govern a misleading conflict between white and black, which are, apparently opposites so that the only way one can be validated is by the submission of the other. When he mentions Louis Armstrong and the music of the Congo he is, from a psychological point of view, revealing the flaws in racial thinking and resistance during his time, that flaw being that through fighting racism arguing that there are inherent “good” qualities in black people that white people lack, they are only reinforcing it and falling into a vicious cycle.
Regarding Anzaldua’s work, she stresses the uncomfortable position that Chicanos are forced to be in. Her words are, in my view, extremely valuable, in the sense that she is giving voice in History to those who have not had one (she also mentions her personal struggle of including Chicano studies in academia). Plenty of information and sources are being developed daily on the Mexican-American issue but usually these focus on a discriminatory relationship that only flows in one direction: from North to South. Suddenly we have a third group, and our mental map of this discriminatory relationships turns more complex. Chicanos are neither American nor Mexican, physically they are in a land where they are told they do not belong to, but there is no such thing as a fatherland for them either. Central to her ideas is the role of language. I probably will not say anything new, but I believe language is more than just a way of putting ideas out there. or that it is only a reflection of the environment that shaped its conception, but that it is also culture, a way of thinking and understanding the world. In that sense, wherever in the world we might see languages being repressed or forced to disappear we have to understand that there is more at stake than just ‘words’.
On chapter 2 of Fanon’s “Black Skin White Masks”, Fanon stipulates about an internalized racism through three different characters on how women of colour would go after white men and turn down men of their own colour. I find it intriguing to read his perception on why this is the case, to which it is a way for women of colour to cope with their own inferiority to have a ‘way in’ to the “white world”. In other words, to be able to assimilate to what is perceived to be of a more “better” race than theirs. Throughout the chapter, it is obvious that there is the struggle within the characters to embrace their own identity. On the other hand, Anzaldua also takes on an internalized racism but only to argue that inferior races or hybrids of races should resist these urges and instead embrace their originality, despite the pressures of society. It is interesting how she takes this idea through language and identity and relates it to one’s perception of pride and self-worth. Her focus on language and her struggle to suppress a large part of her mixed culture to assimilate makes her to claim that such need to assimilate is comparable to censorship (“a violation of the First Amendment”); thus the need to take pride in one’s language that is part of their identity.
In a way both, I think a similar point out of these two authors is the complexity of histories that result in not only the perception of the society, but also the cultures and identities that are created as a result to that. Either through relationships or through language, both authors, to an extent brings into light the idea that there is still a need for society to categorize “race” and create an unwritten hierarchy. This idea of multiple identities is something that I can personally relate to as someone who grew up in different cultures and settings in which, at certain times I would find myself suppressing a part of my “identity” to assimilate, or exaggerate more of a different “identity” to be different.
Though writing from vastly different perspectives and moments in time, there seems to be common threads that linking these two excerpts from the works of Fanon and Anzaldua. These threads can only be understood by continuing to unravel the mystery of intersectionality. Both authors present their unique racialized experiences, ones that are drastically different yet linked by the role dominant white Western culture plays in attempting to denominate specific ideas of identity to each author. While the experiences can be understood in their present tense, I feel to truly see the connectivity of the authors’ ideas it is important to look holistically at the historical processes that have necessitated the critiques presented in these pieces. Whether implicitly or explicitly, both authors outline ideologies reproduced by colonialist superstructures. Colonialism is often underestimated in traditional presentations of American history, established as a past event instead of an ongoing process that has been furthered by the spread of globalization and the preeminence of Western superpowers.
In her piece, Anzaldua presents this colonial superstructure through its divisions of linguistic heritage, and challenges the ordainment handed down by colonial culture both through her assessments of linguistic identity and the writing style she utilizes throughout the text. Instead of simply presenting her case the tongue of colonialism (English,) she weaves together the vast dialects that postulate her own understanding of tradition, purpose, and individuality. The frenetic pace, and self-contained humor / sense of linguistic exclusivity of Azaldua’s writing allow the text to direct itself towards a very particular audience, an audience that shares Azaldua’s language of reclamation. Thus, she is able to challenge the colonial linguistic establishments that she was born into. This sort of exclusivity to an audience reminds me somewhat of my favorite author, Sherman Alexie. Alexie is a Spokane-Coeur d’Alene Native American author who also ponders what it means to retain Indigenous identity while coming to call the language of the colonizers your own. For Azaldua, the language of her colonizers is an amalgamation of dominant tongues (Spanish, English) and to challenge this, she presents the way Chicano culture has reclaimed these languages by crafting their own linguistic subcultures.
Fanon, on the other hand, seeks to understand how to reconcile biology with social precedent and influence. In the same way that language is an often inescapable aspect of our identities, our physical biologies are faced with the a superstructure of social influences and standards, standards which have been historically fashioned by economics and given birth to ideologies of superiority based on physical biology. In his introduction, Fanon writes “I believe that the individual should tend to take on the universality inherent in the human condition.” (10) As I understand this, Fanon is trying to refocus the lens to human commonalities inherent to the biochemical processes of the ever-complex human brain. However, as both he and Anzaldua show, these commonalities are interrupted by societal formations that work to prioritize certain human conditions over others.
In Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon explores the psychology of racism. In doing so, Fanon, by using the example of Mayotte Capécia, draws attention to the ways in which blacks have tried to become white, rather than to proudly represent their blackness. Being black, meant that economically, they will always be inferior to the whites and the internalized idea of their economical inferiority lead to blacks desiring for the whiteness in many ways. Her choice of partner, and her reaction to the fact that her grand mother was indeed white, show her strong aspiration for what Fanon calls, “lactification” and how generalized idea it was for women in Martinique. Such strong aversion to black men, then turns into the feeling of insignificance among black men. Even then, black men would also seek to marry white women as Fanon rights about Nini’s example of him where he was a Negro but he asked a civilized Mulatto woman to marry him.
Fanon concludes that the blacks and whites, are both confined by their sense of inferiority and superiority that they are psychologically too distant from the normal categorization. The Negros would try to isolate themselves from the individuality and the unique presence as opposed to the whites. Which makes sense, to think that such attitudes of the Negros towards each other have made the idea of white supremacy further spread and validated it. “Being white” as seen in the many examples Fanon introduced, have always been so desired quality that neither of Nini or Mayotte had considered odd at that time. It showed that the historical context and the class relationship from the past can have a long lasting indirect effect even on the psychology of the certain race, possibly not only Negros but if it was for Asian, it would also show the same type of admiration for certain race and shame for its own race.
For this week’s post I want to spend more time on the first chapters of Fanon’s essay as it was the reading which bothered me the most out of the two. I thoroughly enjoyed Anzaldua’s piece, namely for the manner in which she addressed subjects addressed by Fanon in his work. I found her tone, analysis and conclusions to be much more inclusive and constructive than Fanon’s, and enjoyed the spiritual, autobiographical, and literary aspect of the work. It reminded me a little of the Life of Oscar Wao (A relevant and highly entertaining novel by Dominican author Junot Diaz). The fact that she is also a Mulatta woman played a significant role in how I related to the text.
Onto Fanon. Although respectful, and grateful for some of Fanon’s influence on racial theory and on liberation movements across the globe, the two first chapters of his Black Skins White Masks left much to be desired. I found his analyses to be highly detailed, and agreed with close to all of them (having witnessed very similar, or sometimes the same phenomenon he describes). The passage where he speaks about how language operates as a social hierarchical device among Black Martiniquans reminded me of similar observations I made when I go back to Ivory Coast; My mom suddenly looses the “Frenchiness” of the French language, suddenly rolling her r’s with her tongue instead of the back of her throat, and she becomes what we jokingly call at home her “village self”.
It was his generalizations and matter-of-fact tone that bothered me. What gives him the authority, as a single Martiniquan man to speak for the psychological states of all Black Martiniquans? Of the Black Woman? Of the Mulatto Woman? I found the following declaration to be pretty astounding, even for the 1950s. “The black man who wants to sleep with the white woman […] wants to be white. Or has a thirst for revenge.” Later on he talks about the inferiority complex of the black woman, basing himself on his own observations, the biographical work of one Black Woman from Martinique, and goes on to conclude that the Black Woman who wants to marry a white Man has an inferiority complex. Having parents, Black (Ivorian & colonized by the French) and White (French & colonizer of Ivory Coast) that have been married for close to 30 years, it’s normal I should have reacted with shock at such a declaration. Nevertheless, Anzaldua’s piece (written 30 years later) seemed much more constructive in how it addressed racial issues rooted in colonization.