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EXCERPT
FROM A BOOK BY FRANTZ FANON
The
habit of considering racism as a mental quirk, as a psychological flaw, must be abandoned. One must consider the
behavior, the defense mechanisms
of the men who are a prey to racism.
In an
initial phase we have seen the occupying power legitimizing its domination by scientific arguments, the
"inferior race" being denied on the basis of race. Because no other solution is
left, the racialized social
group tries to imitate the oppressor and thereby to deracialize itself. The "inferior race" denies itself
as a different race. It shares with
the "superior race" the convictions, doctrines, and other attitudes concerning it.
Having
witnessed the liquidation of its systems of reference, the collapse of its cultural patterns, the native can
only recognize with the
occupant that "God is not on his side." The oppressor, through the inclusive and frightening character of his
authority, manages to impose
on the
native new ways of seeing, and in particular a pejorative judgment with respect to his original forms of existing. This
event, which is commonly designated as alienation is very important, and found
in the official texts under the name
of assimilation.
Now
this alienation is never wholly successful. Whether or not it is because the oppressor quantitatively and
qualitatively limits the
evolution, unforeseen, disparate phenomena manifest themselves.
The
inferiorized group had admitted, since the force of reasoning was implacable,
that its misfortunes resulted directly from its racial and cultural characteristics.
Guilt
and inferiority are the usual consequences of this dialectic. The oppressed
then tries to escape these, on the one hand by proclaiming his total and unconditional adoption of the new
cultural models, and
on the
other, by pronouncing an irreversible condemnation of his own cultural style.
Yet
the necessity that the oppressor encounters at a given point to
dissimulate the forms of exploitation does not lead to the disappearance of this exploitation. The more
elaborate, less crude economic
relations require daily coating, but the alienation at this level remains frightful.
Having
judged, condemned, abandoned his cultural forms, his language, his food habits, his sexual behavior, his way of
sitting down, of resting, of
laughing, of enjoying himself, the oppressed flings himself upon
the
imposed culture with the desperation of a drowning man.
Developing
his technical knowledge in contact with more perfected machines, entering into the dynamic circuit of
industrial production, meeting
men from remote regions in the framework of the concentration of capital, that is to say, on the job, discovering
the assembly line, the
team, the oppressed is shocked to find that he continues to be the object
of racism and contempt.
