#Franz fanon psychology skin
He contrasts the experience of anti-black racism with the experience of anti-Semitic racism, making the claim that race, for Jews, is not visible on their skin in the same way it is for black people.
Specifically, he argues that the experience of racism has a disembodying effect on black people-meaning that it causes them to feel alienated from their own bodies. The most famous example of this given in Black Skin, White Masks is Fanon’s description of witnessing a white child seeing him and exclaiming: “ Maman, look, a Negro! I’m scared!” Fanon explores how repeated experiences such as this inflict lasting damage on black people’s self-image, distorting their understanding of themselves in the world. Therefore, Fanon’s major achievement in Black Skin, White Masks is delineating how the already well-documented material realities of colonialism have shaped the psychological experiences of black people.įanon examines the impact of racism on black consciousness, arguing that black people internalize racist beliefs about themselves. Indeed, Fanon points out repeatedly that white Western culture cannot begin to understand or describe black experience.
This approach to thinking about colonialism was revolutionary at the time of Fanon’s writing, when Western beliefs about the psychology of people of color tended to be crude, dehumanizing, and false. Fanon, a psychiatrist, is concerned with understanding both the psychological and material (i.e., physical and economic) dimensions of colonialism.
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