What is the relation between economic and psychological inferiority?Īccording to Fanon, psychological inferiority, or an inferiority complex, is an internalization of economic inferiority, or disadvantage. Therefore, it is foolish to talk about one society being more racist than another, for instance. That’s because racism is an absolute evil that attacks the very essence of humanity. What is Fanon’s stance on different kinds or degrees of racism?Īccording to Fanon, there are no degrees of racism. But inevitably this leads to neurosis, Fanon says, because Black people will always be Black, and running away from Blackness is running away from one’s self. For instance, this is behind some of the motivations Black people have for dating white people, according to Fanon, because white people seem to provide access to a white world. The first three chapters of Black Skin, White Masks are about Black people who identify the social advantages of being white and therefore want to be white themselves. How does Fanon describe Black people who “want to be white”? Black people begin to think that an economic hierarchy is also a natural hierarchy of humanity, and they interpret the subjugation of Black people as their own inferiority. A Black inferiority complex is created when Black people internalize this social dynamic.
White people have more power, and they also have all the cultural representations in which they appear as good and heroic. Both are Othered, but in different ways.Īccording to Fanon, how is a Black inferiority complex created?Īccording to Fanon, racism creates a system in which white people have advantages compared to Black people. Blacks are considered a threat to bodies, because they are primarily seen as biological and over-sexual. Jews are depicted as a threat to the economy and political life. However, there is a difference in the kind of threat that this evil represents. How does Fanon compare and contrast the experience of Black and Jewish people?ĭrawing upon the work of Jean-Paul Sartre, Fanon says both Black and Jewish people in Europe are considered an “Other.” Both are considered evil and inferior to the rest of white society. Black men are over-sexualized and considered beasts.
This also leads to the fear Black men produce in European society, where they are thought of as rapists from which white women need protection. That means they are not thought of as having brains or minds, but rather solely as having bodies associated with sexual reproduction. To what level are Black men primarily reduced in European society?Īccording to Fanon, Black men are primarily reduced to the genital or biological level. There is no dependency complex before racism. In contrast, Fanon argues that white people create the inferiority of black people in order to support their own superiority. That means they naturally feel inferior, which is why they accepted colonialism and submitted to the superiority of white people. Mannoni thought that Black people have a natural dependency complex. What is Fanon’s critique of the “dependency complex”? Get rid of racism, and the neuroses produced by racism will go away, too. For Fanon, the task instead is to change the world. In turn, Adler thought we could cure neuroses by having individuals develop a more realistic understanding of the world. Where Fanon saw social problems relating to an unjust society, Adler saw individual neuroses that were the private problems of one person at a time. However, Adler lacked the social perspective Fanon had. What is Fanon’s critique of Alfred Adler?Īdler was a psychotherapist like Fanon. In these cultural representations where Black children cannot identify with heroes, they lose a sense of self as well as agency to act in the world. But when they realize that, because they are Black, they are actually the savages, a neurosis begins. Children naturally identify with the hero, which means Black children, too, first of all think they are the heroes in the story. In many cases, they are about white explorers going into “uncharted” lands where “savages” live. What is the role of children’s stories in Fanon’s analysis?įanon discusses how children’s stories usually focus on adventure.
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