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Blackness

Fanon, in his writing The Fact of Blackness, considers blackness a practical distinctiveness that exists for the purpose of differentiating black form white. His discourse is that blackness is considered negativity; black people are coerced to have on the uniform of blacks. Their identity is unchanging so that it is a fact of blackness. Fanon discusses his experience as a black man in a society domineered by white people. Instantaneous, the native has been assigned two structures of position within which he has had to place himself. His norms, customs and beliefs have been wiped out as well as the sources in which they were founded, were wiped out because they did not conform to an unfamiliar civilization that forced itself on him. The Negro in the 20th Century cannot pinpoint at what time his subservience comes into being through the other. In America, the Negro is isolated and discriminated against, in South America he is thrashed on the streets, and Negro demonstrations are met with brute force and cut down by gunfire. In West Africa, his is an subconscious. In the white man’s hand, the Negro is a toy, so in order to board up this cycle of doom, he explodes.

Fanon’s conception of blackness is performative but ironically for the sake of the white man and not for the gain of himself. The image the world has of the black man is one that has been crafted over the years by colonialists. Fanon illustrates this concept by saying the image of the native is the consequence of the white man, who had woven me out of a thousand details, anecdotes, stories.” Fanon articulates his desire as a black man to just be identified as a man. “All I wanted was to be a man among other men.” In a colonized world, the image of the black man has been curated to be that of someone inferior. This image is branded in the mind of the white man, the world, and the back man himself. Thus the storyteller in the story of the Negro, whose story is the background music in every other account of the oppressed in the world, has succeeded in sending the treatise of “fear” and the idea of “inferiority” to all that care to listen.

In this chapter, Fanon creates an image that exemplifies the mental process of the Negro man and woman, highlighting their unsuccessful efforts at asserting themselves a human in addition to rationalizing their color in relation to a system that is unfounded and based on racism and race prejudice. How does the brain digest the fact that a structure (racism) that is applying such force (resentment against the black man and the people of color) on the individual is really based on a falsehood (white supremacy)?

The notion of blackness as the archetypal exemplification of evil is a socially fabricated myth. Fanon attempts to create an understanding that owing to the consequence of the black man encounter with the European imperialist, the colonizer fabricated the image of a black man as inferior and shared this myth with the rest of the world. For this reason, any effort by the native to proclaim a black identity in response to the white man will result in the demonstration of an image deliberately manipulated and brandished by the white man. The only solution to this is the denunciation of this invented identity that European fabricate for the native, “I am a master, and I am advised to adopt the humility of the cripple” (292)

However, Fanon is aware that before the native can truly overcome this already made-up identity crafted by the white man, the native has to overcome a sequence of inherent resistance mechanism that they have developed to vindicate their blackness. The other defense mechanism is laughter. The main shortcoming with this laughter mechanism is that it is not as effective as it was the year before. The native understands that laughter is no longer medicine, “Mama see the Negro! I’m frightened’ Frightened! Frightened! Now they were beginning to be afraid of me. I made up my mind to laugh myself to tears, but laughter had become impossible” (292). The oppressed laugh to make the imperialist comfortable. If the native does not act in this manner, then the colonizer becomes uncomfortable and gives him a reason to be on edge. The natives’ inability to express humor or their refusal to laugh confirms the colonizer’s inherent fright of the native. As the amusement finally subsides, the native will conclude in his longing to make the European comfortable.

Another defense mechanism of the colonized is to hide in their antiquity; in this setting, it would take a history that is centred on African history. Fanon claims that blacks seek to fight the consequences of racism and colonialism by creating emphasis on a love of self through a link with one’s history. Any attempt by the black man to overcome the negative consequences of the colonizer’s attempt to enforce an inferiority complex bear no fruit because of the war the white man has waged to extinguish his sense of self. In this regard Fanon writes “I discovered my blackness, my ethnic characteristics; and I was battered down by tom-toms, cannibalism, intellectual deficiency, fetishism, racial defects, slave-ships, and above all else, above all: ‘Sho good eatin” (293).

In conclusion, Fanon tries to make the black man self-aware he challenges him not to identify himself in response to whiteness. The native cannot simply celebrate their history during the month of February as in the United States and then wonder why the rest of the races do not respect the black man. There is a need for modern academics to rewrite the story of the white-based on the contemporary context that can be understood by the people.