Page 155 - BLACK SKIN, WHITE MASK

116 BLACK SKIN, WHITE MASKS

you are merely describing a universal phenomenon, the criterion of
maturity being in fact adaptation to society. My answer is that such
a criticism goes off in the wrong direction, for I have just shown
that for the Negro there is a myth to be faced. A solidly established
myth. The Negro is unaware of it as long as his existence is limited
to his own environment; but the fi rst encounter with a white man
oppresses him with the whole weight of his blackness. 10
Then there is the unconscious. Since the racial drama is
played out in the open, the black man has no time to “make
it unconscious.” The white man, on the other hand, succeeds
in doing so to a certain extent, because a new element appears:
guilt. The Negro’s inferiority or superiority complex or his feeling
of equality is conscious. These feelings forever chill him. They
make his drama. In him there is none of the affective amnesia
characteristic of the typical neurotic.
Whenever I have read a psychoanalytic work, discussed problems
with my professors, or talked with European patients, I have been
struck by the disparity between the corresponding schemas and
the reality that the Negro presents. It has led me progressively to
the conclusion that there is a dialectical substitution when one
goes from the psychology of the white man to that of the black.
The earliest values, which Charles Odier describes, are
11
different in the white man and in the black man. The drive toward
socialization does not stem from the same motivations. In cold
actuality, we change worlds. A close study should be divided into
two parts:

10. In this connection it is worth remembering what Sartre said:
Some children, at the age of fi ve or six, have already had fi ghts with schoolmates
who call them “Yids.” Others may remain in ignorance for a long time. A young
Jewish girl in a family I am acquainted with did not even know the meaning of
the word Jew until she was fi fteen. During the Occupation there was a Jewish
doctor who lived shut up in his home at Fontainebleau and raised his children
without saying a word to them of their origin. But however it comes about,
some day they must learn the truth: sometimes from the smiles of those around
them, sometimes from rumor or insult. The later the discovery, the more violent
the shock. Suddenly they perceive that others know something about them that
they do not know, that people apply to them an ugly and upsetting term that is
not used in their own families. (Anti-Semite and Jew, p. 75.)
11. Les deux sources consciente et inconsiente de la vie morale (Neuchâtel, La
Baconnière, 1943).

4/7/08 14:16:50
Fanon 01 text 116
Fanon 01 text 116 4/7/08 14:16:50