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138 BLACK SKIN, WHITE MASKS

there will be impulses directed at the mother; she too would like
to disembowel the mother.
Our question, then, is whether, side by side with the fi nal
achievement of femininity, there is not some survival of this
infantile fantasy. “Too strong an aversion in a woman against
the rough games of men is, furthermore, a suspicious indication
of male protest and excessive bisexuality. It is possible that such a
woman will be clitoral.” Here is my own view of the matter. First
42
the little girl sees a sibling rival beaten by the father, a libidinal
aggressive. At this stage (between the ages of fi ve and nine), the
father, who is now the pole of her libido, refuses in a way to take
up the aggression that the little girl’s unconscious demands of
him. At this point, lacking support, this free-fl oating aggression
requires an investment. Since the girl is at the age in which the
child begins to enter the folklore and the culture along roads
that we know, the Negro becomes the predestined depositary of
this aggression. If we go farther into the labyrinth, we discover
that when a woman lives the fantasy of rape by a Negro, it is in
some way the fulfi llment of a private dream, of an inner wish.
Accomplishing the phenomenon of turning against self, it is the
woman who rapes herself. We can fi nd clear proof of this in the
fact that it is commonplace for women, during the sexual act,
to cry to their partners: “Hurt me!” They are merely expressing
this idea: Hurt me as I would hurt me if I were in your place. The
fantasy of rape by a Negro is a variation of this emotion: “I wish
the Negro would rip me open as I would have ripped a woman
open.” Those who grant our conclusions on the psychosexual-
ity of the white woman may ask what we have to say about the
woman of color. I know nothing about her. What I can offer, at
the very least, is that for many women in the Antilles—the type
that I shall call the all-but-whites—the aggressor is symbolized
by the Senegalese type, or in any event by an inferior (who is so
considered).
The Negro is the genital. Is this the whole story? Unfortunately
not. The Negro is something else. Here again we fi nd the Jew.

42. Ibid., p. 180.

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