Page 98 - BLACK SKIN, WHITE MASK

THE MAN OF COLOR AND THE WHITE WOMAN 59

but my dissent will be understood when one recalls that for the idea
of the constitutional as it is understood by the French school I am
substituting that of structure—“embracing unconscious psychic
life, as we are able to know it in part, especially in the form of
repression and inhibition, insofar as these elements take an active
part in the organization peculiar to each psychic individuality.” 3l
As we have seen, on examination Jean Veneuse displays the
structure of an abandonment-neurotic of the negative-aggressive
type. One can attempt to explain this reactionally—that is, through
the interaction of person and environment—and prescribe, for
example, a new environment, “a change of air.” It will properly
be observed that in this case the structure has remained constant.
The change of air that Jean Veneuse prescribed for himself was
not undertaken in order to fi nd himself as a man; he did not have
as his purpose the formulation of a healthy outlook on the world;
he had no striving toward the productiveness that is characteristic
of psychosocial equilibrium, but sought rather to corroborate his
externalizing neurosis.
The neurotic structure of an individual is simply the elaboration,
the formation, the eruption within the ego, of confl ictual clusters
arising in part out of the environment and in part out of the purely
personal way in which that individual reacts to these infl uences.
Just as there was a touch of fraud in trying to deduce from
the behavior of Nini and Mayotte Capécia a general law of the
behavior of the black woman with the white man, there would
be a similar lack of objectivity, I believe, in trying to extend the
attitude of Veneuse to the man of color as such. And I should like
to think that I have discouraged any endeavors to connect the
defeats of Jean Veneuse with the greater or lesser concentration
of melanin in his epidermis.
This sexual myth—the quest for white fl esh—perpetuated by
alienated psyches, must no longer be allowed to impede active
understanding.
In no way should my color be regarded as a flaw. From
the moment the Negro accepts the separation imposed by the

31. Guex, op. cit., p. 54.

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