Response 14: "The Fact of Blackness"

In Fanon’s reading, the subject of binary hierarchies comes into play: “not only must the black man be black; he must be black in relation to the white man” (402). His experience on the train was particularly sad. I also have to agree with his statement that color prejudice “is nothing more than the unreasoning hatred of one race for another, the contempt of the stronger and richer peoples for whom they consider inferior to themselves” (405). Again, going back to the binary hierarchies, it reminds of a reading we had very early on in the semester where it talked about how while the slave had to be reliant on the master for protection and survival, the master was also reliant on the slave for his status and level of prominence in society. In the same way here, even the richer would need someone to be “less” than, perhaps in this case “less” than financially otherwise they wouldn’t be the dominant binary societally.

There is also this dilemma Fanon faces of not fitting in not only with the whites, but also with others of his own race and ethnicity on several levels. He mentions “that little gulf that exists among the almost-white, the mulatto, and the n-word” (402). It reminds me of Clarke’s “The Complex Face Of Black Canada” where in the intro, it is mentioned that “people from ‘black-majority countries’ often identify via class” (433).  In areas where there aren’t large racial divides, there are divides based on shade of color and economic standing. Here, Fanon is facing not only exclusion from whites, but from people with whom he shares a common ethnicity and similar heritage.

There was also another passage that caught my eye: “The white world, the only honorable one, barred me from all participation” (404). It’s a sad kind of irony that the dominant binary is self-proclaimed to be “honorable” and civilized but is both subtly and unsubtly exclusionary.