The article examines in detail the effects of the color line and how black people feel about it. In the text, Frantz Fanon describes his quest for self-consciousness in an emotionally charged monologue. The author understands that the identity of black people was not self-created. Instead, it was imposed on them without their consent. Moreover, Fanon (1970) argues that the ill-fated identity is used to dehumanize and oppress people with black skin color. Throughout the article, the speaker grapples with color prejudice as he feels the constant reminder of his past as the grandson of the enslaved and lynched slaves from Africa (Fanon, 1970). Noticeably, Fanon utilizes the word “man” symbolically to represent freedom and liberty. In the introduction, the author explains how he is dehumanized by being likened to objects, which the article justifies thought the writing.
While his mission is to seek freedom by becoming a “man,” the writer realizes that the most significant limitation is that he is objectified as a black man. In his judgment, the author resolves that a black man has no ontological resistance in the eyes of a white man (Fanon, 1970). The white man does not recognize any aspects that characterize an African American. As a result, the people of color appear uncivilized in the eyes of white people. The black people’s customs and the sources they were based on were wiped out since they conflicted with the beliefs imposed on them.
Additionally, the article claims that in the eyes of the white man, a black man encounters challenges of bodily schema. The melanin in the skin of people of color is the major limitation. Fanon asserts that some white people searched for chemicals to whiten the blackness in the miserable Niger (Fanon, 1970). In addition, black people lost their identity and are defined by the weird history given by the white man. Due to blackness, every person of color represented his body, ancestors, and race. According to the whites, the author maintains that a black person is characterized by intellectual deficiency, cannibalism, defects, and slave-ships (Fanon, 1970). The Negro is also portrayed as evil, ugly, cold, and frightening (Fanon, 1970). Hence, a person of color does not have control over oneself due to a lack of essential qualities of being a man.
Lastly, the writer links the cause of the objectification of black people to lack of freedom. The author believes that the white world barred him from participating in various things that free men enjoy, such as love. Furthermore, the expectation placed on other people differs from his. According to the speaker, men were expected to behave like men, but he was expected to act like a black man (Fanon, 1970). The skin color barred back people from being free as they were perceived as lesser persons. Hence, the writer laments that a black man cannot run away from an inborn complex even when one tries to match the societal expectation (Fanon, 1970). The conventional belief is that all coloreds are incapable of achieving what other humans with lighter skin can accomplish.
The article provides mind-provoking details from the first-person perspective of how black people perceive their treatment by the whites. The author narrates how skin color, which is an inborn quality, is used to oppress him. Fanon notes that white people generalize blacks as less intelligent, cannibalistic, bad, and ugly. As a result, the perception about the colored has been affected and twisted such that black people struggle to show their worth, to no avail.
Reference
Fanon, F. (1970). The fact of blackness. In Black skin, white masks (pp. 110- 140). Grove Press.