Status Updates From Black Skin, White Masks

“One is white if one has a certain amount of money.”
“I am white… I embody the beauty and virtue which have never been black… I am black; I am in total fusion with the world, in sympathetic affinity with the earth, losing my id in the heart of the cosmos”, which the white man is incapable of.
“Unable to blacken or negrify the world, [Mayotte Capécias] endeavors to whiten it in her body and mind.”

The use of pidgin to reinforce the colonized’s inferior status - “Whether he likes it or not, the black man has to wear the livery the white man has fabricated for him” - the colonized must recognize their reality, in order to be able to change it. Lack of this recognition furthers alienation of the colonized, and within them between those who strive to learn the colonizers language and those who reject it.

It’s been a while since I read Wretched so I had lowkey forgotten, Fanon is just so damn interesting to read. He’s sarcastic and a little flippant, giving an informal feel, but demonstrates an extensive understanding of what he speaks on. Found it interesting to start with studying the psychological causes and effects of colonized subjects seeking out the language of their colonizers to assert their own humanity.