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Ideologies of Race in Development

Seminar Direction Handout No.3| Black Skins, White Masks: The Psychology of the Colonized
Prepared by: Tyrone Hall

The Main Themes

The main themes in this week’s readings are stated below; they are relevant to the extent that
they have shaped the questions to be discussed.

 Language and Power

 Liberation
 Resistance
 The Psychology of the Colonized
 Disalienation/Black Consciousness
 Colonial Categories/Binaries
 History, Power and Colonial Agents

Black Skin, White Mask by Frantz Fanon

Please watch the clip below (10mins)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HX0yxe02DG8&feature=related

Main Thoughts: Many of the ideas are still relevant in contemporary Caribbean societies. The
book has a revolutionary tone, yet the ideas expressed may be read as a repudiation of pan-
Africanism and negritude which are themselves considered to be revolutionary ideologies.

Note on Négritude:

“Négritude”, or the self-affirmation of black peoples, or the

affirmation of the values of civilization of something defined as
“the black world” as an answer to the question “what are we in this
white world?” is indeed “quite a problem”: it poses many questions
that will be examined here through the following heading
(Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2010)

Please click on the links below for more information

http://www.postcolonialweb.org/poldiscourse/negritude.html

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/negritude/
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Questions:

1. What does Fanon mean by “the psychology of colonialism”?

2. Fannon (1967) states “the black man has two dimensions… A Negro behaves differently
with a white man and with another Negro. That this self-division is a direct result of
colonialist subjugation is beyond question...” (pg17).

To what extent is this about race or simply a matter of power imbalance? Don’t we all
treat people differently based on power dynamics? Is the duality that Fanon speaks of true
for interactions between blacks and poor whites and poor blacks and wealthier blacks?

3. Fanon sets out to “help the black man to free himself of the arsenal of complexes that has
been developed by the colonial environment.” How does he propose to free “the black
man” and how feasible is his proposition?
4. He says “a man who has a language consequently possesses the world expressed and
implied by that language. What we are getting at becomes plain: Mastery of language
affords remarkable power.” Given the prevalence of bilingual post-colonial societies,
how relevant is Fanon’s observation today?
5. What reasons did Fanon give for the political nature of language in his native
Martinique?
6. How can colonial legacies/retentions stymie ‘local originality’?
7. Fanon states that teaching blacks not to be slaves of their archetypes is more important
that trying to change whites. He also makes reference to decolonizing the mind of the
black man. How does he envision this process?
8. What does this tell us about Fanon’s concept of social change in terms of race?
9. Describe the ‘psychological economic system’ that produces paternalistic, and prejudiced
whites?
10. Fanon uses the phrase, “express himself properly,” isn’t this evidence of his own
language prejudice (p86)?
11. What does he mean by the intellectual alienation of the black man?
12. What are your thoughts on Fanon’s assertion that “there is no negro mission, there is no
white burden?”
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Conflict and Connection: Rethinking Colonial African History by Frederick Cooper

Main Thoughts: It’s important to rethink Africa’s colonial experience because its past holds
many lessons for the way forward. The resistance and colonial lenses are only two of a range of
frames through which Africa’s history may be examined, but are perhaps the least useful if the
intention is to move beyond the existing binaries.

1. What is the relation between colonial knowledge production and power?

2. How does the framing of African colonial history affect north-south relations/ the
black/white encounter? Why is this relevant?
3. To what extent can South-South intellectual exchange on colonial history alter our
contemporary race experiences?
4. How might African intellectuals move beyond the propensity to use Western intellectual
tools given the rigid nature of academia and the desire to measure up to legible, global
standards?
5. How might a truly African history be any more objective than European history?
6. Both Cooper and Fanon allude to changing social orders, how do they envision social
change?
7. Spivak asks rhetorically, “can the subaltern speak?” To what extent do African
intellectuals reflect the consciousness of Africans and can they adequately represent such
a varied people?
8. What is African agency? How might reclaiming and re-representing Africa’s past aid in
realizing that agency?
9. Foucault (in Cooper) speaks of “the continual reconfiguration of both power and
resistance.” To what extent does international development in the post-colonial era
reproduce the colonial encounter?
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White Skin, Many Masks: Colonial School, Race and National Consciousness among White
Settler Children in Mozambique, 1934-1974 by Antoinette Errante

Main Thoughts: Education in post-colonial societies retains many of the vestiges of colonial
education. I think the argument for revisiting the representation of the “colonizer” is valid, but it
might not suit the agenda of many students of African and colonial history.

Questions:

1. Why should revisions of Africa’s colonial history also re-consider the representation of
the “colonizer”?
2. What role did colonial education play in socializing people to maintain, resist or
transform the colonizer-colonized relationship? To what extent does education in the
post-colonial societies play a similar role between elites and non-elites?
3. To what extent is Africa’s intellectual culture still colonized?
4. How does the preoccupation of post-colonial studies with the implications of cultural
whiteness for African identity naturalize the notion of European superiority?
5. To what extend does the education system in post-colonial societies resemble those in the
colonial era?