Frantz Fanon, Black Skin White Masks

Racial epidermal schema 

In his book Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon mixes clinical data, literary allusions and personal reflections to explain the feelings of dependency and inadequacy that Black people experience in a White world. He looks at personal experiences and our affect as explanations for social phenomena. We discussed Fanon in class to the  In chapter five he discusses 'The Fact of Blackness'.Through a re-telling of his own experiences of racism, Fanon is able to show how a black person in a racialized context eventually internalizes the ‘white gaze’. The chapter starts of with ""Dirty nigger!" Or simply, "Look, a Negro!" I came into the world imbued with the will to find a meaning in things, my spirit filled with the desire to attain to the source of the world , and then I found that I was an object in the midst of other objects." Here he explains how he moves through time trying to be modern. The statement 'object in the midst of other objects' is how he describes himself in the world. "But just as I reached the other side, I stumbled, and the movements, the attitudes, the glances of the other fixed me there.." Fanon describes the obstacles he then encountered while trying not to be just seen as black. He was stuck in the past. Typecasting and stereotyping came into play which made it visible that he belonged in a certain space. The behavior, Fanon argues, is even more evident in upwardly mobile and educated Black people who can afford to acquire status symbols. Black was seen as a social advantage and some how removed from the social environment. "Black in relation to the white man" , explains this is a way of organizing knowledge ,being marked racially. Fanon humanness was replaced by his skin color. Throughout history it is different how the body is seen in a space.Fanon highlights both the historical contingency of ‘blackness’ and the ways in which the oppressed can re-narrate their subjectivities. Fanon uses the phase "racial epidermal schema" which is the racialization of someone because of skin or speech. Fanon uses his schemata to explain the creation, maintenance, and eventual rigidification of white-scripted ‘blackness’. Fanon left out of place and saw himself in the third person. He didn't felt as though he belonged.