The Fact of Blackness Midterm

"…in one sense, if I were asked for a definition of myself, I would say that I am one who waits; I investigate my surroundings, I interpret everything in terms of what I discover, I become sensitive."

In Frantz Fanon's piece The Fact of Blackness, he emphasizes a perpetual and overwhelming awareness of his corporeal form--in constant conversation with the world around him, his body defines who he is. This "body is surrounded by an atmosphere of certain uncertainty," or blackness, which also evokes with it "a thousand details, anecdotes, stories," and in its entirity, becomes the social construct of the black existence. Formed by the white "other," the black man lives behind a "racial epidermal schema," which Fanon acutally calls a "corporeal malediction," an everyday burden of inescapable physical appearance which dictates the way in which he can live his life (64). In an endeavor to alleviate the misery of his "malediction," Fanon attempts to commiserate with other downtrodden cultures, to find unique merits in his own culture, and looks to science's assurance that the black man is indeed as human as the white man. Yet, In his everyday functioning as a black person, he finds that nothing can dissuade the "infernal circle" of "color prejudice" which is inevitably programmed into the consciousness of white society (67).

This social framework, the hate of light-skinned races toward dark-skinned people is perpetuated by society's stubborn failure to truly accept that historical notions of the black race are no longer applicable, and actually never were. It would seem to Fanon then, that all black people will be plagued by injustice until historical perceptions can be fully disproved and forgotten. Since this is something that has been a slow process, something that will never be feasible in his lifetime, Fanon says the only thing he can do is wait; wait for an apocalyptic change in the perception of race, initiated by the realization that the black man will only be free, when blackness (and whiteness) no longer exist (76). Fanon then becomes the ultimate observer of human nature, internalizing and interpreting all the flaws which exist in human relations, instead of fighting them, and is the better man for it. "Negritude," as Sartre is quoted, becomes a "moment of negativity," a nonexistence to society at large which, as perceptions are changed, will begin to appear, not as the black man, but simply as man (76).