The Conceptual Tools Necessary to Understand How Race Is Significant to Colonialism - Essay Example

Frantz Fanon was a Martiniquo-Algerian psychiatrist, philosopher par excellence and a revolutionary. He lived from 1925 to 1961 and influenced several postcolonial writers and Marxists with his writings. This essay is about Fanon’s approach to race and how the colonial processes of the 20th century and the globalization processes of the 21st can be explained using Fanon’s theories. This essay would be arguing that the gaps in understanding the inequalities wrought about due to colonization and globalization can be explained using Fanon’s works as the starting point. The larger processes of globalization have been discussed by many authors and experts (Appadurai, 1996, 10). However, the unique problems of race and how it impacts globalization and how it is impacted in turn by it is something that few writers have attempted to answer. Though Fanon lived in an era where the cold war was on and globalization was still nascent, there are many sociologists who believe that Fanon was far ahead of his time when he sought to contextualize the issue of race within colonial and postcolonial frames of reference and which are valid even to this day when globalization (which many see as an extension of colonialism) is the overriding theme of the times (Giddens, 2000, 27). Fanon’s “The Wretched of the Earth”, provides the conceptual tools necessary to understand how race is significant to colonialism and hence, by extension can be used to explain how globalization works. For instance, the following quote is an example of how Fanon approaches race not as a superstructure of a determinant economic base but rather an organizing principle of society itself: …it is clear that what divides this world is first and foremost what species, what race one belongs to. In the colonies the economic infra- structure is also a superstructure. The cause is effect: You are rich because you are white; you are white because you are rich. (5) Fanon’s approach to race is that class and race “gain meaning from each other” and as the above quote illustrates one is of a higher class because one is white and one is white because one belongs to the higher class. This mutually reinforcing tendency of class to perpetuate itself forms the boundaries in the colonized regions where the intention is to not only segregate poor from rich but also to demarcate racial formations. To quote Fanon, “The colonized sector is not only a world of “white folks,” but is also a world that’s “belly is permanently full of good things” (2004:4). He contrasts this with the other sector which is a ““sector of niggers, a sector of towelheads” that is “hungry for bread, meat, shoes, coal, and light” (2004:4-5). Hence, it is clear from these quotes that Fanon views racial inferiority as being realized economically. This conception of race is a useful starting point for contemporary sociologists concerned with the ever widening inequalities wrought due to globalization. The fact that the world is being divided into gated communities of the rich and ghettos of the poor is proof of the fact that Fanon was able to anticipate some of the interrelations between race and class from a colonial perspective (Winant, 2001, 69). Race, for Fanon, was not only a biological trait but a historically constructed phenomenon and culturally mediated artifact. He makes the point that the wealthy and white colonizer exists only in relation to the colonized that are poor and dark. The following quote illustrates Fanon’s line of thinking in this respect: “For not only must the black man be black; he must be black in relation to the white man…his inferiority comes into being through the other.” (1967:110) The point here is that each exists through the other and wealth exists in relationship to poverty and whiteness exists in relation to blackness. In one of his works, Fanon expounds on this relationship by having a whole chapter on the subject. The historical constructs that accompany race and class and the way in which the white man has constructed a narrative of the black man’s inferiority through “a thousand details, anecdotes, stories” (111); means that the institutionalization of race and the socio-cultural mores that rationalize this hierarchy of race is something that has been deliberately done and which has been the case for many centuries. One can sense the angst of Fanon when he talks about these barriers and hierarchies that have been woven so much into the institutional and social fabric of nations and which ensure that the black man stays poor. The way in which history is interpreted and how white power is legitimized through elaborate processes is the subject of Fanon’s work, “Black Skins, White Masks”. The conception of race as a system of maintaining hierarchical power relations and the means of perpetuating it is clearly brought out by Fanon in this work. The task of the colonialists was to overwrite indigenous histories and cultures and instead, replace them with narratives of newly constructed racial ideologies. To quote from a critique of Fanon’s work, “The racial domination of the colonies was legitimated through racist propaganda (69), through religious institutions that equated darkness with evil and inhumanity (6-7), all serving to instill “a mood of submission” in subjugated peoples.” This quote clearly shows how the institutions of power and prestige including those connected with education exist to serve the needs of the dominant elite and how propaganda as a tool is used to subjugate the dark and the colonized. It is noteworthy to note that Fanon fought against the institutional biases throughout his life and he did that not by staying outside of the system but within it. The way in which racism moves through culture is also the subject of Fanon’s attention. For instance, when the colonized speak the language of the colonizers, they are being co-opted into the world of racist ideologies that are an intricate part of the speech. In this way, the colonized and the dark man is “betraying” one’s own self and culture and internalizing one’s sense of inferiority. The hopelessness of such a situation where one has to become colonized if one has to exist and to do otherwise is to be excluded from not only the mainstream but alienate oneself from all the institutions and social mores of life. The world of the Dark Man is indeed dark and given the tendency of the whites and the colonizers to perpetuate these written and unwritten power systems, the overall scenario is bleak for people of color. Fanon’s anger against such perpetuation can be easily felt when he says that the colonized are being “duped” by the colonizers to accept their lot in society (Freire, 1981, 34). To return to the thesis statement, colonization and globalization both work by subjugating the socially downtrodden and making them “subsidize” the lifestyles of the rich (Bauman, 1998, 49). Both works insidiously by a set of rules of conduct that are implicitly racial and the system of power relations at work is subtle and pernicious at the same time. Globalization has been shown to widen the already existing inequalities in the same way colonialism was thought about as exploiting the colonized countries for their natural resources and to use them as a market for the finished goods made in the West. Little has changed in the world since the days of Fanon and in fact, the ongoing global economic crisis has shown that matters have become worse for the poor (and in Fanon’s world, poor is synonymous with race). The fact that an African American was elected as the President of the United States is now being seen as something that was essentially symbolic given the strident opposition that he had to endure ever since he took office. If Fanon were to be alive today, he would probably have seen Barack Obama’s ascension to the presidency in a positive light but would have definitely frowned on the tactics of the Republicans once he took office. If there is to be a vindication of Fanon’s work, it lies in the way black people in the United States have to become “white” (in a metaphorical sense) if they are to hold positions of power. This is because of the polarizing formations brought about due to globalization where the avowed principle is equality but the real intention is to perpetuate poverty and transfer wealth from the poor to the rich (Bonilla-Silva, 2003, 12). This is not a rant but is grounded in the events of the last few decades wherein research has conclusively proved that the rich have gotten richer and the poor have gotten poorer. Fanon was ahead of his time when he wrote about race and colonization. As the preceding discussion showed, the social and cultural mores of colonization and globalization have certain similarities in the way they seek to subjugate the native populations and the poor who by virtue of race and class (both synonymous in Fanon’s world) are conditioned to accept their lot in life. In conclusion, Fanon’s approach to race is comprehensive and nuanced and can be understood in the larger contexts of colonization and extrapolated to arrive at a “true” understanding of globalization. References Appadurai, A., 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Bauman, Z., 1998. Globalization: The Human Consequences. New York: Columbia University Press. Fanon, F., 2004 [1961]. The Wretched of the Earth (Translated by Richard Philcox) New York: Grove Press. Fanon, F., 1967. Black Skin, White Masks (Translated by C. Markmann). New York: Grove Press. Giddens, A., 2000. Runaway World: How Globalization is Reshaping Our Lives. New York: Routledge. Winant, H., 2001. The World Is A Ghetto: Race & Democracy Since World War II. New York: Basic Books. Bonilla-Silva, E. 2003. Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Freire, P. 1981 [1970]. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum. Read More