Quotes from book
Black Skin, White Masks

Black Skin, White Masks
Frantz Fanon Original title Peau noire, masques blancs (French, 1952)

Black Skin, White Masks is a 1952 book by Frantz Fanon, a psychiatrist and intellectual from Martinique. The book is written in the style of auto-theory, which Fanon shares his own experiences in addition to presenting a historical critique of the effects of racism and dehumanization, inherent in situations of colonial domination, on the human psyche. There is a double process that is economic and internalized through the epidermalization of inferiority.

Frantz Fanon photo

“A white man addressing a Negro behaves exactly like an adult with a child and starts smirking, whispering, patronizing, cozening. It is not one white man I have watched, but hundreds; and I have not limited my investigation to any one class but, if I may claim an essentially objective position, I have made a point of observing such behavior in physician, policemen, employers.”

Frantz Fanon book Black Skin, White Masks

Source: Black Skin, White Masks (1952), pp. 31

Frantz Fanon photo

“What is there to say? Purely and simply this: When a bachelor of philosophy from Antilles refuses to apply for certification as a teacher on the ground of his color. I say that philosophy has never saved anyone. Wren one else strives and strains to prove to me that black men are as intelligent as white men, I say that intelligence has never saved anyone; and that is true, for, if philosophy and intelligence are invoked to proclaim the equality of men, they have also been employed to justify the extermination of men.”

Frantz Fanon book Black Skin, White Masks

Source: Black Skin, White Masks (1952), p. 28-29

Frantz Fanon photo

“By refusing to multiply our element, we take the risk of not setting a limit to our field; for it is essential to convey to the black man that an attitude of rupture has never saved anyone.”

Frantz Fanon book Black Skin, White Masks

Source: Black Skin, White Masks (1952), p. 28

Frantz Fanon photo

“At risk of arousing the resentment of my colored brothers, I will say that the black is not a man. There is a zone of nonbeing, an extraordinary sterile and arid region, an utterly naked declivity where an authentic upheaval can be born. In most cases, the black man lacks the advantage of being able to accomplish this descent into real hell.”

Frantz Fanon book Black Skin, White Masks

Introduction,page 8
Black Skin, White Masks (1952)

Frantz Fanon photo

“I said just above that South Africa has a racist structure. Now I shall go farther and say that Europe has a racist structure.”

Frantz Fanon book Black Skin, White Masks

Source: Black Skin, White Masks (1952), Ch.4, p. 92