A major political change occurred recently in the United States of America and we are still seeing the ramifications of this event. On June 26, 2015, the US Supreme Court ruled to legalize same-sex marriage in all fifty states. Around half a decade ago, Frantz Fanon expressed his opinion on interracial marriage. Now, in the 21st century, his opinion on same-sex marriage would make a great chapter in his new book. The sixth chapter of Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks discusses his philosophy that white men internalize homosexual feelings for black men, specifically about black men's penises. His book claims that the "negrophobic woman is in reality merely a presumed sexual partner--just as the negrophobic man is a repressed homosexual (Fanon …show more content…
135). In other words, a woman who fears a colored man assumes the man sees her as a possibly sexual partner. The white men, on the other hand, subconsciously have a homosexual admiration for the genitals of a colored man. There are a myriad of ways to merge Fanon's points from Black Skin, White Masks into philosophical views on the highly prevalent topic of same-sex marriage.
Of course, some of Fanon's views would have to adapt to some of the perspectives of this century. For example, in order to successfully include this chapter in his modern book, Fanon would need to view homosexuality from a more complex standpoint. He cannot simply argue that it is a white man's desire for a black man's body. Perhaps Fanon would theorize that homophobic women are presuming to be the sexual partner of a homosexual woman, while homophobic men are continuing to suppress their homosexual desires. Furthermore, just as he viewed the experiences of women of color and men of color differently, more than likely he would have differing views about homosexual women versus homosexual men. In this society, homosexual men are far less accepted than homosexual women. Just as the color "black" was viewed as "dirty", sodomy is viewed as unclean. Fanon also asserts in chapter six that white men often use colored men as scapegoats; he could easily argue that straight men do the same to homosexual men today. Fanon would also have to recognize the strides taken forward in women's rights. In his book, specifically chapter three, Fanon seems to objectify women: "Between these white breasts that my wandering hands fondle, white civilization and worthiness become mine" (Fanon 45). According to his book, women were only useful to colored men, and even then they typically only served as a possession. This would not be a widely accepted view of women in this
time. Overall, Fanon could quite easily include a chapter about the emergence of same-sex marriage in a 21st-century book. He already has a great deal of material relating to interracial relationships and homosexuality that simply need to be adjusted to fit into the current topic. By changing a few of his perspectives and being aware of some crucial changes in society such as the increased rights of women, this would be a great issue for him to discuss. I would look forward to learning his philosophy concerning same-sex marriage.
Ted Dekker’s Black is a beautifully imaginative book with vivid and strongly rendered emotion; his parallels to our relationship with the Lord and the fall of man are both new and creative as well as highly accurate. The tale with Thomas Hunter, shot in the head by the mob, beginning to dream in another reality. A reality that is virtually perfect. It is here that he obtains prophetic information, which says that a virus will be made that has the potential to decimate a large portion of humanity. Ironically, it is Thomas’ prophecies that bring the virus to light in the first place.
My verbal visual essay is based on the novel The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill. The aspect of the novel I decided to focus on is the protagonist, Amniata Diallo.
The text suggest from various studies that sexual freedom and expression is still limited. How women and men are taught to view their bodies, how they view their autonomy, how they view pleasure, and how marriage is perceived as respectability plays into the socialization of sexuality (49). These studies reminded me of the numerous reasons that many women especially black women conform to societal beliefs and limit their agency and pleasure in sexuality. These socializations of sexuality transcend into gender roles and how gender is considered in kin relationships. Robert Evans and Helen L. Evans suggest in their study Coping: Stressor and Depression among Middle Class African-American Men that men have become a critical group to understand in order to better understand the social and psychological climate of the African American community. They suggest that family issues, employment issues, environmental factors, and racism were the main causes of depression and emotional distress. Acknowledging these factors are essential to acknowledging a communities well-being. While reading numerous studies on the family structure from polygamy to motherhood to fatherhood to black female-black male relationship, I continued to consider the role that post-traumatic slave disorder takes. I so often refer back to the slavery, but I began to ask myself can we really blame everything on
Laurence Hill’s novel, The Book of Negroes, uses first-person narrator to depict the whole life ofAminata Diallo, beginning with Bayo, a small village in West Africa, abducting from her family at eleven years old. She witnessed the death of her parents with her own eyes when she was stolen. She was then sent to America and began her slave life. She went through a lot: she lost her children and was informed that her husband was dead. At last she gained freedom again and became an abolitionist against the slave trade. This book uses slave narrative as its genre to present a powerful woman’s life.She was a slave, yes, but she was also an abolitionist. She always held hope in the heart, she resist her dehumanization.
Yang, G. & Ryser, T. A. (2008). Whiting up and Blacking Out: White Privlege, Race, and White Chicks. African American Review, 42(3/4), 731-746. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40301264
Since 1945, in what is defined by literary scholars as the Contemporary Period, it appears that the "refracted public image"(xx) whites hold of blacks continues to necessitate ...
After slavery ended, many hoped for a changed America. However, this was not so easy, as slavery left an undeniable mark on the country. One problem ended, but new problems arose as blacks and whites put up “color lines” which led to interior identity struggles. These struggles perpetuated inequality further and led W. E. B. Du Bois to believe that the only way to lift “the Veil” would be through continuing to fight not only for freedom, but for liberty - for all. Others offered different proposals on societal race roles, but all recognized that “double consciousness” of both the individual and the nation was a problem that desperately needed to be solved.
The black man is hence for white culture the “the burden of original sin” (Fanon 168). Racism in this way is essentially a kind of defense reaction, which, in a way, explains why racism so powerfully enforces and reaffirms relations of separation and distance – the white man wants as much distance
It is a great pity that with writers with an attitude towards race such as Hurston there is still such a negative attitude towards racial and cultural differences all over the
The above-mentioned essays are: Nihilism in Black America, The Pitfalls of Racial Reasoning, The Crisis of Black Leadership, Demystifying the Black Conservatism, Beyond Affirmative Action: Equality and Identity, On Black-Jewish Relations, Black Sexuality: T...
In Frantz Fanon’s couple chapters, “The Woman of Color and the White Man” and “The Man of Color and the White Woman”, within his novel Black Skin, White Masks, the reader is introduced to the sexual and psychological relations between interracial couples. Fanon analysis these themes through the use of the assumed autobiographical works of authors such as Mayotte Capécia, Abdoulaye Sadji, and René Maran, in order to demonstrate the theory that a person’s race determines their real reasons for entering interracial relations. This theory goes on to claim that the underlying goal of interracial relations for both the woman and man of color is to “grasp white civilization and dignity and make them mine.” Fanon goes on, mostly in the third chapter,
The lives of men and women, women more than men, have changed a lot of the past couple years even decades and more than that. The interconnection of race and gender in the evolving social hierarchy of the early South, Colonial North Carolina, has changed. In Colonial North Carolina the main difference was on how the ways of “ordinary people” interacted with different genders and how race was different between the people of North Carolina. Peoples’ beliefs were the main thing that changed these views, but sometimes it reflected on political beliefs also. Between men and women sex was seen differently. Men and women’s views on sex were far from similar and this has affected their views on race and their views on each other. Views on sex has been
In the “Preface” and a chapter of Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights called “The New Civil Rights,” Kenji Yoshino, the Justice Earl Warren Professor of Constitutional Law at NYU, questions the traditionally accepted idea of assimilation by bringing about the new idea of ‘covering.’ Covering, as Yoshino, describes it, is ‘to tone down a disfavored identity to fit the mainstream’(540). He recounts how he covers in his everyday life because he is homosexual and how even with the shift in societal views towards his sexuality, he still feels the need to cover due to what he calls ‘covering demands.’ The fact that Yoshino still perceives it necessary to cover his sexuality reflects on how there is wrongly a difference between our civil
I start with saying blah. I cannot in my mind imagine what it was for Fanon growing up, but he never embraces love for who his is. The racial slurs and dehumanization is in my opinion not reason enough to write hatred for what you are born into. Not once does he state philosophy on why it’s ok to be what he is. Instead he places himself into an “infernal circle” that he is embraced by white people in spite that he is black, but when he has an enemy they claim that it is so not because he is a black man.
There is an inherently [worrisome] aspect to the question of what is self and how can it be free. After all, is the self not so easily determined or identifiable? Should self not just be an identity shaped and defined by the specific individual? However, as recognized by Franz Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks, the concept of self is not so easily classified, nor is it so easily determined by the individual. Both observing and experiencing French colonialism in the Antilles, Fanon recognized the societal disparity that existed between black Martinicans and white colonialists. This social inequality between the black Martinicans and the white French demonstrated that whiteness, the physical skin color, determined humanity and anything less