“He talks like a white man” is Martinique’s highest praise for mastering French.

Evidence

To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture. The Antilles Negro who wants to be white will be the whiter as he gains greater mastery of the cultural tool that language is. Rather more than a year ago in Lyon, I remember, in a lecture I had drawn a parallel between Negro and European poetry, and a French acquaintance told me enthusiastically, “At bottom you are a white man.” The fact that I had been able to investigate so interesting a problem through the white man’s language gave me honorary citizenship. — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 148 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The colonial seeks French refinement to prove he has measured up; Mastering French makes the Antilles Negro whiter, earning honorary white status — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 148

Related

• The colonial seeks French refinement to prove he has measured up (similarity 0.94)
• Mastering French makes the Antilles Negro whiter, earning honorary white status (similarity 0.94)
• For the Antillean Negro, mastery of French proportionally increases perceived whiteness and humanity. (similarity 0.90)
• Antilleans pursue French refinement to prove cultural adequacy to themselves (similarity 0.84)
• Language mastery determines how human a colonized black man is considered (similarity 0.84)
• Mastery of the colonizer’s language confers honorary whiteness on the colonized (similarity 0.84)
• Antilleans going to France to confirm whiteness instead encounter their blackness. (similarity 0.82)
• A few French phrases in Martinican education shape the young Antillean’s entire worldview (similarity 0.82)
• The newly educated black man speaks French to mark rupture from his past (similarity 0.82)
• The Antillean journey to France to become white reveals his real black face (similarity 0.80)
• Antillean students in Paris face a forced choice between white universality and dialect solidarity (similarity 0.80)
• The Antillean is made white by unconscious processes while lacking white skin (similarity 0.80)
• Antilleans claim superiority over Africans by being closer to the white man. (similarity 0.80)
• A few classroom phrases form the young Antillean’s entire worldview. (similarity 0.79)
• Western language defined the Black intelligentsia before they mastered it. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Mastering French makes the Antilles Negro whiter, earning honorary white status #expands (0.85) — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 148