A black woman’s longing to marry white reflects a vast internalized delusion

Evidence

For after all we have a right to be perturbed when we read, in Je suis Martiniquaise: “I should have liked to be married, but to a white man. But a woman of color is never altogether respectable in a white man’s eyes. Even when he loves her. I knew that.” This passage, which serves in a way as the conclusion of a vast delusion, prods one’s brain. One day a woman named Mayotte Capécia, obeying a motivation whose elements are difficult to detect, sat down to write 202 pages–her life–in which the most ridiculous ideas proliferated at random. — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 159

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader ‘Black Skin, White Masks’ theme of internalized inferiority and to Fanon’s own project in the rest of the book; also links to later psychoanalytic readings of colonial desire. — connects to: Light-skinned Negroes reject darker blacks and seek whiteness through marriage; The woman of color’s love is directed at whiteness itself, not the man; The white woman’s pursuit of Negro lovers sought self-dissolution she could not attain — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 616 (+5 more)

Related

• The woman of color’s love is directed at whiteness itself, not the man (similarity 0.90)
• Black women’s professed love for white men reorders as love of whiteness itself (similarity 0.87)
• Antillean women seek whiteness through desiring lighter-skinned partners (similarity 0.86)
• The white woman’s pursuit of Negro lovers sought self-dissolution she could not attain (similarity 0.83)
• Colonial desire inverts cause and effect, making whiteness the true object of love (similarity 0.82)
• Light-skinned Negroes reject darker blacks and seek whiteness through marriage (similarity 0.81)
• Educated Black men reject darker compatriots by marrying toward whiteness (similarity 0.81)
• Interracial marriage can serve the colored spouse as a bid for deracialization and equality (similarity 0.80)
• Negress and mulatto women pursue distinct psychic projects of whitening (similarity 0.79)
• The Black man needs white authorization even to accept love. (similarity 0.79)
• White-imposed dehumanization drives the black subject to seek whiteness (similarity 0.79)
• The educated black man offers love with fear and self-abasement to whiter women (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Colonial desire inverts cause and effect, making whiteness the true object of love #expands (0.80)
• Antillean women seek whiteness through desiring lighter-skinned partners #corroborates (0.70) — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 171
• White-imposed dehumanization drives the black subject to seek whiteness #expands (0.70)
• Educated Black men reject darker compatriots by marrying toward whiteness #corroborates (0.50)