Antilleans learned savage caricatures of Africans before ever seeing them
Evidence
I was perhaps thirteen when for the first time I saw Senegalese soldiers. All I knew about them was what I had heard from veterans of the First World War: “They attack with the bayonet, and, when that doesn’t work, they just punch their way through the machine-gun fire with their fists… . They cut off heads and collect human ears.” These Senegalese were in transit in Martinique, on their way from Guiana. I scoured the streets eagerly for a sight of their uniforms, which had been described to me: red scarfs and belts. My father went to the trouble of collecting two of them, whom he brought home and who had the family in raptures. It was the same thing in school. My mathematics teacher, a lieutenant in the reserve who had been in command of a unit of Senegalese troopers in 1914, used to make us shiver with his anecdotes: “When they are praying they must never be disturbed, because then the officers just cease to exist. They’re lions in a battle, but you have to respect their habits.” There is no reason now to be surprised that Mayotte Capécia dreamed of herself as pink and white: I should say that that was quite normal. — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 994
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to Mayotte Capécia’s self-whitening dream and the earlier chapters on the Antillean’s relation to Africa. — connects to: Depicting Africans as primitive legitimized colonial invasion and plunder.; Antilleans learned exaggerated myths about African Negroes from local rumor; The colonial image of Africa forced blacks into self-contempt — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 474 (+4 more)
Related
- Antilleans learned exaggerated myths about African Negroes from local rumor (similarity 0.85)
- Depicting Africans as primitive legitimized colonial invasion and plunder. (similarity 0.80)
- The colonial image of Africa forced blacks into self-contempt (similarity 0.79)
Broader Connections
- Antilleans internalize European archetypes so fully that they become anti-Negro
#corroborates(0.70) - The Antillean’s late-realized self-recognition as Negro triggers Negrophobia and neurosis
#expands(0.65) - The colonial image of Africa forced blacks into self-contempt
#expands(0.60) — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 474 - Sudanese slaves in Egypt were caricatured as cartoons and comic characters
#exemplifies(0.55) — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 787 - Sudanese caricatures in Egyptian popular culture coincided with Sudanese anti-British revolt
#exemplifies(0.50)