Education and refinement could qualify blackness in Antillean social judgment

Evidence

During the Second World War, teachers went from Guadeloupe to Fort-de-France to correct the examinations of candidates for the baccalaureate, and, driven by curiosity, I went to the hotel where they were staying, simply in order to see Monsieur B., a philosophy teacher who was supposed to be remarkably black; as the Martinicans say, not without a certain irony, he was “blue.” One family in particular has an excellent reputation: “They’re very black, but they’re all quite nice.” One of them, in fact, is a piano teacher and a former student at the Conservatoire in Paris, another is a teacher of natural science in the girls’ academy, etc. The father was given to walking up and down his balcony every evening at sunset; after a certain time of night, it was always said, he became invisible. Of another family, who lived in the country, it was said that on nights when there was a power failure the children had to laugh so that their parents would know that they were there. On Mondays, very carefully got up in their white linen suits, certain Martinican officials, in the local figure of speech, “looked like prunes in a bowl of milk.” — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 995

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘prunes in a bowl of milk’ and educated black families show the local valuation system that external education then disrupts — core to the reader’s education-contrast analysis. — connects to: Antillean morality requires erasing blackness from consciousness; Educated women of color who disavow blackness pass that pathology on to students; Local colonial schooling shapes Antillean boys to identify with whiteness and disavow their blackness (+21 more)

Related

• Color becomes the judgment criterion regardless of education or attainment (similarity 0.86)
• A few French phrases in Martinican education shape the young Antillean’s entire worldview (similarity 0.85)
• For the Antillean Negro, mastery of French proportionally increases perceived whiteness and humanity. (similarity 0.85)
• A few classroom phrases form the young Antillean’s entire worldview. (similarity 0.82)
• In the Antilles, perception of people always occurs in white terms (similarity 0.81)
• Black middle-class respectability stigmatized calypso as lower-class degeneracy (similarity 0.81)
• No Antillean could think of himself as a Negro until Aimé Césaire appeared (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 0.79)
• Fanon’s claims are scoped to Antillean blacks, not Africans (similarity 0.79)
• External education lets whites accept the black man as culturally white (similarity 0.79)
• The Martinican compares with peers through the white man as standard (similarity 0.79)
• Antillean morality requires erasing blackness from consciousness (similarity 0.79)
• Antilleans going to France to confirm whiteness instead encounter their blackness. (similarity 0.79)
• Antillean folklore and mate-choice rules enforce avoidance of the darkest skin (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Fanon’s claims are scoped to Antillean blacks, not Africans #corroborates (0.75) — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 69