Language mastery determines how human a colonized black man is considered

Evidence

The Negro of the Antilles will be proportionately whiter –that is, he will come closer to being a real human being –in direct ratio to his mastery of the French language. … A man who has a language consequently possesses the world expressed and implied by that language. What we are getting at becomes plain: Mastery of language affords remarkable power. — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 75

Categorization

• DEFINE: This is the core thesis defining ‘Black Skin, White Masks’: linguistic mastery is the mask that whitens.
• XREF: connects to: Reading European literature leads the black colonial subject to enslave himself; Mastery of the colonizer’s language confers honorary whiteness on the colonized; Louverture redefined creole to include African-born people as part of a surveillance system (+11 more)

Related

• Mastery of the colonizer’s language confers honorary whiteness on the colonized (similarity 0.94)
• Western language defined the Black intelligentsia before they mastered it. (similarity 0.90)
• Mastering French makes the Antilles Negro whiter, earning honorary white status (similarity 0.89)
• The colonial seeks French refinement to prove he has measured up (similarity 0.88)
• For the Antillean Negro, mastery of French proportionally increases perceived whiteness and humanity. (similarity 0.88)
• The colonized Antillean internalizes the culture that enslaves him (similarity 0.85)
• “He talks like a white man” is Martinique’s highest praise for mastering French. (similarity 0.84)
• External education lets whites accept the black man as culturally white (similarity 0.83)
• Reading European literature leads the black colonial subject to enslave himself (similarity 0.83)
• Colonized people become psychologically whiter as they adopt the mother country’s culture (similarity 0.82)
• The black Antillean enslaves himself after being enslaved by the white man (similarity 0.82)
• Adopting the colonizer’s language signals an intensified inferiority complex among the educated (similarity 0.82)
• The colonial intelligentsia were themselves partly constituted by the languages of their rulers (similarity 0.81)
• Antilleans internalize European archetypes such that their anima and animus are white (similarity 0.81)
• A colonized intellectual living in Europe acquires Europe’s racist unconscious (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Adopting the colonizer’s language signals an intensified inferiority complex among the educated #expands (0.70) — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 97
• The Negro’s whiteness-seeking stems from overcompensation for racial inferiority #expands (0.60)
• Cultural imposition forces colonized subjects to identify against their own ancestry #complicates (0.50)
• White superiority belief coexists with black men’s compulsion to prove their intellect #contradicts (0.50) — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 38
• Both colonized and colonizer behave according to a neurotic orientation #expands (0.40)