Mastery of the colonizer’s language confers honorary whiteness on the colonized

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 (#expands, via linked claim)

What is the origin of this personality change? What is the source of this new way of being? Every dialect is a way of thinking, Damourette and Pichon said. And the fact that the newly returned Negro adopts a language different from that of the group into which he was born is evidence of a dislocation, a separation. Professor D. Westermann, in The African Today (p. 331), says that the Negroes’ inferiority complex is particularly intensified among the most educated, who must struggle with it unceasingly. Their way of doing so, he adds, is frequently naive: “The wearing of European clothes, whether rags or the most up-to-date style; using European furniture and European forms of social intercourse; adorning the Native language with European expressions; using bombastic phrases in speaking or writing a European language; all these contribute to a feeling of equality with the European and his achievements.” — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 97 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Colonized people gain status precisely by renouncing their own culture for the colonizer’s; Colonized people become psychologically whiter as they adopt the mother country’s culture; Language mastery determines how human a colonized black man is considered — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 75 (+13 more)

Related

• Language mastery determines how human a colonized black man is considered (similarity 0.94)
• Mastering French makes the Antilles Negro whiter, earning honorary white status (similarity 0.89)
• For the Antillean Negro, mastery of French proportionally increases perceived whiteness and humanity. (similarity 0.89)
• The colonial seeks French refinement to prove he has measured up (similarity 0.88)
• Adopting the colonizer’s language signals an intensified inferiority complex among the educated (similarity 0.88)
• Western language defined the Black intelligentsia before they mastered it. (similarity 0.87)
• Inferiority complexes intensify most among the most educated colonized people (similarity 0.87)
• Adopting a new language evidences dislocation and the inferiority complex among the educated. (similarity 0.87)
• Colonized people become psychologically whiter as they adopt the mother country’s culture (similarity 0.86)
• The colonized Antillean internalizes the culture that enslaves him (similarity 0.86)
• The educated colonized suffers an inferiority complex precisely upon assimilation and rejection. (similarity 0.86)
• A colonized intellectual living in Europe acquires Europe’s racist unconscious (similarity 0.86)
• “He talks like a white man” is Martinique’s highest praise for mastering French. (similarity 0.84)
• Colonized peoples acquire inferiority complexes through suppression of local culture (similarity 0.83)
• The racist creates the inferiority of the colonized. (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• Language mastery determines how human a colonized black man is considered #expands (0.80) — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 75
• Adopting the colonizer’s language signals an intensified inferiority complex among the educated #expands (0.75) — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 97