Recognition by a European alone conferred racial status in the Indies

Evidence

To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture. The Antilles Negro who wants to be white will be the whiter as he gains greater mastery of the cultural tool that language is. Rather more than a year ago in Lyon, I remember, in a lecture I had drawn a parallel between Negro and European poetry, and a French acquaintance told me enthusiastically, “At bottom you are a white man.” The fact that I had been able to investigate so interesting a problem through the white man’s language gave me honorary citizenship. — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 148 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Colonial officials proposed legal recognition of European status based on visible racial traits; Colonial race was judged by conduct and affiliation rather than appearance; Returning Antilles Negroes are diagnosed by family as European if French prevails — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 140 (+8 more)

Related

• For the Antillean Negro, mastery of French proportionally increases perceived whiteness and humanity. (similarity 0.82)
• Colonial officials proposed legal recognition of European status based on visible racial traits (similarity 0.82)
• Three-quarters of colonial-era classified Europeans had partial native origin (similarity 0.81)
• The colonial seeks French refinement to prove he has measured up (similarity 0.80)
• French society grants educated colonial subjects status only by denying their Negro identity (similarity 0.80)
• The Negro in Europe is made inferior, not self-made inferior (similarity 0.80)
• Returning Antilles Negroes are diagnosed by family as European if French prevails (similarity 0.80)
• Mastery of the colonizer’s language confers honorary whiteness on the colonized (similarity 0.80)
• Europeans repudiate the colonial educated in their own image while ignoring his origins (similarity 0.79)
• Europeans hold a fixed, condescending concept of the Negro (similarity 0.79)
• A colonized intellectual living in Europe acquires Europe’s racist unconscious (similarity 0.79)
• Three-quarters of Europeans in the Indies were of partial native origin by 1930 (similarity 0.79)
• Colonial censuses turned diverse Europeans into a white race by 1911. (similarity 0.79)
• Mastering French makes the Antilles Negro whiter, earning honorary white status (similarity 0.79)
• Reading European literature leads the black colonial subject to enslave himself (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Colonial race was judged by conduct and affiliation rather than appearance #contradicts (0.80)
• Returning Antilles Negroes are diagnosed by family as European if French prevails #exemplifies (0.70) — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 140
• Mastery of the colonizer’s language confers honorary whiteness on the colonized #expands (0.70)
• Mastering French makes the Antilles Negro whiter, earning honorary white status #expands (0.70) — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 148
• Colonial officials proposed legal recognition of European status based on visible racial traits #complicates (0.65)
• Europeans repudiate the colonial educated in their own image while ignoring his origins #expands (0.60)
• French society grants educated colonial subjects status only by denying their Negro identity #expands (0.60)
• Three-quarters of Europeans in the Indies were of partial native origin by 1930 #expands (0.55)
• Three-quarters of colonial-era classified Europeans had partial native origin #expands (0.55) — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 896
• The Indies’ European population grew from 4,000 in 1815 to over 300,000 by 1930. #expands (0.50)
• Epistemic confusion itself characterized colonial governance across the Indies #expands (0.50)