Slaves granted freedom without struggle cannot grasp its cost or value
Evidence
But the Negro knows nothing of the cost of freedom, for he has not fought for it. From time to time he has fought for Liberty and Justice, but these were always white liberty and white justice; that is, values secreted by his masters. The former slave, who can find in his memory no trace of the struggle for liberty or of that anguish of liberty of which Kierkegaard speaks, sits unmoved before the young white man singing and dancing on the tightrope of existence. — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 800
Categorization
- XREF: Directly ties to the reader’s interest in how external education versus self-earned liberation shapes the colonial subject’s psyche. — connects to: A freed slave who did not fight resembles a servant performing the master’s role; Freed slaves feared the uncertainty of independent work more than slavery’s abuses.; Emancipation granted from without caused psychoses and sudden deaths among freed slaves — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 796 (+4 more)
Related
- Slave societies could trust only that slaves prefer life over death (similarity 0.88)
- A freed slave who did not fight resembles a servant performing the master’s role (similarity 0.88)
- Emancipation granted from without caused psychoses and sudden deaths among freed slaves (similarity 0.79)
- Ex-slaves had to surrender freedom to work as cultivators to defend emancipation. (similarity 0.79)
- Freed slaves feared the uncertainty of independent work more than slavery’s abuses. (similarity 0.78)