Coming back to Fanon’s “Racism and Culture” today. Easily one of the most incisive and insightful modern essays on the intimate interconnections between colonialism, racial oppression, economic exploitation and forms of psychological and cultural alienation.

Right now I'm thinking about Fanon's atheism and why it's helpful and relevant even for a theistic, spiritual and mystical engagement with knowledge production and liberation. #bothandnessofbeing

Very interested in getting my hands on "African American Atheists and Political Liberation: A Study of the Sociocultural Dynamics of Faith" to read, in particular, Michael Lackey's chapter on Fanon's critique of the God concept https://florida.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.5744/florida/9780813030357.001.0001/upso-9780813030357-chapter-2

There are too many gems from Fanon's "Racism and Culture" to share here but let's get into a few of my faves . . .

As we reflect on Fanon's "Racism and Culture", it's worth listening (if you understand French) to his original speech upon which the essay is based: His 1956 speech at the First Congress of Negro Writers and Artists (Paris)

The French text of Fanon's original speech "Racisme et Culture" is also available for download here (no paywall): https://www.jstor.org/stable/24346894?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

"To study the relations of racism and culture is to raise the question of their reciprocal action . . ."

"Etudier les rapports du racisme et de la culture c'est se poser la question de leur action réciproque . . ."

- Fanon, "Racism and Culture" (Haakon Chevalier's translation)

"Racism has not managed to harden. It has had to renew itself, to adapt itself, to change its appearance." (p. 32)

Here, Fanon begins to explain the emergence of "subtle" forms of racism as the consequence of shifts within economic forms of exploitation and colonial relations.

For Fanon, pseudo-scientific racism and biological essentialism are only the most "vulgar, primitive, over-simple" forms of racist ideology. "Such affirmations, crude and massive, give way to a more refined argument...These old-fashioned positions tend...to disappear." (32)

Speaking in 1956, Fanon points to "developments of the past thirty years" as explaining shifts in racist ideology and practice. "The memory of Nazism, the common wretchedness of different men, the common enslavement of..social groups.." +

"..the institution of a colonial system in the very heart of Europe, the growing awareness of workers in the colonizing and racist countries.. all of this has deeply modified the problem and the manner of approaching it." (33)

"Racism, as we have seen, is only one element of a vaster whole: that of the systematized oppression of a people."

Fanon now asks: "How does an oppressing people behave?" (33)

. . . then proceeds with an analysis of racist and colonial cultural destruction.

"We witness the destruction of cultural values, of ways of life. Language, dress, techniques, are devalorized . . . Psychologists, who tend to explain everything by movements of the psyche, claim to discover this behavior on the level of contacts between individuals." (Fanon, 33)

Throughout "Racism and Culture", Fanon employs a socio-historical framework to advance a critique of individualist accounts of racism, particularly discourses representing racism as an individual or psychological phenomenon.

Fanon's socio-historical framework brilliantly advances along several lines of intertwined theorization, seamlessly blending economic, sociological, cultural and colonial exegesis as he shifts between levels of analysis, linking the micro, meso and macro.

On individualist and psychological approaches to racism, Fanon explains: "Such attempts deliberately leave out of account the special character of the colonial situation . . ." (33)

This is a materialist analysis of colonial domination as intrinsic to racial oppression.

This analysis of colonial domination also foregrounds war and militarization as key techniques of racial subjugation: "In reality," Fanon says, "the nations that undertake colonial war have no concern for the confrontation of cultures. War is a gigantic business.." (33)

[This reminds me very much of the ways in which Du Bois and Martin Luther King Jr. linked their critique of racism to colonialism, economic oppression to militarism, although of course Fanon took a different view of revolutionary violence than both Du Bois and MLK]

Fanon, again, on the primary objective of colonial war: "The enslavement, in the strictest sense, of the native population is the prime necessity...Expropriation, spoliation, raids..murder, are matched by the sacking of cultural patterns.."

(Racism and Culture, p. 33)

"The setting up of the colonial system does not of itself bring about the death of the native culture. Historic observation reveals, on the contrary, that the aim sought is rather a continued agony than a total disappearance.."

Fanon, p. 34

"This culture, once living and open to the future, becomes closed, fixed in the colonial status, caught in the yoke of oppression...cultural mummification leads to a mummification of individual thinking...apathy...noted among colonial peoples is but the logical consequence" (34)

Fanon now gets into a really juicy and still-very-much-relevant critique of colonial, racist cultural appropriation and domination. "Thus we witness the setting up of archaic, inert institutions, functioning under the oppressor's supervision and patterned like a caricature" (34)

"These bodies appear to embody respect for the tradition, the cultural specificities, the personality of the subjugated people. This pseudo-respect in fact is tantamount to the most utter contempt, to the most elaborate sadism.."

Fanon, "Racism and Culture", p. 34

[A pause to recognize the brilliance of the phrase 'pseudo-respect' which works perfectly in both English and French!]

Fanon goes on to explain the "evolution" of colonial racism from its most crude, overt and brutal forms to more subtle cultural degradation (and subjugated modes of "inclusion") as being necessitated by shifts in economic and industrial relations..

"Thus in an initial phase the occupant establishes his domination, massively affirms his superiority. The social group, militarily and economically subjugated, is dehumanized in accordance with a pollydimensional method."

Fanon, "Racism and Culture", p. 35

"Progressively, however, the evolution of techniques of production, the industrialization, limited though it is, of subjugated countries, the increasingly necessary existence of collaborators, impose a new attitude upon the occupant."

- Fanon, p. 35

[Note that this is a thoroughly structural account of racist domination. Also worth noting that Fanon is rejecting psychological and individualist explanations of racism *as a medically trained* psychiatrist. The brilliance of this wigsnatching cannot be overstated.]

"The complexity of the means of production, the evolution of economic relations inevitably involving the evolution of ideologies, unbalance the system. Vulgar racism in its biological forms corresponds to the crude exploitation..." (35)

"The perfecting of the means of production inevitably brings about the camouflage of the techniques by which man is exploited, hence of the forms of racism. It is therefore not as a result of the evolution of people's minds that racism loses its virulence."

Fanon, 1964[1956]: 35

"No inner revolution can explain this necessity for racism to seek more subtle forms, to evolve." - Fanon, 35-36

This materialist account of colonial/racial oppression unveils the structural and economic conditions that make "less virulent" forms of racism politically expedient.

"In the very heart of..'civilized nations'..workers finally discover that the exploitation of man..assumes different faces. At this stage racism no longer dares appear without disguise. It is unsure of itself. In an ever greater number of circumstances, the racist takes..cover."

Fanon now launches into what was, for its time, a groundbreaking critique of white guilt. Everything expressed in this section, originally spoken in 1956, applies almost perfectly to current circumstances in 2020.

"He who claimed to 'sense,' to 'see through' those others, finds himself to be a target, looked at, judged. The racist's purpose has become a purpose haunted by bad conscience."

- Fanon, "Racism and Culture", p. 36

"It is a common saying nowadays that racism is a plague of humanity. But we must not content ourselves with such a phrase. We must tirelessly look for the repercussions of racism at all levels of sociability."

Fanon, 1956[1964]: 36

Fanon shifts his focus now to cultural racism in the United States:

"The importance of the racist problem in contemporary American literature is significant. The Negro in motion pictures, the Negro and folklore, the Jew and children's stories..are inexhaustible themes." - p. 36

"Racism, to come back to America, haunts and vitiates American culture. And this dialectical gangrene is exacerbated by the coming to awareness and the determination of millions of Negroes and Jews to fight this racism by which they are victimized."

- Fanon, p. 36

[A quick note to point out that Fanon has much of value to say about the interconnections between anti-Blackness, colonial racism and anti-Semitism. It would be advisable read his thoughts on the subject in conversation with George Fredrickson's "Racism: A Short History"]

Fanon critiques the perverse logic of "reverse racism": "The movement of groups, the liberation..of men previously kept down, make for a more and more precarious equilibrium.. unexpectedly, the racist group points accusingly to a manifestation of racism among the oppressed." (36)

Returning to his materialist explanation for the emergence of 'subtle racism', Fanon continues: "The need to appeal to various degrees of approval and support, to the native's cooperation, modified relations in a less crude, more subtle, more 'cultivated' direction'." (37)

[Incidentally, this is also a genius-level explanation of how tokenism, subjugated inclusion and oppressive incorporation are all intimately tied to subtle, obfuscated forms of racism. Very relevant, of course, to my analysis of 'rainbow white supremacy'..]

Extremely revelatory for current (and corporate) appropriations of #BlackLivesMatter :

"The interesting thing about this evolution is that racism was taken as a topic of meditation, sometimes even as a publicity technique."

- Fanon, "Racism and Culture", p. 37

"Racism stares one in the face for it so happens that it belongs in a characteristic whole: that of the shameless exploitation of one group of men by another which has reached a higher stage of technical development."

Fanon, p. 38

Fanon has now returned to his collectivist, structural analysis of racism as the characteristic of a colonizing society -- not as the trait of individual "hearts and minds"..

"This is why military and economic oppression generally precedes, makes possible, and legitimizes racism." - Fanon, p. 38

[Note the connection, again, between his analysis of colonialism, racial oppression, economic exploitation and militarism]

"The habit of considering racism as a mental quirk, as a psychological flaw must be abandoned."

Frantz Fanon, "Racism and Culture", p. 38

After addressing the responses of colonial subjects to racism (e.g. assimilation, internalized oppression and over-compensation through excessive valorization of subjugated/indigenous cultures), Fanon continues his critique of individualist approaches to racism and anti-racism..

"Developing his technical knowledge in contact with more and more perfected machines, entering into the dynamic circuit of industrial production, meeting men from remote regions in the framework of the concentration of capital--that is to say, on the job . . ." +

". . . discovering the assembly line, the team, production 'time,' in other words yield per hour, the oppressed is shocked to find that he continues to be the object of racism and contempt."

Fanon, "Racism and Culture", p. 39

"Having judged, condemned, abandoned his cultural forms, his language, his food habits, his sexual behavior, his way of sitting down, of resting, of laughing, of enjoying himself, the oppressed flings himself upon the imposed culture with the desperation of a dying man." - Fanon

"It is at this level that racism is treated as a question of persons. 'There are a few hopeless racists, but you must admit that on the whole, the population likes...'

With time all this will disappear.

This is a country where there is the least amount of race prejudice.." (39)

"At the United Nations there is a commission to fight race prejudice. Films on race prejudice, poems on race prejudice, messages on race prejudice . . . Spectacular and futile condemnations of race prejudice.

In reality, a colonial country is a racist country."

- Fanon, p. 39

[Here, Fanon is engaging in some breathtaking wig snatching, rejecting common discourses during his lifetime -- and ours - that represent racism as an individual trait that will 'die out eventually' or that misrepresent racist societies as 'the least prejudiced'.. +]

[Note that Fanon is *also* critiquing the proliferation of putatively 'anti-racist' claims and cultural forms which obfuscate the structural reality that a colonial society, that is, one in which colonial relations of power persist, is necessarily racist. And this--in 1956!]

"If in England, in Belgium, or in France, despite the democratic principles affirmed by these respective nations, there are still racists, it is these racists who, in their opposition to the country as a whole, are logically consistent."

Fanon, "Racism and Culture", p. 40

We might interpret Fanon here as arguing that overt racists are more logically coherent than their racist countries, which falsely present themselves as "democratic" and "inclusive". I'd quibble with him a bit, because there are many incoherences in racist thought. Nevertheless..

What Fanon also means to clarify is that racism within racist societies is normal. He says so explicitly:

"The racist in a culture with racism is therefore normal. He has achieved a perfect harmony of economic relations and ideology." (p. 40)

Fanon rejects anti-racist efforts to change "hearts and minds." He states: "Forgetting racism as a consequence, one concentrates on racism as cause. Campaigns of deintoxication are launched. Appeal is made to the sense of humanity, to love, to respect for supreme values.." (40)

[Such individualist efforts to "enlighten" and "educate" can only fail to the extent that the structural/colonial conditions that produce racism are obfuscated, ignored and unaddressed. This is also why Du Bois finally understood that education is not enough to dismantle racism.]

"A society has race prejudice or it has not. There are no degrees of prejudice. One cannot say that a given country is racist but that lynchings or extermination camps are not to be found there. The truth is that all that and still other things exist on the horizon." - Fanon, 41

[I disagree with the translation here. Fanon clearly states in French that "Une société est raciste ou ne l'est pas." This means "A society is RACIST or it isn't." There is no mention of prejudice. I'd argue the translator is invoking the individualist frame that Fanon rejects.]

[The translator is also wrong to interpret Fanon's phrase "Il n'existe pas de degrés du racism" as "There are no degrees of race prejudice." The man stated very clearly that there are no degrees of RACISM. Again, there was no mention of 'race prejudice' in the original French.]

.. This is why I like to read the original French alongside any translation. I also need to find out who has done the best English translations of Fanon ..

There’s so much in this text that demonstrates disturbing continuities between forms of epistemological ignorance in Fanon’s day and our own.. particularly around the nature of racism and discourses of “antiracism” that obfuscate far more than they reveal.