BSWM

My friends and I recently formed a book club (I know...geeky, nerdy, whatever).  We're starting off with Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon.  I expect that this will be both a challenge for me and a joy.  A challenge because even though I am familiar with critical theory, I've had little experience with post-colonialism and psychoanalysis.  If approach well, I expect that this will be a growing experience.  A joy because I hope that this highly praised and important work will provide me more tools for thinking through current realities of racism and of contemporary forms of colonization.  Additionally, even as I read through the first chapter, I could identify some of his analyses in my own life, in my family, and in my work with the low income, black communities here in Washington, D.C.  I'll end this post with a terrific excerpt from his first chapter:

"All colonized people--in other words, people in whom an inferiority complex has taken root, whose local cultural originality has been committed to the grave--position themselves in relation to the civilizing language: i.e., the metropolitan culture.  The more the colonized has assimilated the cultural values of the metropolis, the more he will escape the bush.  The more he rejects his blackness and the bush, the whiter he will become.  In the colonial army, and particularly in the regiments of Senegalese soldiers, the 'native' officers are mainly interpreters.  They serve to convey to their fellow soldiers the master's orders, and they themselves enjoy a certain status."

-Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 2-3.