Fanon

Reading Fanon’s piece really made me think. Race issues are not usually something I like to talk about. I feel like it is just a very touchy subject, but I do think that it is important. I feel like reading what other think about race issues could help me develop my feelings on race issues. Obviously, we all know that we are not all equal. It’s really not right, but we all know it’s true, whether we like to admit it or not. I just think that it is always interesting to see what others think about the subject in order to get the wider picture or view on the whole thing.

I did enjoy reading this piece, but like others, I was a bit confused on how Fanon wanted to compare African Americans to Jews. On page 115, Fanon writes “all the same, the Jew can be unknown in his Jewishness. He is not wholly what he is. One hopes, he waits. His actions, his behavior are the final determinant.” Fanon then goes on to talk about how Jews are harassed and “hunted down” and horrible things such as that, but then says that it is like little “family quarrels. When I first read that I was like “what?” How can you compare that type of thing to a little family quarrel? I didn’t fully get it until I read on. What I think he means here is that every race, religion, basically anything fights, but within each race or religion, there are fights as well, not only fights about them from other perspectives, but also quarrels within them.

Fanon then goes on to talk a lot about African Americans and how they are effected by their race. One thing that I thought was interesting was on page 117. Fanon writes “the black physician can never be sure how close he is to disgrace.” On first thought, I thought “well, can anyone really?” With any race, we all can never be too sure? But what does Fanon really mean here? I think that with any race, it is hard to always be right, because no one is ever fully right about a subject especially on a topic such as touchy as this one. The question is really what is considered disgrace and what is not? Figuring out that draws the line on what is right or wrong without putting a title on anything. When a title is placed on something, such as race, it automatically opens a new discussion of right and wrong. Why does anyone have to be right or wrong? Is it a sense of pride or power? Or is it just simply human nature that there has to be a stronger or more dominant group? I never really got that, why can’t we all just be equal? We are all basically the same anyway, so when we “disgrace,” shouldn’t it all be the same anyway? Instead of figuring out the level of “disgrace” by the color of our skin? I hope this made some type of sense here. It sounded so much better in my head.

After reading this piece, I do feel bad for Fanon for what he went through, but everyday, people are still going through the same things. It just doesn’t make sense that skin color or culture can really make us as humans that different. I personally don’t think that peace will ever be reached, just for the simple fact of arrogance. If we all just put aside our own ideas, our own upbringings on the subject for a moment, we would realize that we all not all that different, but still I think that our upbringings and our own personal views are the very thing that allows us to create a barrier between cultures. The cycle is really never ending.