Questions for Fanon: Black Skin, White Masks

• In the first chapter of his book, Fanon writes: “Every colonized people—in other words, every people in whose soul an inferiority complex has been created by the death and burial of its local culturally originality—finds itself face to face with the language of the civilizing language… (Pp.8 of the original text)?” What does he mean by this?
• In this chapter, Fanon seems to be arguing that for the colonized purposeful assimilation is concomitantly emasculating and infantilizing. Do you agree with this line of argumentation?

• Also on page 18 of the original text, Fanon argues that the Negro…will become proportionately whiter—that is he will come closer to being a real human being—in direct ratio to his mastery of the French language.” Do you feel this this argument is applicable to our educational system here in the United States?