Is Racism Best Understood as a Social Pathology or a Social Injustice?
March 2020
In this paper, I will summarize Franz Fanon’s account of race in postcolonial society and argue that Fanon’s ambiguous conception of racism is a combination of social injustice and social pathology and can be defined as something that equally impacts everyone in society. In making this argument, I will adopt Fanon’s two approaches in diagnosing racism in Black Skin, White Masks (BSWM): 1) Alfred Adler’s psychoanalytic tradition; 2) G. W. F. Hegel’s concept of mutual recognition. Through these approaches, we can better understand racism as a whole and advance our understanding of the colonial effects on Black society. I will then use Jean-Paul Sartre’s theory of existentialism to explain whether Fanon believes there is a way to recover from the effects of racism and colonialism in the pursuit of attaining a good life.
Fanon views racism as a hierarchy of superiority and inferiority that is politically produced and reproduced by colonialists in a domination structure. In this structure, people are divided into the categories of ‘human’ and ‘inhuman’. Those deemed human are socially recognized in their humanity as human beings with subjectivity and with access to human rights. Those deemed subhuman are considered non-human, and their humanity is questioned and denied. With this deconstructed definition of racism, it is easier to tackle Fanon’s use of the Adlerian and Hegelian diagnoses of psychological pathologies, which provide a deeper understanding of racial pathology.
Fanon uses Adler's theory of the inferiority complex, which posits an unconscious psychological sense of inferiority in individuals. The root cause of the inferiority complex is a recurring feeling of helplessness experienced by children at an early age due to intimidation from adults in their lives. Adler argues that these feelings of fear and helplessness lead children to focus their lives on compensating for their inferiority by aspiring to overcome it through age and experience. However, when a child cannot overcome the inferiority, it grows up to have an inferior life. Thus, the child's entire life becomes centered on a given plan for the attainment of the final goal. Fanon refocuses this theory beyond the individual psyche in claiming a strong parallelity with the Antillean Black society's artificial superiority.
Antillean society, as a whole, is “...a neurotic society, a society of comparison” (p. 213) that created compensatory strategies out of fear of the negative racial stereotypes held by colonizers. Thus, as a whole, they create an artificial neurosis of superiority. Instead of focusing on an individual’s psyche, Fanon focuses on Antillleans’ collective psychology for the broader goal of analyzing the social structure, since he believes the social structure to be the cause of the inferiority complex within the whole group. The social structure denigrates Blacks, which causes them to feel inferior and react to it by developing strategies “...to react with a superiority complex” (p.213). Thus, a feeling of inferiority is a direct effect of a collective structure.
The Adlerian account of racism argues that the pathological social structure in Black society is caused by a continuous experience of inferiority produced by the White people's lack of recognition. This gap can only be escaped either through the recognition of the Black person or through the Black person’s becoming White, which is unachievable.
Fanon applies the Hegelian slave/master dialectic to elucidate the Adlerian recognition problem. Hegel states that self-consciousness is formed strictly through reciprocal interaction. If this interaction lacks a) a sufficient expression of mutual recognition between the two parties and b) the understanding that both parties are dependent on the other’s recognition, it is incomplete. Thus, in the experience of mutual recognition, “they (the two parties) recognize themselves mutually recognizing each other” (p.217). Without this reciprocity, one cannot be sufficiently recognized by the other. Hegel explains this idea through a “master-slave dialectic,” which features both the master and slave waiting for recognition from one another. By not recognizing the slave as human, the master deprives himself of recognizing his own freedom, which is a requirement of his own self-consciousness. This means it is not reciprocal as it is one-sided.
Fanon takes this Hegelian reciprocal theme as the framework for analyzing the Black people who live in a condition of incomplete recognition. Fanon describes this incomplete, one-sided recognition as, “One day the white Master, without conflict, recognized the Negro slave” (p. 217). Moreover, “The Negro is a slave who has been allowed to assume the attitude of a master. The white man is a master who has allowed his slaves to eat at his table” (p. 219). Here, the master recognizes the slave but affirms his status, which means he does not depend on the recognition of the slave. In other words, the master has not reached the full structure of mutual recognition by its given definition.
Detecting the multi-dimensional distinction between social pathology and social injustice allows us to properly detect the ambiguities found in the above frameworks of analysis. The first dimension rests upon the level of impact- everyone vs. a certain group. A social pathology affects everyone and is a form of a social gap. In contrast, social injustice is a form of personal or group domination containing an antagonistic structure. So, not only does social injustice not affect everyone, but it also carries praise/blame connotation. The second dimension rests upon the norm across the two diagnoses. In the case of social pathology, it is the norm of a good life. Social institutions prevent people from living a good life. In the case of injustice, that is different. People’s rights are violated.
Adopting our clear distinction between what constitutes a social pathology and social injustice allows us to properly detect the ambiguities found in the above frameworks of analysis. The first ambiguity is when Fanon shifts from a diagnosed social pathology to injustice in the Hegelian framework. He correctly diagnosed a failure of recognition of the other to be a failure of attaining freedom, or the good life, as a social pathology based on the nature of the given definition. However, he fails to point out whether everyone else is actually affected (White people) in the example. Additionally, there is an element of injustice as it is someone doing it to another.
The second ambiguity is Fanon’s account of the slave/master recognition problem. For example, the slave and the master’s unequal power relations means that even if the master conferred recognition upon the slave, the master’s recognition of the power balance would not shift. The only thing that would actually change is the slave being named.
The final ambiguity is when Fanon concludes that the best way to end the incomplete recognition of Black people is to engage in the forceful struggle. By risking one’s life, one’s action indicates to the other a form of value and worth that surpasses mere survival. However, based on Fanon’s text, it is unclear what people are supposed to do to demonstrate this worth in a constructive manner.
In light of these ambiguities, Fanon introduces Jean-Paul Sartre’s ideas of existential freedom and indeterminism to help advance the idea that Blacks must become free and independent from their past and other people’s categorization; then, they must decide for themselves who they want to be. He states, “I do not want to exalt the past at the expense of my present and of my future” (p. 226), and affirms that Blacks should not be defined by reference for the past regardless of how positive it is told. This idea of freedom is in line with the Sartrean view, which argues that each human has the ability to define who he wants to be.
Regardless, Fanon’s conclusions remain unsatisfactory as they do not provide a sufficiently concrete solution. He provides a strong account of this bad situation, but he has no account of what the struggle for recognition will actually look like outside of the philosophical armchair. Thus, our understanding of Fanon’s conception of racism remains ambiguous, containing elements of both social pathology and social injustice.
Bibliography:
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks.
"View Of What Is Racism?". Jwsr.Pitt.Edu, 2020, http://jwsr.pitt.edu/ojs/jwsr/article/view/609/743.