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= Frantz Fanon on Jews =

Background: Fanon and Jews

Frantz Fanon was a psychiatrist and philosopher who had a great impact on post-colonial minority self advancement. As a Pan-Africanist, Fanon's ideology combines the passion of Marcus Garvey and the rationality of W.E.B DuBois. In his book Black Skin, White Masks(1952), Fanon psychoanalyzed the oppressed Black person who is perceived to have to be a lesser creature in the White world that they live in. He described how they navigate the world through a performance of Whiteness. Fanon showed parallels between Blacks and Jews in his work. He claimed that antisemitism and black racism are eventually the same since they reflect the society's effort to make certain groups of people feel non human. He often drew comparisons between antisemitism and black racism to display their similarities and differences and to show the uniqueness of black racism. Fanon believed that when it comes to the cause of discrimination, subtle differences can be observed between the two victim groups. Both Jews and Blacks are feared by similar traits such as sexual danger to white women or laziness, but Jewishness is more ideological and Blackness is more physical because Jewishness cannot be easily detected physically but Blackness can.

A Comparison Between Black Racism and Antisemitism

Fanon explored the true meaning of blackness in chapter five of Black Skin, White Masks. As a psychiatrist, he pointed out that there is a pattern of thought in people's cognitive system that categorizes information and organizes inter-category relations. Fanon believed that the concept of blackness is formed based on the observation that black people have different physical appearances and fact that white people cannot see past the physical differences. A white man would automatically categorize a black man as different from himself. He would also associate the black man with colonial history. Therefore Fanon reached the conclusion that blackness is a label that was created in, and will always be implemented as, the reverse of whiteness due to the intuitive categorization of Whites. In other words a black man does not have the choice to be white. Fanon thus stressed that the practices of individual and collective self-recognition through the revaluation of black culture, history, and identity should be a crucial part of the struggles against black racism .

Agreeing with Sartre, Fanon defined jewishness as a product of external views. He claimed that a person is a jew only if everyone around him or her label him as jewish. Comparing to blackness, jewishness is not based on the cognitive intuition from physical differences, which means that a jew can be white if he or she does not show evidence that will convince others to put the jewish label on him or her. Fanon pulled from Sartre's work to argue that antisemitism is not a consequence of rationality, that it's incorrect to characterize antisemitism as a system directed to particular groups to suppress their rights to be human. In other words, antisemitism is often triggered by dissatisfaction, passion and non-rationality(just like the Leo Frank case). So as long as such emotions are not triggered, Jews can blend into the White society. Fanon claimed that the major difference between antisemitism and black racism is the difference between an idea and an observation, that blackness is based on a visible difference and jewishness is based on an emotion outburst. Therefore logically the impact of self-recognition is less significant on Jews but more significant on Blacks.