Black Skin, White Masks

“In the absolute, the black is no more to be loved than the Czech, and truly what is to be done is to set man free.”

Fanon's ultimate intention is not to extol the black man above others,but rather to end racialized thinking altogether so that is possible for all people to embrace a universal humanism.

"The Negro of the Antilles will be proportionately whiter – that is, he will come closer to being a real human being – in direct ratio to his mastery of the French language."

Fanon introduces the idea that whiteness and humanity are thought of as one and the same; a black man is not considered fully human. Language is one of the ways in which black people attempt to 'whiten' themselves – that is, to be accepted as human beings – and consequently one of the ways that racist systems are reproduced. 

"The black man who arrives in France changes because to him the country represents the Tabernacle; he changes not only because it is from France that he received his knowledge of Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Voltaire, but also because France gave him his physicians, his department heads, his innumerable little functionaries – from the sergeant-major 'fifteen years in the service' to the policeman who was born in Panissières. There is a kind of magic vault of distance, and the man who is leaving next week for France creates round himself a magic circle in which the words Paris, Marseille, Sorbonne, Pigalle become the keys to the vault. He leaves for the pier, and the amputation of his being diminishes as the silhouette of his ship grows clearer. In the eyes of those who have come to see him off he can read the evidence of his own mutation, his power. 'Good-by bandanna, good-by straw hat…."

This passage depicts the enormous symbolic power with which France is invested in the Antillean mind. The young Antillean who is leaving for France feels that he is getting closer to achieving his full potential and to finally making contact with Culture.