America’s White Skin in Black Masks
Ihad a conversation with Frantz Fanon last night. And, nope, we did not discuss the vexing issues of the wretched of the earth. Instead, it was the exfoliating impact of the contact between civilizations as enunciated in black skin, white masks that was the crux of our discourse. And, guess what: Fanon rolled on the floor laughing all night long gasping for air between burst of laughter and a phrase that seems to choke him: “… a restructuring of the world.”
My encounter with Fanon was necessitated by the dreary act of Rachel Dolezal, who probably broke the internet a few days ago after her white, proudly American, parents with European roots declared her a fraud. This denigrating label was affixed on Rachel Dolezal with aplomb and gusto when her parents, a few days ago, revealed that their daughter is without any iota of blackness in her lineage: in other words, Rachel Dolezal is hundred per cent Caucasian! Since then, there has been an avalanche of diatribe on social media platforms castigating this professor of Africana Studies who, for so many years, has been parading herself as the progeny of an inter racial union. In essence, this lady, who until a few days ago was the Spokane chapter president of the powerful National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP), is another exotic quantum invading the American political landscape just like Barack Obama did a few years ago. For me, her actions are not disturbing because, as Fanon reminded me last night, “man is motion toward the world and toward his like.” However, what I find appalling is the insolence of the American society towards Rachel Dolezal. Therefore, it is the American hypocrisy that fills me up with nausea.
If Americans were not hypocritical, no one would have cast the first stone at Rachel Dolezal. Why do I say this? It is because every true American citizen knows that the US is the land of the free and home of the brave! This declaration is not just an empty boast that finds relevance only as the last line of the American national anthem, but it is the very essence of the American way of life which is always defended, with the US military might as the trusted bulwark. Therefore, the braveness of Rachel Dolezal in wearing black masks on her white skin should be celebrated because her action epitomizes the liberty that is American. Besides, why should she be vilified and crucified by mortals if Amendment 14 to the US constitution stipulates that no state can even deprive any person of liberty “without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”? In my view, Rachel Dolezal’s rebellion against white privilege is not tantamount to an insurrection against the state of Washington or the US as a sovereign state. As a result, since she has not committed a treason, no one American has been born to “abridge the privileges or immunities of” Rachel Dolezal; that is, according to the US constitution.
Hypocrisy aside, the Rachel Dolezal debacle and the attendant trolling focusing on her actions depict a bulk of Americans as ignorant people who are oblivious of the provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. If Rachel Dolezal, within the provisions of the US constitution, is simply exercising her freedom to become physically a black woman in spite of her natural whiteness just as a well endowed masculine Olympian, Bruce Jenner, recently metamorphosed into Caitlyn Jenner, why should a vivacious white lady with an astute faculty become disparaged here in America simply because she chose to wear black masks? As far as I am concerned, there is no basis for the recrimination because, according to Article 27 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.” This provision, without any doubt in my mind, encapsulates the provisions in Article 18 and 19 that affirm that everyone “has the right to freedom of thought ... [and] right to freedom of expression.” Consequently, it is the prerogative of Rachel Dolezal, without any interference, to think that she is a black person trapped in a white skin and it is her right to participate, without any hindrance, in the cultural life of the black community. After all, just as Fanon quipped, doesn’t “white and black represent the two poles of a world, two poles in perpetual conflict”?
Another nature of the American public, which I find worrisome, is the unwarranted display of self-righteousness by those whose hearts may be described as the devil’s playground or else why should a tolerant, God fearing people always rush to judgment and fan the ambers of destruction at every given opportunity without taking into consideration the rights of other people? Here is the truth: America has always benefitted from its performance of blackness just as its national interest defines her foreign policies, and Americans of all ages know it. So, there is no justification for the recent hoopla because some random white lady chose to model her life after what is permissible within black culture. My crystal ball tells me that her parents, just like Madonna and Angelina Jolie, gave Rachel Dolezal ample reason to long for what she lacked at birth. Or how will one explain the parents’ penchant for the adoption of black kids? I am not saying that the parents are guilty of a crime for adopting black children, but I am only suggesting that they provided the inspiration for her unfettered embrace of her internal blackness since this may be the easiest way to explain her relationship with her four black siblings without being interrogated by a discriminating world. Within this context, Fanon interjected: “The neurotic structure of an individual is simply the elaboration, the formation, the eruption within the ego, of conflictual clusters arising in part out of the environment and in part out of the purely personal way in which that individual reacts to these influences [of the environment].
Rachel Dolezal may have awoken the world’s collective unconscious through her actions, but the universe should remember her performance as a harmless public declaration: “I marry black culture, black beauty, black blackness.”
Frantz Fanon laughs at this parody.