Me, looking at you, looking at me
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Who is the black man if not seen through the eye of the white man, “for not only must the black man be black; he must be black in relation to the white man”. Fanon’s exploration of subjecthood, objecthood and the influence of the external world sheds light to the complexities of navigating identity as a black man in a white colonialist context. The notion of self and that of the black man’s body is only truly constructed externally. The way in which Fanon sees his body as a black man and how it navigates the world around him is influenced twofold: his sense of a body is detached as he must grapple with the reality that he must view his body as it is viewed by the white man. Fanon speaks of his desire to find shelter and hide his black body from view as he begins to see how he is viewed by the world around him; he, the subject of his world, sees the object that he is in the eyes of the prying white world around him. He thus becomes the white man’s creation of the black man he so wishes to prove he is not (Fanon, 86).
This notion of becoming the fabricated version of the black man that was created by the white man is also explored in Kendrick Lamar’s The Blacker The Berry. The idea of hypocrisy is woven in with a conflict between the black identity imposed on him by white America, and the black identity he himself wishes to claim. The point of overlap between the two, however, presents some nuance that Lamar seeks to navigate: should he be the “proud monkey” the white world around him so claims that he is? Or would he be perpetuating the negative stereotypes imposed by the white man, thus proving him right? Speaking to white America, Lamar voices that “You vandalize my perception”, which draws some similarity to how Fanon must perceive his own black body as the constructed, or even altered, version of it. Lamar’s perception of himself has been contorted, altered as he seeks to fight the stereotypes made by the “institutionalized fabrication and lies” of the white world around him, but also reclaim those stereotypes as a way of reconstructing his own black identity. Lamar speaks of gang violence and killing within his community, highlighting this conflict of identities for him as well as the hypocrisy he feels he is perpetuating. Despite trying to fight stereotypes surrounding his black identity imposed on him, the simple fact of violence within the black community invalidates his attempts at proving the world wrong. The mention of Trayvon Martin also perhaps humanises the internal struggle within the African American community and acts as a stark reminder that it is not always about casting blame on the people and systems that put the community into such dire and dangerous situations, but also taking accountability for the role he plays in perpetuating the stereotypes given to his community.
I found that Maimouna Youssef is able to bring in another layer of complexity into the conversation about gender and black identity. Though not so much to do with exploring subjecthood and objecthood, Youssef navigates her female body image as a black-indigenous woman confronting unrealistic white beauty standards and her complicated family history in a colonial context through the connection between her and her grandmother. Youssef speaks of not only having to deal with negative female self image, but also from a racial standpoint, she must deal with beauty standards set out by white norms since “self hatred and white supremacy are quite the pair”. The act of her indigenous grandmother brushing out her hair symbolises the difficulties of having to conform to white beauty standards as a black woman and the pain of understanding why she “don’t look like” her, perhaps alluding to her feeling as though her appearance unintentionally erases her indigenous heritage.