MY new mistress proved to be all she appeared when I first met her at the door, a woman of the kindest heart and finest feelings. She had never had a slave under her control previously to myself, and prior to her marriage she had been dependent upon her own industry for a living. She was by trade a weaver; and by constant application to her business, she had been in a good degree preserved from the blighting and dehumanizing effects of slavery. I was utterly astonished at her goodness. I scarcely knew how to behave towards her. She was entirely unlike any other white woman I had ever seen. I could not approach her as I was accustomed to approach other white ladies. My early instruction was all out of place. The crouching servility, usually so acceptable a quality in a slave, did not answer when manifested toward her. Her favor was not gained by it; she seemed to be disturbed by it. She did not deem it impudent or unmannerly for a slave to look her in the face. The meanest slave was put fully at ease in her presence, and none left without feeling better for having seen her. Her face was made of heavenly smiles, and her voice of tranquil music.

But, alas! this kind heart had but a short time to remain such. The fatal poison of irresponsible power was already in her hands, and soon commenced its infernal work. That cheerful eye, under the influence of slavery, soon became red with rage; that voice, made all of sweet accord, changed to one of harsh and horrid discord; and that angelic face gave place to that of a demon

 

 

 

1. Identify and write out the sentence that best characterizes Douglass's new mistress (Sophia Auld) in that paragraph. (Chapter VI)?

Write an objective summary of the Lincoln (Abraham Lincoln)-Douglas (Frederick Douglas) Debates. This should at least have 3-6 sentences.

Name __________________________________       

Date ___________________________________

Cornerstone Readings: Frantz Fanon

Reading 1: Black Skin, White Masks, “The Fact of Blackness” by Frantz Fanon, published in 1952

In this text, Fanon describes the science behind the impact of negative stereotypes on black people. He describes the ways that white people have created a narrative about black people’s physicality, psychology, and culture. In this excerpt from his text, he begins by identifying some of the ways that white people have created this narrative, then moves to his realization of the narrative, and finally his rejection of the narrative. Many civil rights leaders were familiar with his work and used it to help spur their own thinking, ideas, and movements.

Directions: Write the answers to the questions below using evidence from the text in your responses.

For not only must the black man be black; he must be black in relation to the white man. Some critics will take it on themselves to remind us that this proposition has a converse. I say that this is false. The black man has no ontological resistance in the eyes of the white man. Overnight the Negro has been given two frames of reference within which he has had to place himself. His metaphysics, or, less pretentiously, his customs and the sources on which they were based, were wiped out because they were in conflict with a civilization that he did not know and that imposed itself on him.

[…]

And then the occasion arose when I had to meet the white man’s eyes. An unfamiliar weight burdened me. The real world challenged my claims. In the white world the man of color encounters difficulties in the development of his bodily schema. Consciousness of the body is solely a negating activity. It is a third-person consciousness.

[…]

For several years certain laboratories have been trying to produce a serum for “denegrification”; with all the earnestness in the world, laboratories have sterilized their test tubes, checked their scales, and embarked on researches that might make it possible for the miserable Negro to whiten himself and thus to throw off the burden of that corporeal malediction. Below the corporeal schema I had sketched a historico-racial schema. The elements that I used had been provided for me not by “residual sensations and perceptions primarily of a tactile, vestibular, kinesthetic, and visual character,” but by the other, the white man, who had woven me out of a thousand details, anecdotes, stories. I thought that what I had in hand was to construct a physiological self, to balance space, to localize sensations, and here I was called on for more.

[…]

[Some may say,] “Mama, see the Negro! I’m frightened!”

Frightened! Frightened! Now they were beginning to be afraid of me. I made up my mind to laugh myself to tears, but laughter had become impossible.

I could no longer laugh, because I already knew that there were legends, stories, history, and above all historicity, which I had learned about from Jaspers. Then, assailed at various points, the corporeal schema crumbled, its place taken by a racial epidermal schema.

[…]

I was responsible at the same time for my body, for my race, for my ancestors. I subjected myself to an objective examination, I discovered my blackness, my ethnic characteristics; and I was battered down to tom-toms, cannibalism, intellectual deficiency, fetichism, racial defects, slave-ships, and above all else, above all: “Sho’ good eatin’.”

On that day, completely dislocated, unable to be abroad with the other, the white man, who unmercifully imprisoned me, I took myself far off from my own presence, far indeed, and made myself an object. […] All I wanted was to be a man among other men. I wanted to come lithe and young into a world that was ours and to help to build it together.

[…]

All around me the white man, above the sky tears at its navel, the earth rasps under my feet, and there is a white song, a white song. All this whiteness that burns me…

I sit down at the fire and I become aware of my uniform. I had not seen it. It is indeed ugly, I stop there, for who can tell me what beauty is?

While I was forgetting, forgiving, and wanting only to love, my message was flung back in my face like a slap. The white world, the only honorable one, barred me from all participation. A man was expected to behave like a man. I was expected to behave like a black man – or at least like a ni[**]er. I shouted a greeting to the world and the world slashed away my joy. I was told to stay within bounds, to go back where I belonged.

They would see, then! I had warned them, anyway. Slavery? It was no longer even mentioned, that unpleasant memory. My supposed inferiority? A hoax that it was better to laugh at. I forgot at all, but only on condition that the world not protect itself against me any longer. 

What! When it was I who had every reason to hate, to despise, I was rejected? When I should have been begged, implored, I was denied the slightest recognition? I resolved, since it was impossible for me to get away from an inborn complex, to assert myself as a BLACK MAN. Since the other hesitated to recognize me, there remained only one solution: to make myself known.

[…]

I had rationalized the world and the world had rejected me on the basis of color prejudice. Since no agreement was possible on the level of reason, I threw myself back toward unreason. It was up to the white man to be more irrational than I. Out of the necessities of my struggle I had chosen the method of regression, but the fact remained that it was an unfamiliar weapon; here I am home; I am made of the irrational; I wade in the irrational. Up to the neck in the irrational.

[…]

So here we have the Negro rehabilitated, “standing before the bar,” ruling the world with his intuition, the Negro recognized, set on his feet again, sought after, taken up, and he is a Negro – no, he is not a Negro but the Negro, exciting the fecund antennae of the world, placed in the foreground of the world, raining his poetic power on the world, “open to all the breaths of the world,” I embrace the world! I am the world!

The white man has never understood this magic substitution. The white man wants the world; he wants it for himself alone. He finds himself predestined master of this world. He enslaves it. An acquisitive relation is established between the world and him. But there exist other values that fit only my forms. Like a magician, I robbed the white man of “a certain world,” forever after lost to him and his. When that happened, the white man must have been rocked backward by a force that he could not identify, so little used as he is to such reactions. Somewhere beyond the objective world of farms and banana trees and rubber trees, I had subtly brought the real world into being.

[…]

I put the white man back into his place; growing bolder, I jostled him and told him point-blank, “Get used to me, I am not getting used to anyone.”

Ontological: the philosophical study of the nature of being, becoming, existence or reality

Schema:  a conception of what is common to all members of a class

Serum: blood serum is taken from immunized people and given to others to transfer immunity

Corporeal

Malediction – a curse or negative statement about one’s body – in this case, black men

Historico-racial schema: a narrative created by white men that suggests white men as superior and black men as inferior

Historicity – historical authenticity

Racial epidermal schema – the internalized feelings of inferiority black people may develop living in an anti-black world

Lithe- agile

Fecund - bountiful

Reread the underlined sentence. What point is Fanon making?

According to Fanon, what two states of existence do black men live in?

Reread the underlined phrase. Who imposed the unknown civilization onto black men?

What is the unfamiliar weight?

Think about Fanon’s experience before and after the encounter with the “white man’s eyes.”

Based on this paragraph, what is a consequence that occurs because of the narratives white men make about black skin?

Based on the context of the sentence and paragraph, what would the serum do?

Reread the underlined sentence. How does the white man create this narrative about black men?

As Fanon thinks through the process of how white people have come to feel about people of color, how do their feelings impact Fanon? Cite evidence from the text.

What replaced Fanon’s own beliefs about his body? Explain the significance of this shift.

As Fanon discovers his blackness, what does he come to understand about the narrative white men have created about all black men? Cite evidence.

Reread the underlined phrase. How did white men’s narratives about black men make black men into objects?

Reread these underlined phrases. How does Fanon feel? What is the tone? Cite evidence in your response.

Based on the context of this paragraph, what is the “uniform” that Fanon refers to?

Reread the underlined sentences. Explain Fanon’s purpose for using these lines, paying particular attention to the words he chooses to use.

Reread these underlined phrases. What is the tone? Cite evidence in your response.

Reread the underlined sentence. Explain Fanon’s reasoning and conclusion.  

What hypocrisy does Fanon point out in the underlined sentence?

What is Fanon’s resolution? Cite evidence.

Reread the underlined words. What is Fanon’s point?

Fanon’s point is that judgment based on skin color is an unreasonable action, and that white men who judge based on skin color are themselves unreasonable.

What can happen when black men reject the narrative told by white men?

According to Fanon, what beliefs do white men have about themselves?

How does Fanon begin to change the narrative about black men?

How has Fanon’s tone shifted throughout this excerpt?

Fellow Countrymen:

At this second appearing to take the oath of the presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of a course to be pursued, seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention, and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself; and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it – all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war – seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend6 the Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other.

It may seem strange that any man should dare to ask just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not that we are not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh!”

If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope – fervently do we pray – that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said: “the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.”

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.

How does paragraph 6 contribute to the development of ideas in the text?