Thoughts on Fanon's article

In this week's post, I'll respond to this quotation from Fanon's article.

"To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture. The Antilles Negro who wants to be white will be the whiter as he gains greater mastery of the cultural tool that language is."

The main point here is that the mastery of the language of the dominant culture enables one to assume a culture. For some reason, I immediately thought of Obama. He's now the first African-American president of the US, and by extension also the most powerful person in the whole world yada yada ... but at the same time, is Obama "black" or "white" ??? Yes, he has a black body, but in many ways, he's also white. He's not only really well-educated (all the great schools!), speaks well, speaks the language of the educated white Americans etc; or perhaps we can consider him as black in a way that is acceptable to many whites. In many ways, Obama's success at being able to "take on a world" can be attributed to his being able to "gain greater mastery of the cultural tool" of the Americans. In comparison however, if we were to come across a black drunkard in an alley, we would immediately classify him as a black. But of course, this black drunkard speaks the same English as Obama, so I think the question then to ask is if they're speaking the same language?

Whilst writing this blogpost, I suddenly thought of a show that I use to be quite crazy over. "mind your language"-- in which Mr Brown teaches a class of foreigners English and all the cultural stereotypes start showing themselves. It's hilarious, okay, maybe also racist. But at the same time it shows how we can all be speaking the same English, but actually speaking a different language.