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Frantz Fanon who was a black French Caribbean intellectual and a psychoanalyst wrote a book in French called 'Black skin , white mask' . He wrote about all the subtle mechanisms that make the black man feel inferior . He was not talking about direct racist attacks , just the soft warm current that flows through you when you are a kid . He could analyse all that because he was a psychoanalyst . He happened to be black too .
I think that what he talks about happens to white children too , that soft warm current , no direct contact with racist violence , and lots of surface words , and just knowing that you are white , and 'better' . Of course that word 'better' would never be used in educated , liberal circles , but it is lying there like a snake all the time . I think it is time we had a European psychoanalyst do what Frantz Fanon did , but with the white child as the subject . I think it is time we had the courage to face the obscene ghosts we carry around with us .
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