Franz Fanon And W.E.B. Du Bois example essay topic

The myth that "all men are equal" has created false hopes for the people of color, who continually seek opportunities to excel, that just aren't there. They have been led to believe that intelligence and ambitions are key contributors to one's success. Even if they do possess ambition and intelligence, the dominant majority of the white population oppresses them. This type of oppression points out that new methods of struggle are needed, such as whose employed by Martin Luther King, Jr., Franz Fanon and W.E.B. Du Bois. Martin Luther King, Jr. advocated nonviolence to suppress oppression in his essay, "The Power of Nonviolent Action". King's factual and reasoned approach is intended to win his adversaries over by appealing to their consciences.

King realized that the best strategy to liberate African-Americans and gain them justice was to use nonviolent forms of resistance. He wanted to eliminate the use of violence as a means to manage and establish cooperative ways of interacting. Moreover, King states that the "oppressed people must organize themselves into a militant and nonviolent mass movement" in order to achieve the goal of integration. The oppressed must "convince the oppressors that all he seeks is justice, for both himself and the white man" (King, 345).

Furthermore, King agreed with Gandhi that if a law is unjust, it is the duty of the oppressed to break the law, and do what they believe to be right. Once a law is broken, the person must be willing to accept the consequences, which may be the penalty of imprisonment. The way of nonviolence means a willingness to suffer and sacrifice. It's the ultimate form of persuasion through words or acts, even if death is the only solution to be free from injustice.

Furthermore, Franz Fanon in his novel "Decolonizing, National Culture, and the Negro Intellectual" questions the basic assumptions of colonialism. He questions whether violence is a tactical assumption of colonialism. Fanon questions whether native intellectuals who have adapted western methods of thought and support slow decolonization are in fact part of the same technology of control that the white world employs to exploit colonized. Fanon states that in order for the native intellectual, "to ensure his salvation and to escape from the supremacy of the white man's culture the native feels the need to turn backward toward his unknown roots and to lose himself at whatever costing his own barbarous people", thus turning himself into the defender of his people (Fanon, 362). Fanon questions whether the colonized world should copy the west or develop a whole new set of values and ideas. In all these questionings of basic assumptions of colonization Fanon exposes the methods of control the white world uses to hold down the colonies.

Fanon calls for a radical break with colonial culture and supports violence as necessary solution for this break. Moreover, W.E.B. Du Bois's "Double-Consciousness and the Veil" portrays the invisibility of black America, the separation between whites and blacks, and the obstacles that blacks face in gaining self-consciousness in a racist society. The veil is symbolic of the invincibility of blacks in America. Du Bois says that Blacks in America are a forgotten people, "after the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son born with a veil" (Du Bois, 164). Du Bois struggled thorough out his career to prevent Black Americans from becoming a Seventh Son invisible to the rest of the world, hidden behind a veil of prejudice.

The veil is not a two dimensional cloth to Du Bois, but instead it is a three dimensional prison that prevent blacks from seeing themselves as they as they are but instead makes them see the negative stereotypes that whites have of them. Also, Du Bois exclaims that the veil represents separation of blacks and whites in America through slavery. The veil acts as a physical barrier that permanently brands black Americans as an "other". The veil in this case hides the humanity of blacks, which has important implications to the types of relations that developed between blacks and whites. Du Bois wrote "Double-Consciousness and the Veil" to show the pain and sorrow of the striving people and to urge people no to live behind the veil but to live above it. Ultimately, the methods of struggle employed by Martin Luther King, Jr., Franz Fanon and W.E.B. Du Bois to suppress oppression of people of color have undoubtedly influence the way people think about each other.

Certainly many strides have been made, but indeed racism still prevails. Not only amongst whites versus blacks, but also people of other skin color, races, political affiliations, etc. And until we all realize that we are of one spiritual community that we will never fully realize a total coming together.