It’s alternately disheartening and hopeful.
When he wrote Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon was analyzing his time–the 1950s and ’60s–and his world–Martinique, Algeria, and the French colonial empire.
But much of what he says about colonialist and racist mindsets, of the false sense of superiority and entitlement born of these mindsets, remains as true today as it was when he was writing.
In other words, the bankrupt logic used by colonialists to justify inequality and violence against people of color is still employed today for the same reasons.
Consider this observation in The Wretched of the Earth:
The colonized man is an envious man. The colonist is aware of this as he catches the furtive glance, and constantly on his guard, realizes bitterly that: “They want to take our place.”
If the colonized person is “envious,” the colonizer is scared shitless of losing his power and status. We’ve seen this fear in our own lifetimes, notably in Charlottesville in 2017.
But it has also appeared in other public displays of arrogance and ignorance, like when Megyn Kelly, then a Fox News host, felt obliged…
