Retrieving Insights From Fanon: Systemic and Social Violence

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In his classic work, The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon laid out an extensive explanation of how an oppressed people, which does not fight fiercely and self- consciously against its own oppression, will witness the emergence of those who turn the pent-up anger, disdain and righteous rage they have for their oppressor into self-destructive explosions and aggression against themselves and others of their people. And in this month of marking his coming into being, and in the light and context of the recent rise of gang- related shootings and killings in the Black community, I thought of him and how relevant and resourceful many of his ideas remain for us.