Anti-Colonial Science: A Course Journal. Vol. 3, 2025. https://ojs.library.dal.ca/acs/

Intellect, Psychology and the Experience of Personhood Under Colonialism

Rosie Pryce-Digby

Psychology has been a divisive area of scientific inquiry since its beginning as it often models theories of superiority of mind and intelligence. Disrespect for the psychology and invalidation of the creative mind and intellect of Black people has been a driving factor of oppression and white supremacy. Europeans negated the humanity of Black people by attempting to prove cognitive differences and lack of intellectual abilities which resulted in the justification of slavery. The relevance of psychology and understanding the mind is highly relevant when examining effects of colonialism and oppression on people cross-culturally. Fredrick Douglass, in his 1854 speech “The Claims of the Negro Ethnologically Considered” provides insight into the reasons and methods Europeans and North Americans have used to discount Black intellect and justify slavery. He counters these claims by reconnecting the Black body to the Black mind. Lewis Gordon and Peter Adamson in the podcast “Lewis Gordon on Frantz Fanon” describe how Frantz Fanon furthers Douglass’s work by critically examining the psychological experience of oppressed people under colonialism. Together the two thinkers affirm the importance of intellectual freedom, respect of cognition, and recognition of the dynamic mind. They show how the field of psychology can be used for and against colonialism.

Frederick Douglass begins and ends his address to Western Reserve College by affirming Black intelligence and psychological creativity.1 It is evident throughout the speech that the orator wants to emphasize the discrepancy between the obvious truth that Black people are people with intellectual interests, creative minds, and unique psychologies, and the accepted stereotype that they lack any intellect or academic potential. Douglass raises Black people to the status of the white oppressor by reconnecting the enslaved person (and Black people in general) to their intellect and mind.

Firstly, Douglass presents the idea that an autonomous, working mind is what separates people from animals. He says, “tried by all the usual, and all the unusual tests, whether mental, moral, physical, or psychological, the negro is a man.”2 Here the orator proves common status of Black and White people through logic and reasoning. In contrast to this, Douglass presents the European’s attempt to dehumanize black people by stripping them down to exist as machines or technologies of production. The body, stripped of the mind, is only useful for labour and producing profit, like a pack donkey or work horse. “The whole argument in defense of slavery, becomes utterly worthless the moment the African is proved to be equally a man with the Anglo-Saxon,”3 he asserts. The only way in which slavery can be justified is by severing Black people from their humanity, which is the ability to think freely and critically. Further, Douglass defines humans in their ability to actively resist or alter difficult circumstances.4 Douglass’s and many of his contemporaries' pursuit toward the abolition of slavery and liberation of Black people also affirms their status within humanity.

Douglass opens his speech by comparing the educated mind to a “gallant ship, newly launched, full rigged, and amply fitted, about to quit the placid waters of the harbor for the boisterous waves of the sea... Before such an ocean of mind lies outspread more solemn than the sea, studded with difficulties and perils.”5 Here he embraces the metaphor of the body as technology, but by including the intellect. Education is the best technology to fight oppression. His audience at Western Reserve College was comprised mostly of young White graduates, but at a time when the College had graduated its first Black student. The metaphor of the ship can be generalized to all students, but it can also be directly related to the Black experience. Connecting the experience of the educated Black person to a ship recalls the history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and reclaims Black people’s experience under colonialism and slavery. In Douglass’s metaphor the ship represents autonomy, fortitude, capability, and hope, as he connects the body to the mind. This is the opposite to the imprisoning and dehumanizing slave ships.

One hundred years later, Frantz Fanon, an anti-colonial, revolutionary, Black academic and intellectual shows this connection between discrimination and pursuit of understanding the mind. His research in psychology, philosophy and psychiatry emphasizes the importance of investigating humanity’s psychology within the colonial context. While Frederick Douglass presents how Black people have been stripped of their intellect and human rationality in order to justify slavery, Fanon actually investigates the minds of the colonized. What is understood or perceived as mental illness is “a complex that arises from a certain social situation and political situation.”6 The mind, under colonization and oppression has to enter a state of cognitive dissonance to survive. Fanon, in his psychiatric pursuits categorized two types of people seeking psychological help. One type is physically unwell due to chemical imbalances or other differences, but the second type is “suffering because they are healthy.”7 A person facing oppression or discrimination on the basis of their personhood and existence should be unhappy in the society that enforces this. Fanon encourages political activism and social agency instead of prescribing pills that sedate the patient into further submission to oppression.8 His method and theory reaffirm the colonized’s intelligence, autonomy, and psychological intricacy.

Frederick Douglass and Frantz Fanon write in different time periods and cultural contexts, but together they demonstrate the importance of valuing human, especially Black, psychology and examining the psychological experience of those living under oppression. Douglass, in his speech “The Claims of the Negro Ethnologically Considered,” addresses college graduates and celebrates the radical achievement of education. He posits that a dynamic mind and strong intellect separates humans from animals, and when a human is stripped of this, they are subjugated into the role of animal. Douglass highlights how enslaved Black people in the United States exist (in his time) under these conditions. However, the orator notes that by reclaiming their intellect through education and creative intellectual expression, Black people can liberate themselves from oppression of the mind which will eventually lead to freedom of the body. Frantz Fanon, in the 1950s, investigates the unique psychological experience of living under colonial oppression. This affirms colonized people’s free-thinking ability, and he attempts to assuage the cognitive dissonance that many are forced to live with. Psychology has historically been used to divide and dissect groups of people from each other, but Fanon exemplifies how the area of scientific inquiry can also be used to fight colonialism and liberate the oppressed.

Bibliography

Douglass, Frederick, “The Claims of the Negro Ethnologically Considered,” Speech to The Literary Societies of Western Reserve College, Hudson, Ohio, July 12, 1854.

Gordon, Lewis and Peter Adamson, host, “107. Lewis Gordon on Frantz Fanon” Africana Philosophy in the Twentieth Century (podcast), September 18, 2022, accessed Mar 14, https://www.historyofphilosophy.net/fanon-gordon.

  1. Frederick Douglass, “The Claims of the Negro Ethnologically Considered,” (speech, The Literary Societies of Western Reserve College, Hudson, Ohio, July 12, 1854).

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  2. Douglass, “The Claims,” 123.

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  3. Douglass, “The Claims,” 129.

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  4. Douglass, “The Claims,” 123.

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  5. Douglass, “The Claims,” 120.

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  6. Lewis Gordon and Peter Adamson, host, “107. Lewis Gordon on Frantz Fanon” Africana Philosophy in the Twentieth Centry (podcast), September 18, 2022, accessed Mar 14, https://www.historyofphilosophy.net/fanon-gordon.

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  7. Gordon and Adamson, “107. Lewis Gordon.”

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  8. Gordon and Adamson, “107. Lewis Gordon.”

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