Analysis # 7 Ethnicity Studies

Black Hair, Blonde Masks
Analysis on Ethnicity studies through cross cultural influences of America on Japanese fashion and maybe more

"The white man is sealed in his whiteness. The black man in his blackness"(9). Though Fanon Frantz brings out this concept in "Black Skin, White Masks, he reveals that the widely held, subconscious wrench that is thrown in is that "for the black man there is only one destiny. And it is white" (10) It is the ultimate place that he saw a certain class of black people drawing their visions from, their day to day goals and instillations of values for their children. Today we see a parallel, in the area of America still being a desirable place, the land of the free and better education; a place where people from all over the world want to reproduce the Hollywood style and glamor. Whereas Langston Hughes stands for identifying one's self not as a poet, but a black poet. Because he says "it is the duty of the younger Negro artist, if he accepts any duties at all from outsiders, to change through the force of his art that old whispering "I want to be white," hidden in the aspirations of his people, to "Why should I want to be white? I am a Negro- and beautiful! (1316).
So in this case, of the modern Japanese girls who bleach their hair and make their skin bronzed, we are not just dealing with fashion, but a desire to be like Americans in many other ways. From the older, more traditional generation, we see a new generation, adapting the culture and lifestyle of Americans. Langston Hughes would say that these girls, called gangurus, are Japanese, not American, and to be all that you are inside, not trying to conform to some idealistic lifestyle or different way of living than what they are used to for the sake of envy or what people will think of them. To hold on to your own culture and accept who you really are. I would like to think it is only for reasons of fashion, but you never know.

Works Cited

Hughes, Langston "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain." The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: Norton, 2001. 1313-317. Print.

Fanon, Frantz, Black Skin, White Masks. Trans. by Charles Lam Markmann. London: Pluto, 1986.