She was raped. Rape is a crime against humanity—inexcusable, a pure violation. Right? For Lucy and the residents of Grahamstown, it’s a lot more complicated. They’re living in a different place from
Cape Town, and the social rules there are different. If apartheid has just ended, then there’s most likely a bitter aftertaste amid the social and political reconstruction. Lucy acknowledges the injustice of the rape, but she does not file a report or pursue her attackers to procure justice. She is afraid of them still, but admits that she can do nothing: “I think I am in their territory. They have marked me. They will come back for me.” David doesn’t understand—he tells her to leave, as he thinks this the rational thing to do. “What if that is the price one has to pay for staying on?” Lucy asks. “Why should I be allowed to live here without paying?” (158). David thinks he’s beginning to understand. “They want you to be their slave,” he says (159). “Not slavery,” she replies. “Subjection. Subjugation” (159). Does she feel like she deserved this? That she had to “take one for the team,” so to speak?
In no way does Fanon condone rape or violence as a solution to racism. But his essay helps explain the possible motives for the rape and for Lucy’s reaction. The black man, according to Fanon, wants to reclaim his “negritude” and to hold onto his past. That past, however, is scarred and painful. It’s the painful part that the white man won’t let go—the remnants of Jim Crow laws, of segregation, of racist remarks. Fanon points out that “there will always be a world between you and us…The other’s total inability to liquidate the past once and for all” (122). Perhaps Lucy recognizes that these men have hearts that hold a past of oppression and violence, and knows that the violence finds an outlet through herself, a white woman. Fanon proclaims, “My cry grew more violent: I am a Negro, I am a Negro, I am a Negro…” (138). The rape could also be an assertion of the black man’s presence. We are here, they say, We exist, and we’re human.
