Fanon compares the ways in which blacks and Jews are hated, labeled, and excluded in order to bolster his bold claim that the suffering of blacks is worse than the Jews. The Jew was hunted and exterminated by the millions, but in society where the anti-antisemitism is far less brutal, Jews can go unnoticed by appearance alone. He goes so far as to refer to anti-antisemitism as a little family feud within the whites (Fanon 5). In an effort to label and exclude white (Jew) from white (non-Jew), anti-semites observe the Jews for specific tells that would reveal this other white’s Jewishness. Fanon describes this particular characteristic of separation and discrimination as “conduct” that is “perpetually overdetermined from the inside” (Fanon 5). Blacks do not share the luxury of the Jews that allows them to blend in with whites. Also, in direct opposition to overdetermination from within that the jews are subject to, savagery is attributed to blacks in what epitomizes “overdetermination from without.” Fanon believes the latter to be worse because it prejudges the behavior of an entire group of people based on their appearance. This idea is comparable to what is known as racial profiling; stereotyping all because of the supposed attributes of a few.

Later on in the paper, Fanon describes an interaction between black man and white man in which the black man has broken free from the stereotypes of overdetermination and, for once, feels like the free master of his own fate. The black man achieves this by joining and embracing the cosmic force of the world as opposed to entering an “acquisitive relation” with the world like the white man. Fanon explains how this “magic substitution” has imbued the black man with a greater poetic ability than the white man could dream of. The white man reaches into the pockets of the black man in a vain effort to reacquire the world. Despite despising blackness, the white man envies the black man’s union with the world. According the Fanon’s description of whites, it is futile to reach into the pockets of the blacks because whites refuse to share with or learn from the blacks. Before trying to share in the blacks poetic mastery of the world, the white man disregards the black man’s triumph as a stage of genetic development. This utterly deflates the speaker in Fanon’s paper who finds himself an orphan of the world who is once again subject to overdetermination from without.