 But there is no alternative for Fanon. In one of the most important moments of the book, Fanon discusses the problem of diction and racial embodiment. The black person can perfect speech, learn to speak perfect French and sound like a sophisticated Parisian. That might promise a certain kind of liberation from the alienation in and through mastery of proper French. That is, if the black colonial learns to speak as well as the white Parisian, then perhaps there can be equal participation in language and its world. Yet, this is impossible because of what Fanon terms the epidermal character of race. To be black and speak with perfect diction is still to be black, and therefore marked as special, unique, and surprising. Fanon’s anecdotes in the opening chapter describe this as the surprise of white French people at the articulateness of a black French speaker. Surprise is a reminder of inferiority, not in the content of one’s presence, but rather on the bearing black skin has on the white mask of perfect diction. There is no escape from the epidermal skin. Embodiment frames linguistic performance and limits its significance. Fanon also remarks on how this fated-to-failure emphasis on diction in turn alienates the black person from his or her fellow black people—the desire to be white, Fanon’s characterization of the drive to perfect diction, means alienation from blackness and this lands the black subject, again, in the zone of non-being.