We might add, quite between ourselves, as men of the world: ‘After all, let them bawl their heads off, it relieves their feelings dogs that bark don’t bite.’Ī new generation came on the scene, which changed the issue. Then, indeed, Europe could believe in her mission she had hellenized the Asians she had created a new breed, the Graeco-Latin Negroes. What? They are able to talk by themselves? Just look at what we have made of them! We did not doubt but that they would accept our ideals, since they accused us of not being faithful to them. We listened without displeasure to these polite statements of resentment, at first with proud amazement. It came to an end the mouths opened by themselves the yellow and black voices still spoke of our humanism but only to reproach us with our inhumanity. From Paris, from London, from Amsterdam we would utter the words ‘Parthenon! Brotherhood!’ and somewhere in Africa or Asia lips would open. These walking lies had nothing left to say to their brothers they only echoed. After a short stay in the mother country they were sent home, whitewashed. They picked out promising adolescents they branded them, as with a red-hot iron, with the principles of western culture, they stuffed their mouths full with high-sounding phrases, grand glutinous words that stuck to the teeth. The European élite undertook to manufacture a native élite. ![]() In the colonies the truth stood naked, but the citizens of the mother country preferred it with clothes on: the native had to love them, something in the way mothers are loved. Between the two there were hired kinglets, overlords and a bourgeoisie, sham from beginning to end, which served as go-betweens. The former had the Word the others had the use of it. NOT so very long ago, the earth numbered two thousand million inhabitants: five hundred million men, and one thousand five hundred million natives. ![]() ![]() Jean-Paul Sartre 1961 Preface to Frantz Fanon’s “Wretched of the Earth” Preface to Frantz Fanon's Wretched of the Earth by Jean-Paul Sartre
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