Bon Mots: Fanon on Racism

From his essay “Racism and Culture” in Toward the African Revolution (Grove Press, 1964, p.59-60), Frantz Fanon writes:

It is at this level that racism is treated as a question of persons. “There are a few hopeless racists, but you must admit that on the whole the population likes…”

“With time all this will disappear…”

“This is the country where there is the least amount of race prejudice… “

“At the United Nations there is a commission to fight race prejudice…”

Films on race prejudice, poems on race rejudice, messages on race prejudice…

Spectacular and futile condemnations of race prejudice. In reality, a colonialist country is a racist country. If in England, in Belgium, or in France, despite the democratic principles affirmed by these respective nations, there are still racists, it is these racists who, in their opposition to the country as a whole, are logically consistent.

It is not possible to enslave men without logically making them inferior through and through. And racism is only the emotional, affective, sometimes intellectual explanation of this inferiorization.

The racist in a culture with racism is therefore normal… One cannot with impunity require of a man that he be against “the prejudices of his group.”

And, we repeat, every colonialist group is racist.

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