It Is Justice? (cudgel convictions and the poorly whitened)

   One day, the Black seized hold of the White’s neck-tie, grabbed a bowler hat, dressed up in them, and left laughing . . .

It was only a game, but the Black did not let himself take it as a game. He became so accustomed to the neck-tie and the bowler hat that he ended up believing he had always worn them. He made fun of those who didn’t wear them at all and disowned his father whose name is Spirit of the Bush . . . This is a bit of the history of the pre-war Negro, who is only the Negro before reason. He sits down at the school of the Whites. He wants to be “assimilated.”

  I would gladly say that it is madness, if I didn’t remember that, in a certain sense, the madman is always “the man who has faith in himself,” and because of that saves himself from madness.

   If assimilation is not madness, it is certainly foolishness. To want to be assimilated is to forget that nothing can change animal nature. It is to misunderstand “otherness,” which is a law of Nature.

   This is so true that the People, elder brothers of Nature, warn us of it

every day: A decree says to the Blacks: “You are similar to the Whites. You are assimilated.”

   The People, wiser than the decree because they follow Nature, shout to us: “Begone! You are different than us! You are only aliens and negroes.” They deride the “Black man with a bowler,” bully the “poorly whitened,” and bludgeon the “negro.”

   I confess that it is justice, though unfortunate for the one who needs to be convinced by means of a cudgel that he can only be himself.

~from Negreries: Black Youth and Assimilation, by Aime Cesaire