A colonizer who rejects colonialism does not find a solution for his anguish in revolt. If he does not eliminate himself as a colonizer, he resigns himself to a position of ambiguity. If he spurns that extreme measure, he contributes to the establishment and confirmation of the colonial relationship. It is understandable that it is more convenient to accept colonization and to travel the whole length of the road leading from colonial to colonialist.
A colonialist is, after all, only a colonizer who agrees to be a colonizer. By making his position explicit, he seeks to legitimize colonization. This is a more logical attitude, materially more coherent than the tormented dance of the colonizer who refuses and continues to live in a colony. The colonizer who accepts his role tries in vain to adjust his life to his ideology. The colonizer who refuses, tries in vain to adjust his ideology to his life, thereby unifying and justifying his conduct. On the whole, to be a colonialist is the natural vocation of a colonizer.
It is customary to contrast an immigrant and a colonialist by birth. An immigrant would adopt the colonialist doctrine more slowly, while the transformation of a native colonizer into a colonialist is more inevitable. Family influence, vested interests, acquired situations, in which he lives and by which he is greatly influenced, and of which colonialism is the ideology, restrain his freedom. I do not believe, however, that the distinction is a fundamental one. The material condition of a privileged person/usurper is identical for the one who inherits it at birth and the one who enjoys it from the time he lands. A realization of what he is and of what he will become necessarily ensues, in varying degrees, if that condition is accepted.
It is a bad sign to decide to spend life in the colonies, just as it is a negative indication to marry a dowry. The immigrant who is prepared to accept anything, having come for the express purpose of enjoying colonial benefits, will become a colonialist by vocation.
The model is very ordinary and his portrait flows readily from the top of a pen. The man is generally young, prudent, and polished. His backbone is tough, his teeth long. No matter what happens he justifies everything—the system and the officials in it. He obstinately pretends to have seen nothing of poverty and injustice which are right under his nose; he is interested only in creating a position for himself, in obtaining his share. One protector sends him, another welcomes him, and his job is already waiting for him. If it should happen that he was not exactly summoned to the colony, he is soon chosen to go there. It takes little time for the colonizer’s solidarity to come into play. “Can we leave a fellow citizen in difficulty?” I have seen many immigrants who, having recently arrived, timid and modest, suddenly provided with a wonderful title, see their obscurity illuminated by a prestige which surprises even them. Then, supported by the corset of their special role, they lift up their heads, and soon they assume such inordinate self-confidence that it makes them dizzy. Why should they not congratulate themselves for having come to the colony? Should they not be convinced of the excellence of the system which makes them what they are? Henceforth they will defend it aggressively; they will end up believing it to be right. In other words, the immigrant has been transformed into a colonialist.
Even if the intention is not so clear, the final result is no different with the colonialist by persuasion. A government official assigned there by chance, or a cousin to whom a cousin offers asylum, he may even be a leftist upon arrival and develop irresistibly by the same relentless mechanism into a rude or cunning colonialist. As though it had been enough to cross the sea, as though he had rotted in the heat! The converse applies to native-born colonizers. While the majority cling to their historical opportunity and defend it at all cost, there are some who travel the opposite path, rejecting colonization and, perhaps, leaving the colony. They are for the most part very young people, the most generous ones, the most open ones who, upon leaving adolescence, decide that they do not want to spend their manhood in a colony.
In both cases, the best go away. Either for ethical reasons, not being able to justify profiting from daily injustice, or simply out of pride, because they feel they are of better stuff than the average colonizer, they leave the colony. They set their sights on ambitions and horizons other than those of the colony which, contrary to what is thought, are very limited. In either case, the colony cannot retain the outstanding members of its populations: those who came temporarily and are going back mocking the deception of the colony; those natives who cannot stand rigged games at which it is too easy to become a success without applying one’s full capabilities. “The successful colonized are usually superior to Europeans in the same category,” admitted a jury foreman to me bitterly. “You can be sure that they deserve it.”
The constant removal of the best colonizers explains one of the most frequent characteristics of those who remain in the colony—their mediocrity.
The inconsistency among the prestige, pretentions and responsibilities of a colonialist, combined with the disparity between his true capacity and the results of his work, is too vast. When approaching a colonialist society, one cannot help expecting to find an elite, or at least a selection of the best, most efficient or most reliable technicians. Almost everywhere, those persons occupy, by right or de facto, the top posts; they know it and claim esteem and honor because of it. The society of colonizers intends to be a managing society and works hard to give that appearance. The receptions of délégués from the mother country are more like those accorded a head of government than those for a préfet. The least significant trip involves a series of imperious, backfiring and whistling motorcyclists. Nothing is spared to make an impression on the colonized, the foreigner and, possibly, the colonizer himself.
On examining the situation more closely, one generally finds only men of small stature beyond the pomp or simple pride of the petty colonizer. With practically no knowledge of history, politicians given the task of shaping history, are always taken by surprise or incapable of forecasting events. Specialists responsible for the technical future of a country turn out to be technicians who are behind the time because they are spared from all competition. As far as administrators are concerned, the negligence and indigence of colonial management are well known. It must truthfully be said that better management of a colony hardly forms part of the purposes of colonization.
Since there is no more a colonizer race than there is a colonized race, there certainly must be another explanation for the surprising shortcomings of the rulers of a colony. We have already noted the defection of the best ones; a double defection, of native-born and newcomers. This phenomenon results in a disastrous complement; the mediocre ones remain, and for their whole life. This is because they had not hoped for much. Once settled in, they will be careful not to cede their position unless a better one is proposed to them (which can only happen in a colony). That is why, contrary to what is commonly said, colonial personnel are relatively stable. The promotion of mediocre personnel is not a temporary error but a lasting catastrophe from which the colony never recovers. The birds of passage, even if animated by considerable energy, never succeed in shattering the appearance, or simply the administrative routine, of colonial headquarters.
The gradual selection of the mediocre which necessarily takes place in a colony is further worsened by a restricted recruiting ground. Only the colonizer is called by birth, father to son, uncle to nephew, from cousin to cousin, by an exclusive and racist government to manage the affairs of the city. The governing class, solely of the colonizer group, thus benefits from only negligible inflow of new blood. A kind of etiolation, if one can call it that, is produced by administrative consanguinity.
It is the mediocre citizens who set the general tone of the colony. They are the true partners of the colonized, for it is the mediocre who are most in need of compensation and of colonial life. It is between them and the colonized that the most typical colonial relationships are created. They will hold on so much more tightly to those relationships, to the colonial system, to their status quo, because their entire colonial existence—they have a presentiment of it—depends thereon. They have wagered everything, and for keeps, on the colony.
Even if every colonialist is not mediocre, every colonizer must, in a certain measure, accept the mediocrity of colonial life and the men who thrive on it.
It is also clear that every colonizer must adapt himself to his true situation and the human relationships resulting from it. By having chosen to ratify the colonial system, the colonialist has not really overcome the actual difficulties. The colonial situation thrusts economic, political, and affective facts upon every colonizer against which he may rebel, but which he can never abandon. These facts form the very essence of the colonial system, and soon the colonialist realizes his own ambiguity.
Accepting his role as colonizer, the colonialist accepts the blame implied by that role. This decision in no way brings him permanent peace of mind. On the contrary, the effort he will make to overcome the confusion of his role will give us one of the keys to understanding his ambiguous position. Human relationships in the colony would perhaps have been better if the colonialist had been convinced of his legitimacy. In effect, the problem before the colonizer who accepts is the same as that before the one who refuses. Only their solutions are different; the colonizer who accepts inevitably becomes a colonialist.
Certain features which can be grouped into a coherent whole spring from this assumption of himself and his situation. These related features form The Usurper’s Role (or, the Nero complex).
As was stated before, accepting the reality of being a colonizer means agreeing to be a nonlegitimate privileged person, that is, a usurper. To be sure, a usurper claims his place and, if need be, will defend it by every means at his disposal. This amounts to saying that at the very time of his triumph, he admits that what triumphs in him is an image which he condemns. His true victory will therefore never be upon him: now he need only record it in the laws and morals. For this he would have to convince the others, if not himself. In other words, to possess victory completely he needs to absolve himself of it and the conditions under which it was attained. This explains his strenuous insistence, strange for a victor, on apparently futile matters. He endeavors to falsify history, he rewrites laws, he would extinguish memories—anything to succeed in transforming his usurpation into legitimacy.
How? How can usurpation try to pass for legitimacy? One attempt can be made by demonstrating the usurper’s eminent merits, so eminent that they deserve such compensation. Another is to harp on the usurped’s demerits, so deep that they cannot help leading to misfortune. His disquiet and resulting thirst for justification require the usurper to extol himself to the skies and to drive the usurped below the ground at the same time. In effect, these two attempts at legitimacy are actually inseparable.
Moreover, the more the usurped is downtrodden, the more the usurper triumphs and, thereafter, confirms his guilt and establishes his self-condemnation. Thus, the momentum of this mechanism for defense propels itself and worsens as it continues to move. This self-defeating process pushes the usurper to go one step further; to wish the disappearance of the usurped, whose very existence causes him to take the role of usurper, and whose heavier and heavier oppression makes him more and more an oppressor himself. Nero, the typical model of a usurper, is thus brought to persecute Britannicus savagely and to pursue him. But the more he hurts him, the more he coincides with the atrocious role he has chosen for himself. The more he sinks into injustice, the more he hates Britannicus. He seeks to injure the victim who turns Nero into a tyrant. Not content with having taken his throne, Nero tries to ravish his only remaining possession, the love of Junia. It is neither pure jealousy nor perverseness which draws him irresistibly toward the supreme temptation, but rather that inner inevitability or usurpation—moral and physical suppression of the usurped.
In the case of the colonialist, however, the temptation to effect the disappearance of the usurped finds its self-regulation within itself. If he can vaguely desire—perhaps even revealing it—to eliminate the colonized from the roll of the living, it would be impossible for him to do so without eliminating himself. The colonialist’s existence is so closely aligned with that of the colonized that he will never be able to overcome the argument which states that misfortune is good for something. With all his power he must disown the colonized while their existence is indispensable to his own. Having chosen to maintain the colonial system, he must contribute more vigor to its defense than would have been needed to dissolve it completely. Having become aware of the unjust relationship which ties him to the colonized, he must continually attempt to absolve himself. He never forgets to make a public show of his own virtues, and will argue with vehemence to appear heroic and great. At the same time his privileges arise just as much from his glory as from degrading the colonized. He will persist in degrading them, using the darkest colors to depict them. If need be, he will act to devalue them, annihilate them. But he can never escape from this circle. The distance which colonization places between him and the colonized must be accounted for and, to justify himself, he increases this distance still further by placing the two figures irretrievably in opposition; his glorious position and the despicable one of the colonized.
This self-justification thus leads to a veritable ideal reconstruction of the two protagonists of the colonial drama. Nothing is easier than to put together the supposed features of those two portraits proposed by the colonialist. For this, a brief stay in a colony, a few conversations, or simply a hasty glance over the press or a so-called colonial novel would suffice.
We shall see that these two images are not without importance. That of the colonized as seen by the colonialist; widely circulated in the colony and often throughout the world (which, thanks to his newspapers and literature, ends up by being echoed to a certain extent in the conduct and, thus, in the true appearance of the colonized). Likewise, the manner in which the colonialist wants to see himself plays a considerable role in the emergence of his final portrait.
For it is not just a case of intellectualizing but the choice of an entire way of life. This man, perhaps a warm friend and affectionate father, who in his native country (by his social condition, his family environment, his natural friendships) could have been a democrat, will surely be transformed into a conservative, reactionary, or even a colonial fascist. He cannot help but approve discrimination and the codification of injustice, he will be delighted at police tortures and, if the necessity arises, will become convinced of the necessity of massacres. Everything will lead him to these beliefs: his new interests, his professional relations, his family ties and bonds of friendship formed in the colony. The mechanism is practically constant. The colonial situation manufactures colonialists, just as it manufactures the colonized.
For it is not without cause that one needs the police and the army to earn one’s living or force and injustice to continue to exist. It is not without detriment that one is willing to live permanently with one’s guilt. The eulogizing of oneself and one’s fellows, the repeated, even earnest, affirmation of the excellence of one’s ways and institutions, one’s cultural and technical superiority do not erase the fundamental condemnation which every colonialist carries in his heart. If he should try to muffle his own inner voice, everything, every day, would remind him of a contradictory pose: the very sight of the colonized, polite insinuations or sharp accusations by foreigners, confessions by his compatriots in the colony, visits back home where during each trip he finds himself surrounded by a suspicion mixed with envy and condescension. To be sure, he is treated with respect, like all those who hold or share some economic or political power. But there are suggestions that he is a crafty man who knows how to take advantage of a particular situation, whose resources are probably of questionable validity. It is almost as though people are giving him a knowing wink.
Against this accusation, implicit or open, but always there, always in readiness within himself and in others, he defends himself as best he can. Sometimes he stresses the difficulties of his life abroad: the treacherous nature of an insidious climate, the frequency of illnesses, the struggle against unfertile soil, distrust by hostile populations. Other times, furious, aggressive, he reacts clumsily, giving scorn for scorn, accusing his homeland of cowardice and degeneracy. On the other hand, he admits his guilt by proclaiming the riches of living abroad; and after all, why not? He basks in the privileges of his chosen life: easy living, numerous servants, abundant pleasures (impossible in Europe), anachronistic authority—even the low cost of gasoline.
Nothing and no one can give him the high praise he so avidly seeks as compensation: neither the outsider, indifferent at best, but not a dupe or accessory; nor his native land where he is always suspected and often attacked; nor his own daily acts which would ignore the silent revolt of the colonized. In truth, put under accusation by the others, he scarcely believes in his own innocence. Deep within himself, the colonialist pleads guilty.
Under these conditions, it is clear that he does not seriously hope to find within himself the source of that indispensable grandeur, the badge of his rehabilitation. The excesses of his vanity, the too magnificent portrait he paints of himself, betray him more than serve him. He has always been directing attention beyond himself: he seeks this final refuge in his mother country.
His homeland must, indeed, bring together two preliminary conditions. The first is that it relate to a world in which he himself participates if he wants the credits of the mediator to reflect on him. The second is that this world must be totally extraneous to the colonized so that he can never avail himself of it. Miraculously these two conditions are both found in his home country. He will, therefore, call attention to the qualities of his native land—extolling them, exaggerating them—stressing its special traditions, its cultural originality. Thus, at the same time, he establishes his own share in that prosperous world, his natural tie to his homeland. Likewise, he is assured of the impossibility of the colonized sharing in its magnificence.
Furthermore, the colonialist wants to profit every day from this choice, this grace. He presents himself as one of the most perceptive members of the national community, for he is grateful and faithful. He knows, as compared to the citizens back home whose happiness is never threatened, what he owes to his origin. His faithfulness is, however, abstract—his very absence attests to it. It is not soiled by all the trivialities of the daily life of his fellow citizens back home who must gain everything by ingenuity and electoral schemes. His pure fervor for the mother country makes him a true patriot, a fine ambassador, representing its most noble features.
In one sense it is true that he can make people believe it. He loves the most flashy symbols, the most striking demonstrations of the power of his country. He attends all military parades and he desires and obtains frequent and elaborate ones; he contributes his part by dressing up carefully and ostentatiously. He admires the army and its strength, reveres uniforms and covets decorations. Here we overlap what is customarily called power politics, which does not stem only from an economic principle (show your strength if you want to avoid having to use it), but corresponds to a deep necessity of colonial life; to impress the colonized is just as important as to reassure oneself.
Having assigned to his homeland the burden of his own decaying grandeur, he expects it to respond to his hopes. He wants it to merit his confidence, to reflect on him that image of itself which he desires (an ideal which is inaccessible to the colonized and a perfect justification for his own borrowed merits). Often, by dint of hoping, he ends up beginning to believe it. The newly arrived, whose memory is still fresh, speak of their native country with infinitely more accuracy than do veteran colonialists. In their inevitable comparisons between the two countries, the credit and debit columns can still compete. The colonialist appears to have forgotten the living reality of his home country. Over the years he has sculptured, in opposition to the colony, such a monument of his homeland that the colony necessarily appears coarse and vulgar to the novitiate. It is remarkable that even for colonizers born in the colony, that is, reconciled to the sun, the heat and the dry earth, the other scenery looks misty, humid and green. As though their homeland were an essential component of the collective superego of colonizers, its material features become quasi-ethical qualities. It is agreed that mist is intrinsically superior to bright sunshine, as is green to ocher. The mother country thus combines only positive values, good climate, harmonious landscape, social discipline and exquisite liberty, beauty, morality and logic.
It would, nevertheless, be naïve to tell a colonialist that he should go back to that wonderful land, as soon as possible, repairing the error of having left it. Since when does one settle down amidst virtue and beauty? The characteristic of a superego is indeed not to be a part of things, to control from a distance without ever being touched by the prosaic and convulsive behavior of men of flesh and blood. The mother country is so big only because it is beyond the horizon and allows the existence and behavior of the colonialist to be made worthwhile. If he should go home, it would lose its sublime nature, and he would cease to be a superior man. Although he is everything in the colony, the colonialist knows that in his own country he would be nothing; he would go back to being a mediocre man. Indeed, the idea of mother country is relative. Restored to its true self, it would vanish and would at the same time destroy the super-humanity of the colonialist. It is only in a colony, because he possesses a mother country and his fellow inhabitants do not, that a colonialist is feared and admired. Why should he leave the only place in the world where, without being the founder of a city or a great captain, it is still possible to change the names of villages and to bequeath one’s name to geography? Without even fearing the simple ridicule or anger of the inhabitants, for their opinion means nothing; where daily one experiences euphorically his power and importance?
It is necessary, then, not only that the home country constitute the remote and never intimately known ideal, but also that this ideal be immutable and sheltered from time; the colonialist requires his homeland to be conservative.
He, of course, is resolutely conservative. It is on just that point that he is most rigid, that he compromises the least. If absolutely necessary, he tolerates criticism of the institutions and ways of the people at home; he is not responsible for the inferior, if he asks for something better. But he is seized with worry and panic each time there is talk of changing the political status. It is only then that the purity of his patriotism is muddled, his indefectible attachment to his motherland shaken. He may go as far as to threaten—Can such things be!—Secession! Which seems contradictory, in conflict with his so well-advertised and, in a certain sense, real patriotism.
But the colonialist’s nationalism is truly of a special nature. He directs his attention essentially to that aspect of his native country which tolerates his colonialist existence. A homeland which became democratic, for example, to the point of promoting equality of rights even in the colonies, would also risk abandoning its colonial undertakings. For the colonialist, such a transformation would challenge his way of life and thus become a matter of life or death.
In order that he may subsist as a colonialist, it is necessary that the mother country eternally remain a mother country. To the extent that this depends upon him, it is understandable if he uses all his energy to that end.
Now one can carry this a step further; every colonial nation carries the seeds of fascist temptation in its bosom.
What is fascism, if not a regime of oppression for the benefit of a few? The entire administrative and political machinery of a colony has no other goal. The human relationships have arisen from the severest exploitation, founded on inequality and contempt, guaranteed by police authoritarianism. There is no doubt in the minds of those who have lived through it that colonialism is one variety of fascism. One should not be too surprised by the fact that institutions depending, after all, on a liberal central government can be so different from those in the mother country. This totalitarian aspect which even democratic regimes take on in their colonies is contradictory in appearance only. Being represented among the colonized by colonialists, they can have no other.
It is no more surprising that colonial fascism is not easily limited to the colony. Cancer wants only to spread. The colonialist can only support oppressive and reactionary or, at least, conservative governments. He tends toward that which will maintain the current status of his homeland, or rather that which will more positively assure the framework of oppression. Since it is better for him to forestall than to cure, why should he not be tempted to promote the birth of colonial governments? If one adds that his financial and therefore political means are great, it will be realized that he represents a permanent danger for home government, a pouch of venom forever liable to poison the entire structure of the homeland.
Even if he should never move, the very fact of his living in a colonial system gives rise to uncertainties at home; an alluring example of a political pattern whose difficulties are resolved by the complete servitude of the governed. It is no exaggeration to say that, just as the colonial situation corrupts the European in the colonies, the colonialist is the seed of corruption in the mother country.
The danger and ambiguity of his excessive patriotic ardor are found again, and confirmed, in the more general ambiguity of his relations with his native country. To be sure, he sings its glory and clings to it, even paralyzing it, drowning it if need be. But, at the same time, he harbors deep resentment against the mother country and its citizens.
Up to now we have noted only the privileges of the colonizer with respect to the colonized. Actually, a European in the colonies knows that he is doubly privileged—with respect to the colonized and with respect to the inhabitants of his native land. Colonial advantages also mean that in a comparable position, a government employee earns more, a merchant pays fewer taxes, an industrialist pays less for raw materials and labor, than do their counterparts back home. The comparison does not end there. As well as being tied to the existence of the colonized, colonial privileges are a function of the mother country and its citizens. The colonialist is not unaware that he obliges his home country to maintain an army, and that while the colony is nothing but an advantage for him, it costs the mother country more than it earns for it.
And just as the nature of the relationship between colonizer and colonized is derived from their economic and social relationships, the relationships between the colonizer and the inhabitants of the mother country arise from their comparative situations. The colonizer is not proud of the daily difficulties of his fellow citizen: the taxes which weigh on him alone with his mediocre income. The colonizer returns from his annual trip troubled, displeased with himself and furious with the citizens of his homeland. As always, he had to reply to insinuations or even frank attacks, use the rather unconvincing arguments of the dangers of the African sun and illnesses of the alimentary canal, summon to his rescue the mythology of heroes in a colonial helmet. Nor do they speak the same political language. Each colonialist is naturally further to the right than his counterpart in the homeland. A newly arrived friend was telling me of his naïve astonishment: he did not understand why bowlers, who were Socialists or Radicals back home, were reactionaries or inclined toward fascism in the colony.
Finally, political and economic considerations cause a real antagonism between the colonialist and the resident of his homeland. And in this connection, the colonialist is, after all, correct when he speaks of not feeling at home in his native country. He no longer has the same interests as his compatriots. To a certain extent, he no longer belongs to them.
These exaltation-resentment dialectics uniting the colonialist to his homeland give a peculiar shade to the nature of his love for it. To be sure, he takes pains to present the most glorious image of home, but this maneuver is tainted by everything which he expects of it. Not only that, but if he never slackens his military pomposity, if he multiplies his cajolery, he poorly conceals his anger and vexation. He must unceasingly see to it, intervening if necessary, that his home country continue to maintain the troops which protect him, maintain the political habits which tolerate him, and keep up the appearance which suits him. Colonial budgets will be the price paid by mother countries that are convinced of the debatable grandeur of being mother countries.
Such is the enormity of colonial oppression, however, that this over-evaluation of the mother country is never enough to justify the colonial system. Indeed, the distance between master and servant is never great enough. Almost always, the colonialist also devotes himself to a systematic devaluation of the colonized.
He is fed up with his subject, who tortures his conscience and his life. He tries to dismiss him from his mind, to imagine the colony without the colonized. A witticism which is more serious than it sounds states that “Everything would be perfect … if it weren’t for the natives.” But the colonialist realizes that without the colonized, the colony would no longer have any meaning. This intolerable contradiction fills him with a rage, a loathing, always ready to be loosed on the colonized, the innocent yet inevitable reason for his drama; and not only if he is a policeman or government specialist, whose professional habits find unhoped-for possibilities of expansion in the colony. I have been horrified to see peaceful public servants and teachers (who are otherwise courteous and well-spoken) suddenly change into vociferous monsters for trifling reasons. The most absurd accusations are directed toward the colonized. An old physician told me in confidence, with a mixture of surliness and solemnity, that the “colonized do not know how to breathe”; a professor explained to me pedantically that “the people here don’t know how to walk; they make tiny little steps which don’t get them ahead.” Hence, that impression of stamping feet which seems characteristic of streets in the colony. The colonized’s devaluation thus extends to everything that concerns him: to his land, which is ugly, unbearably hot, amazingly cold, evil smelling; such discouraging geography that it condemns him to contempt and poverty, to eternal dependence.
This abasement of the colonized, which is supposed to explain his penury, serves at the same time as a contrast to the luxury of the colonialist. Those accusations, those irremediable negative judgments, are always stated with reference to the mother country, that is (we have already seen by what detour) with reference to the colonialist himself. Ethical or sociological, aesthetic or geographic comparisons, whether explicit and insulting or allusive and discreet, are always in favor of the mother country and the colonialist. This place, the people here, the customs of this country are always inferior—by virtue of an inevitable and pre-established order.
This rejection of the colony and the colonized seriously affects the life and behavior of the colonized. But it also produces a disastrous effect upon the colonialist’s conduct. Having thus described the colony, conceding no merits to the colonial community, recognizing neither its traditions, nor its laws, nor its ways, he cannot acknowledge belonging to it himself. He refuses to consider himself a citizen with rights and responsibilities. On the other hand, while he may claim to be indissolubly tied to his native land, he does not live there, does not participate in or react to the collective consciousness of his fellow citizens. The result is that the colonialist is unsure of his true nationality. He navigates between a faraway society which he wants to make his own (but which becomes to a certain degree mythical), and a present society which he rejects and thus keeps in the abstract.
It is not the dryness of the country or the lack of grace of the colonial communities which explain the colonialist’s rejection. It is rather because he has not adopted it, or could not adopt it, that the land remains arid and the architecture remains unimaginative in its functionalism. Why does he do nothing about town planning, for example? When he complains about the presence of a bacterially infected lake at the gates of the city, of overflowing sewers or poorly functioning utilities, he seems to forget that he holds power in the government and should assume the blame. Why does he not direct his efforts in a disinterested manner, or is he unable to? Every municipality reflects its inhabitants, guards their immediate and future welfare and their posterity. The colonialist does not plan his future in terms of the colony, for he is there only temporarily and invests only what will bear fruit in his time. The true reason, the principal reason for most deficiencies is that the colonialist never planned to transform the colony into the image of his homeland, nor to remake the colonized in his own image! He cannot allow such an equation—it would destroy the principle of his privileges.
The colonialist always clearly states that this similarity is unthinkable. In fact, achieving this equation is only the vague dream of a humanist from the mother country. But the explanation which the colonialist feels he must give (itself extremely significant) is entirely different. This equality is impossible because of the nature of the colonized. In other words, and this is the characteristic which completes this portrait, the colonialist resorts to racism. It is significant that racism is part of colonialism throughout the world; and it is no coincidence. Racism sums up and symbolizes the fundamental relation which unites colonialist and colonized.
It is, however, not a matter of a doctrinal racism. Besides, that would be difficult; the colonialist likes neither theory nor theorists. He who knows that he is in a bad ideological or ethical position generally boasts of being a man of action, one who draws his lessons from experience. The colonialist has too much difficulty in building his scheme of compensation not to mistrust debates. His racism is as usual to his daily survival as is any other prerequisite for existence. Compared to colonial racism, that of European doctrinaires seems transparent, barren of ideas and, at first sight, almost without passion. A mixture of behaviors and reflexes acquired and practiced since very early childhood, established and measured by education, colonial racism is so spontaneously incorporated in even the most trivial acts and words, that it seems to constitute one of the fundamental patterns of colonialist personality. The frequency of its occurrence, its intensity in colonial relationships, would be astounding if we did not know to what extent it helps the colonialist to live and permits his social introduction. The colonialists are perpetually explaining, justifying and maintaining (by word as well as by deed) the place and fate of their silent partners in the colonial drama. The colonized are thus trapped by the colonial system and the colonialist maintains his prominent role.
Colonial racism is built from three major ideological components: one, the gulf between the culture of the colonialist and the colonized; two, the exploitation of these differences for the benefit of the colonialist; three, the use of these supposed differences as standards of absolute fact.
The first component is the least revealing of the colonialist’s mental attitude. To search for differences in features between two peoples is not in itself a racist’s characteristic, but it has a definitive function and takes on a particular meaning in a racist context. The colonialist stresses those things which keep him separate, rather than emphasizing that which might contribute to the foundation of a joint community. In those differences, the colonized is always degraded and the colonialist finds justification for rejecting his subjects. But perhaps the most important thing is that once the behavioral feature, or historical or geographical factor which characterizes the colonialist and contrasts him with the colonizer, has been isolated, this gap must be kept from being filled. The colonialist removes the factor from history, time, and therefore possible evolution. What is actually a sociological point becomes labeled as being biological or, preferably, metaphysical. It is attached to the colonized’s basic nature. Immediately the colonial relationship between colonized and colonizer, founded on the essential outlook of the two protagonists, becomes a definitive category. It is what it is because they are what they are, and neither one nor the other will ever change.
Going back to the original purpose of all colonial policy, there are two illustrations which reveal its failure to fulfill its promised goals. Contrary to general belief, the colonialist never seriously promoted the religious conversion of the colonized. The relations between the church (Catholic or Protestant) and colonialism are more complex than is heard among thinkers of the left. To be sure, the church has greatly assisted the colonialist; backing his ventures, helping his conscience, contributing to the acceptance of colonization—even by the colonized. But this profitable alliance was only an accident for the church. When colonialism proved to be a deadly, damaging scheme, the church washed its hands of it everywhere. Today the church hardly defends the colonial situations and is actually beginning to attack them. In other words, the church used it as it used itself, but the latter always held to its own objective. Conversely, while the colonialist rewarded the church for its assistance by granting it substantial privileges—land, subsidies and an adequate place for its role in the colony, he never wished it to succeed in its goal—that is, the conversion of all the colonized. If he had really favored conversion, he would have allowed the church to fulfill its dream. Particularly at the beginning of colonization, he enjoyed complete freedom of action, unlimited power to oppress and widespread international support.
But the colonialist could not favor an undertaking which would have contributed to the disappearance of colonial relationships. Conversion of the colonized to the colonizer’s religion would have been a step toward assimilation. That is one of the reasons why colonial missions failed.
The second illustration is that there is as little social salvation as there is religious conversion for the colonized. Just as the colonized would not be saved from his condition by religious assimilation, he would not be permitted to rise above his social status to join the colonizer group.
The fact is that all oppression is directed at a human group as a whole and, a priori, all individual members of that group are anonymously victimized by it. One often hears that workers—that is all workers, since they are workers—are afflicted by this and that defect and this and that fault. The racist accusation directed at the colonized cannot be anything but collective, and every one of the colonized must be held guilty without exception. It is admitted, however, that there is a possible escape from the oppression of a worker. Theoretically at least, a worker can leave his class and change his status, but within the framework of colonization, nothing can ever save the colonized. He can never move into the privileged clan; even if he should earn more money than they, if he should win all the titles, if he should enormously increase his power.
We have compared oppression and the colonial struggle to oppression and the class struggle. The colonizer-colonized, people-to-people relationship within nations can, in fact, remind one of the bourgeoisie proletariat relationship within a nation. But the almost absolutely airtight colonial groupings must also be mentioned. All the efforts of the colonialist are directed toward maintaining this social immobility, and racism is the surest weapon for this aim. In effect, change becomes impossible, and any revolt would be absurd.
Racism appears then, not as an incidental detail, but as a consubstantial part of colonialism. It is the highest expression of the colonial system and one of the most significant features of the colonialist. Not only does it establish a fundamental discrimination between colonizer and colonized, a sine qua non of colonial life, but it also lays the foundation for the immutability of this life.
The racist tone of each move of both the colonialist and the colonizer is the source of the extraordinary spread of racism in the colonies. And not only the man on the street: A Rabat psychiatrist dared tell me, after twenty years’ practice, that North African neuroses were due to the North African spirit.
That spirit or that ethnic grouping or that psychism stems from the institutions of another century, from the absence of technical development, from the necessary political bondage—in short, from the whole drama. It demonstrates clearly that the colonial situation is irremediable and will remain in a state of inertia.
But there is one final act of distortion. The servitude of the colonized seemed scandalous to the colonizer and forced him to explain it away under the pain of ending the scandal and threatening his own existence. Thanks to a double reconstruction of the colonized and himself, he is able both to justify and reassure himself.
Custodian of the values of civilization and history, he accomplishes a mission; he has the immense merit of bringing light to the colonized’s ignominious darkness. The fact that this role brings him privileges and respect is only justice; colonization is legitimate in every sense and with all its consequences.
Furthermore, since servitude is part of the nature of the colonized, and domination part of his own, there will be no dénouement. To the delights of rewarded virtue he adds the necessity of natural laws. Colonization is eternal, and he can look to his future without worries of any kind.
After this, everything would be possible and would take on a new meaning. The colonialist could afford to relax, live benevolently and even munificently. The colonized could be only grateful to him for softening what is coming to him. It is here that the astonishing mental attitude called “paternalistic” comes into play. A paternalist is one who wants to stretch racism and inequality farther—once admitted. It is, if you like, a charitable racism—which is not thereby less skillful nor less profitable. For the most generous paternalism revolts as soon as the colonized demands his union rights, for example. If he increases his wages, if his wife looks after the colonized, these are gifts and never duties. If he recognized duties, he would have to admit that the colonized have rights. But it is clear from everything above that he has no duties and the colonized have no rights.
Having founded this new moral order where he is by definition master and innocent, the colonialist would at last have given himself absolution. It is still essential that this order not be questioned by others, and especially not by the colonized.