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THE NEGRO AND PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 113

aggression. The magazines are put together by white men for little
white men. This is the heart of the problem. In the Antilles—and
there is every reason to think that the situation is the same in the
other colonies—these same magazines are devoured by the local
children. In the magazines the Wolf, the Devil, the Evil Spirit,
the Bad Man, the Savage are always symbolized by Negroes or
Indians; since there is always identifi cation with the victor, the
little Negro, quite as easily as the little white boy, becomes an
explorer, an adventurer, a missionary “who faces the danger of
being eaten by the wicked Negroes.” I shall be told that this is
hardly important; but only because those who say it have not
given much thought to the role of such magazines. Here is what
G. Legman thinks of them:

With very rare exceptions, every American child who was six years old in
1938 had therefore assimilated at the very least 18,000 scenes of ferocious
tortures and bloody violence. . . . Except the Boers, the Americans are the
only modem nation that within living memory has completely driven the
6
autochthonous population off the soil that it had occupied. America alone,
then, could have had an uneasy national conscience to lull by creating
7
the myth of the “Bad Injun,” in order later to be able to bring back the
historic fi gure of the Noble Redskin vainly defending his lands against
invaders armed with rifl es and Bibles; the punishment that we deserve
can be averted only by denying responsibility for the wrong and throwing
the blame on the victim; by proving—at least to our own satisfaction—that
by striking the fi rst and only blow we were acting solely on the legitimate
ground of defense. . . . [Anticipating the repercussions of these magazines on
American culture, Legman went on:] There is still no answer to the question
whether this maniacal fi xation on violence and death is the substitute for
a forbidden sexuality or whether it does not rather serve the purpose of
channeling, along a line left open by sexual censorship, both the child’s and
the adult’s desire for aggression against the economic and social structure
which, though with their entire consent, perverts them. In both cases the
root of the perversion, whether it be of a sexual or of an economic character,
is of the essence; that is why, as long as we remain incapable of attacking
6. In this connection, it is worth noting that the Caribs experienced the same fate at
the hands of French and Spanish explorers.
7. In English in the original. (Translator’s note.)

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