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THE NEGRO AND PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 115

that I should like nothing more nor less than the establishment of
children’s magazines especially for Negroes, the creation of songs
for Negro children, and, ultimately, the publication of history
texts especially for them, at least through the grammar-school
grades. For, until there is evidence to the contrary, I believe that
if there is a traumatism it occurs during those years. The young
Antillean is a Frenchman called on at all times to live with white
compatriots. One forgets this rather too often.
The white family is the agent of a certain system. The society is
indeed the sum of all the families in it. The family is an institution
that prefi gures a broader institution: the social or the national
group. Both turn on the same axes. The white family is the
workshop in which one is shaped and trained for life in society.
“The family structure is internalized in the superego,” Marcus
says, “and projected into political [though I would say social]
behavior.”
As long as he remains among his own people, the little black
follows very nearly the same course as the little white. But if
he goes to Europe, he will have to reappraise his lot. For the
Negro in France, which is his country, will feel different from
other people. One can hear the glib remark: The Negro makes
himself inferior. But the truth is that he is made inferior. The
young Antillean is a Frenchman called upon constantly to live
with white compatriots. Now, the Antillean family has for all
practical purposes no connection with the national—that is, the
French, or European—structure. The Antillean has therefore to
choose between his family and European society; in other words,
the individual who climbs up into society—white and civilized—
tends to reject his family—black and savage—on the plane of
imagination, in accord with the childhood Erlebnisse that we
discussed earlier. In this case the schema of Marcus becomes
Family ← Individual → Society
and the family structure is cast back into the id.
The Negro recognizes the unreality of many of the beliefs that
he has adopted with reference to the subjective attitude of the
white man. When he does, his real apprenticeship begins. And
reality proves to be extremely resistant. But, it will be objected,

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