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THE NEGRO AND PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 133

The objection is valid. It applies to me as well. In the beginning
I wanted to confi ne myself to the Antilles. But, regardless of
consequences, dialectic took the upper hand and I was compelled
to see that the Antillean is fi rst of all a Negro. Nevertheless, it
would be impossible to overlook the fact that there are Negroes
whose nationality is Belgian, French, English; there are also Negro
republics. How can one claim to have got hold of an essential
when such facts as these demand one’s recognition? The truth
is that the Negro race has been scattered, that it can no longer
claim unity. When Il Duce’s troops invaded Ethiopia, a movement
of solidarity arose among men of color. But, though one or two
airplanes were sent from America to the invaded country, not
a single black man made any practical move. The Negro has a
country, he takes his place in a Union or a Commonwealth. Every
description should be put on the level of the discrete phenomenon,
but here again we are driven out to infi nite perspectives. In the
universal situation of the Negro there is an ambiguity, which is,
however, resolved in his concrete existence. This in a way places
him beside the Jew. Against all the arguments I have just cited,
I come back to one fact: Wherever he goes, the Negro remains
a Negro.
In some countries the Negro has entered into the culture. As
we have already indicated, it would be impossible to ascribe too
much importance to the way in which white children establish
contact with the reality of the Negro. In the United States, for
example, even if he does not live in the South, where he naturally
encounters Negroes concretely, the white child is introduced to
them through the myth of Uncle Remus. (In France there is the
parallel of La Case de l’Oncle Tom—Uncle Tom’s Cabin.) Miss
Sally’s and Marse John’s little boy listens with a mixture of fear
and admiration to the tales of Br’er Rabbit. To Bernard Wolfe this
ambivalence in the white man is the dominant factor in the white
American psychology. Relying on the life of Joel Chandler Harris,
Wolfe goes so far as to show that the admiration corresponds
to a certain identifi cation of the white man with the black. It is
perfectly obvious what these stories are all about. Br’er Rabbit
gets into confl icts with almost all the other animals in creation,

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