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is because, through their knowledge of these writers, they expect
their color to be forgotten.
Moral consciousness implies a kind of scission, a fracture of
consciousness into a bright part and an opposing black part. In
order to achieve morality, it is essential that the black, the dark,
the Negro vanish from consciousness. Hence a Negro is forever
in combat with his own image.
If in like manner one allows M. Hesnard his scientifi c conception
of the moral life, and if the world of moral sickness is to be
understood by starting from Fault and Guilt, a normal person
will be one who has freed himself of this guilt, or who in any case
has managed not to submit to it. More directly, each individual
has to charge the blame for his baser drives, his impulses, to the
account of an evil genius, which is that of the culture to which
he belongs (we have seen that this is the Negro). This collective
guilt is borne by what is conventionally called the scapegoat.
Now the scapegoat for white society—which is based on myths
of progress, civilization, liberalism, education, enlightenment,
refi nement—will be precisely the force that opposes the expansion
and the triumph of these myths. This brutal opposing force is
supplied by the Negro.
In the society of the Antilles, where the myths are identical
with those of the society of Dijon or Nice, the young Negro,
identifying himself with the civilizing power, will make the nigger
the scapegoat of his moral life.
I was fourteen years old when I began to understand the meaning
of what I now call cultural imposition. I had an acquaintance,
now dead, whose father, an Italian, had married a Martinican.
This man had lived in Fort-de-France for more than twenty years.
He was considered an Antillean, but, underneath, his origin was
always remembered. Now, in France, from a military point of
view, an Italian is despised; one Frenchmen is the equal of ten
Italians; the Italians have no guts. . . . My acquaintance had been
born in Martinique and he associated only with Martinicans.
On the day Montgomery routed the Italian army at Bengazi, I
wanted to mark the Allies’ victory on my map. Measuring the
substantial advance of the lines, I could not help exulting: “We

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