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 modern nation that within living memory has completely driven the autochthonous population off the soil that it had occupied. America alone, then, could have had an uneasy national conscience to lull by creating the myth of the “Bad Injun,” in order later to be able to bring back the historic figure of the Noble Redskin vainly defending his lands against invaders armed with rifles 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 first and only blow we were acting solely on the legitimate ground of defense.

Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, loc. 571