The Negro is not. Any more than the white man. … Both must turn their backs on the inhuman voices which were those of their respective ancestors in order that authentic communication be possible. Before it can adopt a positive voice, freedom requires an effort at disalienation. At the beginning of his life a man is always clotted, he is drowned in contingency. The tragedy of the man is that he was once a child.

Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, loc. 878