And if the newcomer soon gets the floor, it is because they were waiting for him. First of all to observe his manner: The slightest departure is seized on, picked apart, and in less than forty-eight hours it has been retailed all over Fort-de-France. There is no forgiveness when one who claims a superiority falls below the standard. Let him say, for instance, “It was not my good fortune, when in France, to observe mounted policemen,” and he is done for. Only one choice remains to him: throw off his “Parisianism” or die of ridicule. For there is also no forgetting: When he marries, his wife will be aware that she is marrying a joke, and his children will have a legend to face and to live down.

Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, loc. 96