Some ten years ago I was astonished to learn that the North Africans despised men of color. It was absolutely impossible for me to make any contact with the local population. I left Africa and went back to France without having fathomed the reason for this hostility. Meanwhile, certain facts had made me think. The Frenchman does not like the Jew, who does not like the Arab, who does not like the Negro . . . The Arab is told: “If you are poor, it is because the Jew has bled you and taken everything from you.” The Jew is told: “You are not of the same class as the Arab because you are really white and because you have Einstein and Bergson.” The Negro is told: “You are the best soldiers in the French Empire; the Arabs think they are better than you, but they are wrong.”

Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, loc. 372