Césaire explains that his readers’ “enemies” are not only the “sadistic governors and greedy bankers” who directly orchestrated colonization, but also the journalists and academics who justify colonization in the name of a “Progress” that never arrives. Regardless of their personal beliefs and best intentions, they must be held accountable for “the objective social implications of the evil work they perform as watchdogs of colonialism.” Césaire offers some examples, like the anthropologist
Pierre Gourou, who insisted “that
there has never been a great tropical civilization,” and the missionary
Reverend Tempels, who conveniently “discovered” a
Bantu philosophy in the Congo that happened to sanction Belgium’s private property. Beyond ignoring the possibility that non-white races could be virtuous in any way, these academics contrast “the weakness of primitive thought” with their own “rationalism,” conveniently forgetting that the rationalist philosophers believed
all humans were inherently rational.