Albert Memmi Quotes

“Racism… is the highest expression of the colonial system and one of the most significant features of the colonialist.”

Albert Memmi book The Colonizer and the Colonized

The Colonizer and the Colonized (1957).

“There is a strange kind of tragic enigma associated with the problem of racism. No one, or almost no one, wishes to see themselves as racist; still racism persists, real and tenacious.”

Albert Memmi

Racism (1982)

“Racism rests upon and functions as a kind of seesaw: the persecutor rises by debasing and inferiorizing his victim.”

Albert Memmi

Racism (1982)

“Racism does not limit itself to biology or economics or psychology or metaphysics; it attacks along many fronts and in many forms, deploying whatever is at hand, and even what is not, inventing when the need arises.”

Albert Memmi

Racism (1982)

“We would have liked to be Arab Jews. If we abandoned the idea, it is because over the centuries the Moslem Arabs systematically prevented its realization by their contempt and cruelty. It is now too late for us to become Arab Jews.”

Albert Memmi

Source: "Who is an Arab Jew?" (1975)

“I arrived in France, and found myself up against the legend which was current in left-wing Parisian salons: the Jews had always lived in perfect harmony with the Arabs. I was almost congratulated for having been born in such a land where racial discrimination and xenophobia were unknown. It made me laugh.”

Albert Memmi

Source: "Who is an Arab Jew?" (1975)