Albert Memmi: Racism

“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)

Problem

“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)