The Negro is the Race Oppressed by All the Imperialists
Leopold Senghor
You are perhaps aware that ours is the most oppressed race in
the world. This is the race oppressed by all the imperialists on
earth, and whose life and death lie in the hands of its enemies...
What is colonization? To colonize is to rob a people of the
right to manage its own affairs as best it can and as it sees fit...
We have seen that during the war as many Negroes as possible
were recruited, to be used as cannon-fodder They let our
comrades be slaughtered in the first Morocco war before the Great
War of 1914. They are still being butchered today in Morocco, in
the Rif and in Syria. Negroes are being sent to Madagascar.
Negroes are sent to Indochina because it is near China which is
setting them a splendid revolutionary example.
To the Chinese I say: I would dearly embrace you, Comrades,
because you set a good revolutionary example to all the peoples
under the yoke of the colonizers, and I would that all of them
would let themselves be influenced by your revolutionary spirit."
The French imperialists have sent Negroes to Indochina and
ordered them to fire on the Indochinese in case they should rise up
against the French colonies. They tell them they are not of their
race and that they should kill them, in case they rebel against the
so-called "mother-country".
The Negroes have slept for too long. But beware! The man who
has slept too well, and then awakes, will not fall asleep again.
Young Negroes are beginning to see things clearly. We know
and ascertain that we are French when they need us to let us be
killed or make us labor. But when it comes to giving us rights we
are no longer Frenchmen but Negroes.
The congress gathered here has, I believe, realized the wish
of many who, like me, would like to devote themselves completely to
the task of world liberation. Those who have come here are the
very people who are pursuing a revolutionary ideal and a human
ideal and who sacrifice themselves and all their energies to
eradicating this monstrous imperialist oppression the world over.
The imperialist oppression which we call colonization at home and
which here you term imperialism is one and the same thing. It all
stems from capitalism. It is capitalism which breeds imperialism
in the peoples of the leading countries. Therefore those who
suffer under colonial oppression must join hands with those who
suffer under the imperialism of the leading countries. Fight with
the same weapons and destroy the scourge of the earth, world
imperialism!
1927
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