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opposes the idea of a union between all the Caribbean islands—a sort of international island federation,
which is sometimes discussed—on the grounds that it would automatically fall under the economic and
political domination of the U.S.A., and evolve into what he terms an 'execrable false democracy'; as the
Caribbean islands merely juxtapose, without in any way complementing each other. He is an advocate of
'pluralist solutions': separate solutions, that is, for each of the colonies. There is no golden rule or pan-
acea that can be applied to them wholesale. French colonial problems must be dealt with piecemeal, he
insists, starting with the granting of dominion status to the French colonies in Africa.
M. Césaire has a consciousness of his colour which goes, as his poems illustrate, far farther than a
complex or a persecution mania; it is a constant and burning sense of the sorrows and injustices of the
African race in the Antilles, that is reminiscent in a more civilized way of the sentiments of the Haitian
leaders of the early nineteenth century.
The colour question is wielded as a political arm by agitators with some success, by reviving and ex-
ploiting the bitterness that existed in the time of slavery, by automatically identifying White with the
capitalist and tyrannous rich and Black with the down-trodden poor. This oversimplification is not exact,
for in no island where the same conditions prevail are there fewer evidences of a colour bar or of racial
discrimination to be observed. It is true that scarcely any intermarriage occurs between the Créoles and
their coloured neighbours, and that the landowners are still mainly drawn from this white minority, or
'plantocracy.' This is an inevitable heritage of the old order which, under new conditions and the spread
of education, is changing fast. The richest plantation-owner and rum- and sugar-factor at the moment is a
coloured man; and the prosperous shops of the capital are owned by coloured men of African descent, by
grandsons of indentured Indian coolies or by the ubiquitous recent arrivals from Syria and the Lebanon.
The doctors, lawyers, professional men, mayors, deputies, police and the government officials who are
responsible, under a white prefect nominated from Paris, for the internal conduct of the island are all col-
oured, as are the intelligentsia upon whom, more than any other groups, the future of the island depends.
So complete has been the mixing of races in Guadeloupe and Martinique—in fact, it was nearing com-
pletion in the days of the observant Père Labat two and a half centuries ago—that the authentic ebony
shade of the Congo and the Guinea Coasts is now extremely rare; much rarer than that of the pure whites
who originally bought their black contemporaries from the slave merchants.
The overwhelming majority of the Martinicans are descended from both slaves and slave-owners. So-
metimes there is only the faintest white admixture, or so little black that its presence would be quite un-
detectable to a European. But whatever the proportions may be, the prejudice in the past has forced all
these elements into the same 'coloured' camp from which are drawn the bourgeoisie and intelligentsia,
who, after studying in the universities of France, now represent in the French Antilles the world of art,
medicine, law, letters and ideas.
Schoelcher abolished slavery in 1848, just over a hundred years ago. Since then, time has been slowly
doing its work, and if the scars of ancient bitterness were not, for political reasons, kept open artificially,
they could have healed in a generation. Metropolitan France which, in spite of her many mistakes, has
an uncanny flair for the right course in these particular matters, herself led the way by granting, at once
and under no pressure, and in practice as well as theory, equal rights to all citizens of every colour. This
wise policy is furthered by the recent assimilation of Martinique, Guadeloupe, Guiana and la Réunion as
integral prefectures of France, with exactly the same privileges, status and representation as the Bouches
du Rhône or the Seine Inférieure. It is a significant tribute to France's management of her Empire that her
distant territories should consider this to be the highest compliment and benefit they could receive.
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