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“At most they recognize that the Negro has artistic gifts linked to his sensitivity as an inferior animal. Such is the opinion of the Frenchman Joseph de Gobineau, precursor of Nazi philosophy, who in his famous book ‘On the Inequality of Human Races’ decrees that the artistic sense is inseparable from Negro blood; but he reduces art to an inferior manifestation of human nature: in particular, the sense of rhythm is related to the Black’s emotional aptitudes.”
“This climate of alienation finally deeply affected the personality of the Negro, especially the educated Black who had had an opportunity to become conscious of world opinion about him and his people. It often happens that the Negro intellectual loses confidence in his own possibilities and in those of his race to such an extent that, despite the validity of the evidence presented in this book, it will not be astonishing if some of us are still unable to believe that Blacks really played the earliest civilizing role in the world.”
“Frequently Blacks of high intellectual attainments remain so victimized by this alienation that they seek in all good faith to codify those Nazi ideas in an alleged duality of the sensitive, emotional Negro, creator of art, and the White Man, especially endowed with rationality. So it is in good faith that a Black African poet expressed himself in a verse of admirable beauty:
‘L’emotion est negre et la raison hellene.’ (Emotion is Negro and reason Greek.)”
Cheikh Anta Diop
“The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality”
