The Burdens of Whiteness: Revolt and the American Psyche

“The more manifest the oppression, the greater the oppressor’s psychic need to justify his actions. The more he debases the subject race, the more guilty he feels, the more he must justify himself [by further entrenching and so proving his superiority], and so it continues. How can he emerge from this increasingly explosive circle except by rupture and explosion? The colonial situation, by its own internal inevitability, brings on revolt. One cannot adjust to the colonial condition: like an iron collar, it can only be broken.” — Albert Memmi