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• 1 media/Thumb126.png 2024-11-08T11:54:42-05:00 "The indelible flaw of Mr. Charles Canivet" (Jean de Nivelles) of the newspaper the Soleil 27 Benito Sylvain criticizes another Parisian journalist for his attitude toward Black people. plain 2024-12-03T17:17:04-05:00 Translation: It is a curious and quite a sad fact that the work undertaken by Cardinal Lavigerie to improve the unfortunate lot of Africans should be so unjustly fought by the Paris newspaper that purports to be one of the most zealous defenders of the ideas of Christian liberty.
  
  I do not know if Mr. Charles Canivet is conscious of the harm he is doing to himself and to the Soleil for which he writes every time he takes up his crusade of extermination against the nègres.
  
  If, to explain the bizarre differences sometimes observed in the psychological states of same individual, it was still appropriate to invoke the phenomenon of double personality, I would willingly say that there are two Charles Canivets; the one, kind, humane, charitable, who often writes touching things and knows feels compassion toward the suffering and weakness of the oppressed; the other cruel and bloodthirsty—by atavism, no doubt—dreams only of massacres, and would like to see Europe use its civilization to prevent backward peoples to arrive there in their turn. 
  
  Mister Charles Canivet, homo duplex, is a living contradiction.
  
  The African question being on the agenda, I will permit myself, for the second and last time, Sir, to present certain observations on the thesis that you sustain so relentlessly.
  
  Last April, you wrote in the Soleil, under the rubric "Hot countries," an article whose principal phrases I have pulled out.

  I suppose, you said, that we are not going to humanity about Dahomey.
  
  ... All the Black who have come to do their studies in Paris, hold in their depths the vices and flaws of their race.
  
  ...It's an indelible flaw. They are marked with atavism from the soles of their feet to the roots of their hair.
  
  ...It is not necessary to civilize Dahomey; the conquest would not be worth the effort.
  
  ...The best thing would be to leave all of the nègres where they are, and forbid them from leaving if it comes to it.

  I made a reply to this article which appeared in the Evènement on the 12th of April, and in which I invoked the witness of history to peremptorily establish that all races pass through the same periods of barbarism. And, approaching the question of atavism, which seems so dear to you, I summarized my conclusions by this ad hominem argument: "Such a Parisian journalist whom I know, sometime writes lines that are so coldly cruel, that one would be induced to think that more than one of his ancestors would not be worth the ferocious amusements of the kings of Dahomey."
  
  You took me to task in your following issue, but in such a benign and inconclusive manner that I had good reason to believe that you had come back to better sentiments.
  
  Yet, here is what you wrote in the Soleil of 5 August:

  All these backward people who are brushing up against civilization will not come to much.
  
  What will we teach him, this child of Ahmadou? This one whose polished boots are not made to be carried under his arm. He will necessarily learn it, and do it; but when he takes flight, he will immediately return to his first love and walk around barefoot.
  
  What does this prove apart from the fact that there is nothing to do, and that the education that we give nègres, or so called, does not penetrate the skin? For them, they will always return to their instincts, as if they had never left their home, where they should be left in peace to carry out their human sacrifices.

  It is clear, Sir, that you have forgotten everything and learned nothing since last April.
  
  As for atavism, I would refer you to my editorial. I won't return to it.
  
  The Black race is currently in a state of inferiority with regard to the other races. It is a fact. But will it always be thus? Carried along by the current of your prejudices, you have categorically proclaimed in the affirmative. Haiti, and with it the entire Black race, responds resolutely: no!
  
  If we could see into the future, it is certain that we would discover a civilization more advanced than the one that prevails in Europe. But what people would dare to declare that it would be created for or by them? There is no necessary civilization, there is no indispensable race.
  
  Your thesis, Sir, is in complete disagreement with modern scientific ideas; the theory of evolutive process overturns all of those old traditions on which you are relying.
  
  You are going against one of the most beautiful principle of Christianity: the redemption of all people, by affirming that there are people who are eternally doomed to barbarity. You are killing the sentiment of evangelical charity, which Cardinal Lavigerie wants to exalt in favour of the most just of causes.
  
  Finally, you are diminishing the glory of your country. Since, in declaring the first abolition of slavery, France showed how she understands fraternity. Is one of the rights that she claimed for the benefit of the entire universe. And this great educator of humanity will play too glorious a role in the world for her to consider abdicating it.
  
  I hope, Sir, that this last consideration, if not the two others, will lead you toward more humane sentiments.

  
  Benito Sylvain
  
  
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