Dakar is the wrong place to discuss a theory of color, because theory requires a distancing from the object. But here we are not able to take this step away from color. For us, color is exactly what we are up against. If we distance ourselves from it, we risk losing ourselves. Nonetheless, I plan to present to the Troisième Congrès International de la Négritude a few theoretical ideas about color, convinced that only when People of Color work out a theory of color does the problem of color truly gain a voice.

Based on an extremely dubious taxonomy, humanity is divided into three categories of color: 57 percent yellow, 36 percent white, and 7 percent black. This taxonomy is doubtful not only because it is uncomfortable, but also because it is based on a faulty understanding of color. We may disregard the fact that it is uncomfortable. It is true that there is hardly a human being who neatly fits into any of these three categories. Since categories are always theoretical, however, you can force the phenomenon to adapt to them. For example, red skins can theoretically be classified as yellow (mutated Mongols), and brown people theoretically as a mixture of yellow, black, and white people. What defeats this taxonomy is not the fact that it is completely useless, but that it is theoretically wrong. White and black are not colors. If the majority of humanity, in its core, is indeed yellow (and this is undoubtedly the case, since it accords with all theories of color), then it would be expected that humanity tends either toward red or toward purple. But there are no green mulattos. Down with racism!

I allowed myself to get carried away by nontheoretical considerations, but I have regained my distance so that I can address the problem of white and black with composure. If the word “color” means a visible portion of the field of light oscillations, then white is not a color, because it is not perceived as a visible portion, but as a sum of all rays. For a parallel reason, black, too, is not a color, because the eye perceives it as a complete absence of these rays—and, rather importantly, as overridden rays. If one switches perspectives on this problem, one could say: if a surface reflects all incoming light rays, then it is white; if it absorbs them all, it is black; if it absorbs them only partially, then it appears colored. You will have noted my efforts to formulate these definitions without any engagement and with the requisite scientific dispassion.

Every phenomenological observation of all Black cultures proves the correctness of color theory. Such cultures are open to light, absorb it. The incomparable rhythm everything in us oscillates is nothing but sublimated oscillation of light within ourselves. We, the Black people, are the real children of light—of the sun, the moon and the stars—especially because we swallow the light, save it within ourselves, and override it as culture. To date, we have not, however, drawn the proper radical conclusions from this theoretical perspective on color. Our encounter today should give us the courage to formulate our message clearly and then to act accordingly.

Based on the (questionable) taxonomy mentioned above, 57 percent of people are yellow (colored), that is, such people only absorb part of the incident light. They represent a mass that is indifferent to light, which is what the natural development of the human species entails—because yellow is probably the natural color of humanity. Thirty-six percent of humanity is white, shuts itself off to light, pushes away all light, and rejects all that is radiant. It is probably the cadaverous aspect of white people that is to blame for this rejection, which, in truth, results from a rejection of life. Only a small fraction of humanity, an elite of 7 percent, is black, hospitable to light, permeated by it and determined to swallow it. Philanthropy, properly understood, would happen if the Black elite finally decided to stir the rest of humanity and to move it into the oscillation of light. Philanthropy, properly understood, would be anthropophagy, which would help us to imbibe the rest of humanity in order to turn it black.

It is a historical fact that, over the past centuries, the white minority seized power and subjugated the yellow and black majority. It was probably able to do so because it reflects the light, negating both light and life, something often described using the euphemisms “science” and “technology.” We have had plenty opportunity over the past centuries to experience the deadliness of these white reflections on our own bodies. If, therefore, anthropophagy is the kind of philanthropy characteristic of us, then, based on my ideas about color theory, we should begin with the systematic devouring of whites.1 The remaining issue of the great yellow mass can be left for a distant future.

The strategy presented here rests on straightforward ideas about color theory. But it has an aesthetic side as well. Compared to the bland yellowness of the great mass and the disgusting corpse-whiteness of those still in power, the radiant blackness of the human elite is beautiful. I invite you to take on the burden of beauty (Black Man’s burden).