J.M.G Le Clézio points out France's duty towards its former colonies

In an interview conducted by Nathalie Crom, the French writer Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, who often sets the action of his novels in colonial times, adds to the French debate around the remembrance of colonisation. "It seems healthy to me that we should at last be talking about France's colonial history and enough has yet to be said on the subject. Mortifying ourselves is out of the question, but we have to purge this old illness that still exists, that is racism, the sense of superiority. In the Antilles, you still hear white people refer to Blacks as overgrown, indolent and indecisive children. It's terrible. All exercising of memory is salutary. It isn't about resorting to laws and decrees in order to rewrite History. Nor is it about using big words and speaking of genocide. More simply, the colonisers have a responsibility towards these small countries, former colonies now deserted and thrown into neglect, practically living off international charity. France has to accompany into adulthood the countries that it held in a state of childhood for so long."

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