ABSTRACT
The West Indians had been provided with a French culture, language and identity, while in America blacks had been despised, discriminated against and prevented from entering the mainstream. 'Assimilation had both a political and a social and cultural dimension. In essence, it aimed toward a future when the colony would become an integral part of metropolitan France. The African peoples of Senegal were to become as much like Frenchmen as possible, in language, manners, and political orientation'. Leopold Sedar Senghor is credited with being the leading exponent of negritude. The development of negritude as an ideology is associated with Senghor. Senghor's problem was the problem of privilege. Only the asimilados suffered from double consciousness. In the first half of the twentieth century all the major elements of black consciousness were being explored among Francophones, from the Antilles, Harlem and Senegal.
