Racism or Nah...?

Accusing someone of being racist is a bold statement to make however; using textual evidence and an analytical response makes the statement controversial. I appreciated Chinua Achebe’s point of view and reasoning of how/why Joseph Conrad is racist, especially since Chinua Achebe is a Nigerian Writer and Professor, although I was not convinced. If a work of literature does not scream racism or say in the fine print, “This novel deals with racism…” I will not analyze the reading for it. Conrad informed readers about a story about what he personally experienced throughout his journey along the Congo River to the heart of Africa and how that affected people around him. Heart of Darkness, written in 1899, has readers automatically infer that whites will be prejudice towards black, analyzing the interactions of Europeans in specific and Africans. Conrad did not write a novella about the history of Europeans colonizing land in Africa; prior history should have pertained before reading the novella. Therefore, readers are aware the novella will be sensitive towards several topics and in Achebe’s case: racism. Achebe’s statement of “Africans teaching their own people” is a segregated statement. It is as if saying Jews have to teach other Jews about the holocaust and not Nazis. How are third party people supposed to be educated on history if someone who is of that race during the historical time has to teach it? Yes, the way Conrad described Africa and Africans on numerous accounts are portrayed as racist, but that is the purpose of a writer. In order for readers to grasp and understanding of the work, describing scenes and characters in depth is essential to creating a picture of what is occurring.

The way Achebe put passages of Conrad’s novella in his speech helped me get a different point of view of how Conrad is describing native “savages” which supposedly illuminated how he is racist. Conrad described an African woman being “…savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent…” with every compliment came an insult. Then later described a European woman as delicate and elegant in the way she walked toward him. If we stop and think for a minute and picture the African women, we too can describe her as savage and wild-eyed. It is as if you are picturing an African woman who has a dark countenance but in reality, she is delicate and elegant. I agree Conrad could have used diction but Heart of Darkness is still an exceptional novella despite if there are racist comments.