Degrees of Racism

As gleaned from her title, “Heart of Darkness and Racism,” Hunt Hawkins attempts to describe the degree of racism found in Joseph Conrad’s novella.

She criticizes Chinua Achebe’s harsh disapproval of the novel as “bloody racist.”

She suggests that perhaps a critique of racism is not the main purpose of the novel but rather Conrad’s main focus was to critique European imperialism.

Conrad does not present a story free from racism. The Africans in the novel have neither names nor many pages devoted to their stories, they are often described as animal-like and even when they display human qualities they are somehow separated from white humanity. Despite the “endemic” racism of his time, he “did not share the racism of his time.”

He very clearly did not demonstrate “bloody racism,” but rather a lesser degree of racism as well as a different kind.

Achebe even goes far enough to state that Conrad’s work promotes genocide. It is clear that in the face of extreme cultural racism, Heart of Darkness is an exception.

The importance of Heart of Darkness lies within the acknowledgement of extreme human rights abuses so that it has entered our language as such.