10.29

Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is a work which would not be considered unusually racist for it’s time. The treatment of black people in the piece was normal by the standards set in the time Conrad lived and as such the piece does not make him a racist; or, at least, no more of a racist than anyone else at that time was. Unfortunately, everybody was racist at that time, Conrad included, if you view their values through the lens of today’s society. This leads us to be unable to conclusively state whether or not Conrad could be considered a racist, because his level of racism changes greatly relative to the views of society in his time and ours.
He is a racist if you view his work from our perspective, as he depicts black people in a poor light, to say the least. However, if somebody was alive when HOD was released read it, they would have a vastly different opinion. Such suffering and depreciation of black people was standard practice then, and as such did not warrant special attention. Which raises another argument, can Conrad be considered racist if he is simply reflecting what is actually going on in the world? If somebody did a report on the terror attacks of 9/11, they could easily come off as anti-muslim or anti-arab, yet those were the feelings being circulated at the time. Would accurately reflecting those feelings make them a racist? I think not. They, like Conrad, would simply be telling it like it is, it just so happens it was awful for black folks at the time, so we view it as awful now.