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Candy Hunt
Resisting racism
Anuradha Malalasekara
As a country with a society full of many cultures, Australia always
takes fundamental actions to prevent racism. The most recent initiative
is to introduce much more anti-racist works of literature to school aged
children.
I have a slightest memory that when I first came to Monash I heard
the undergraduates no matter what subject stream they were in were
recommended to read Harper Lee's To Kill A Mocking Bird. I was impressed
by the idea but haven't had a thought about its rich anti-racist content
and the impact it would create on this very multicultural society.
Personal belief
Literature cannot remain ineffective to the human stances like
racism. Modern day readers have found new meanings in old literature and
have branded some of them as totally racist writings. To my personal
beliefs that no one can be judgemental about some writings happened to
be produced nearly a century back. Even in my own childhood days, I have
heard many racist remarks as forms of historical facts. Neither the
discriminated group nor us complained about racism in there and just
took them as mere notes from the history lesson.
 In February 1975, Chinua Achebe presented a famous lecture at Amherst
college in the United States, entitled "An image of Africa: Racism of
Conrad's Heart of Darkness". In his lecture, Achebe attacks Conrad's
Heart of Darkness and accuses him of being a "bloody racist". Achebe
also states that the novel de-humanized Africans, denied them from
language and culture and reduced them to a metaphorical extension of the
dark and dangerous jungle into which the Europeans venture, "Conrad
refuses to bestow human expression on Africans, even depriving them of
language".
Prehistoric earth
Achebe quotes the following lines from the 'Heart of Darkness'. "We
were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the aspect
of an unknown planet. But suddenly as we struggled round a bend there
would be a glimpse of rush walls, of peaked grass-roots, a burst of
yells, a whirl of black limbs, a mass of hands clapping, of feet
stamping, of bodies swaying, of eyes rolling under the droop of heavy
and motionless foliage."
In the lines above, the reader could realize that Conrad used
impolite words to describe the Africans. Conrad refers to Africa as a
"prehistoric earth" that had "black limbs" living on it. Also he
compares the Africans to animals and objects calling them "ants",
"savages", "glistening white eyeballs" and worst of all that disturbed
Achebe is the use of the word "savage specimen" that means that the
Africans are samples.
"It is clear that Conrad had problems with black people" he stated in
his lecture. He also disagreed with people that consider Heart of
Darkness a great work of art by saying "The question is whether a novel
which celebrates this dehumanization, which depersonalizes a portion of
the human race, can be called a great work of art. My answer is: No, it
cannot".
Defending Conrad
In defence of Conrad in my point of view, I realized that his main
intention in writing Heart of Darkness is to show the imperialism that
Africa was drowning in that it was receiving from the Europeans. He did
not mean to show any racist acts or thoughts toward the Africans;
instead, he wanted to, first, reveal the reality and life conditions
that the Africans were truly living in, and second, to show the
deterioration of one European mind caused by solitude and sickness.
Hating someone due to their skin colour or the language they speak is
something tribal in modern days. But more or less, it happens around the
worlds no matter whether it is first or the third.
Literature is something that benefits from it as literature makes new
meanings and creates beauty from the hatred.
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