Racial Considerations at Heart of Joseph Conrad

In issuing a scathing critique of Joseph Conrad’s personage in 1977, famed Nigerian author Chinua Achebe embarrassed himself. Indeed, Achebe fell victim to the very dangers of which Conrad’s Marlow warns against in Heart of Darkness, his seminal work: “The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much” (Conrad 112). As suggested by those who have thoroughly discredited Achebe’s critique as personally motivated and bizarre, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is, in fact, a critique of colonializing imperialism, though the manner and style in which Conrad issues this critique continues to be unappreciated in light of the contemporarily racialized paranoia demonstrated by Achebe, which afflicts so many black authors of our time.

The most devastating failing of Achebe’s critique is that suggests a future in which black people engaged in the arts are unable to appreciate that art on its merits. Or, in the words of Cedric Watts: “the blacks have enough enemies; it is saddening to see Achebe attack one of their friends” (Watts 197). Achebe’s critique suggests that white people are foreclosed from critical assessment of Heart of Darkness because they only appreciate the novel on account of the manner in which it panders to their deep-seeded racism (Watts 197). Achebe thus suggests that any white man or woman possesses a latent impulse for racial oppression, triggered most profoundly within the artistic context. To be sure, this kind of thinking only furthers the same “thoroughgoing racism” that Achebe perceives in Conrad’s work. Indeed, this racially-rooted paranoia is perversely unhealthy and has penetrated our social fabric, as suggested by the present state of our national dialogue on race.

In his debate with Caryl Phillips, Achebe’s paranoia manifested in the most demonstrative of ways. Achebe rails: “Can nobody see the preposterous and perverse arrogance in…reducing Africa to the role of props for the break-up of one petty European mind?” Achebe Further states that Conrad's brilliantly extended sentences exist for the purpose of "trickery," as though designed to lull the reader into the kind of stupor necessary for the purpose of inculcating him or her into some racist new world order (Achebe and Phillips 63). Achebe’s critique smacks of personal insecurity and bitter resentment stemming from his own perceptions of the African Continent having been misappropriated by those who would colonize and exploit it. And yet, Achebe fails to recognize that Conrad is not one such would-be colonialist, though he prefers to subsume him under this rubric. Similarly, those who would, for example, offer critique of President Obama’s governance are often identified as “racists” simply and only by virtue of President Obama’s race being different from their own. This kind of “othering” is that which Conrad’s prose condemns, though it is rendered alive and well by those like Achebe, who refuse to subjugate their perhaps understandable paranoia to a more universal and productive form of reason.

Last week, we witnessed an instance of Achebe-esque racialized insecurity confusing what might have otherwise amounted to a civil dialogue in the furtherance of human civility. En route to a Super Bowl Championship, an elite athlete, Richard Sherman, proceeded to launch into a televised tirade in which he championed himself as the finest player at his position and insulted the capabilities of the players against whom he plays. Sherman’s outburst and his on-field conduct were objectively uncivilized; his outburst reflects the lowest form of competitive gracelessness, regardless of his skin’s color. And yet, because it happens that Sherman is black, he and others instead took it upon themselves to identify critique of his conduct as racially motivated. Indeed, Sherman and his allies seemed to suggest that Sherman himself could not possibly have behaved like a “thug” because Sherman is a graduate of Stanford University. In other words, and just as in Achebe’s case, perhaps Sherman’s achievements in his chosen field of specialty are insufficient to cure him of his own hyper-racialized paranoia.

Ultimately, Chinua Achebe’s allegations are as logically unfounded as they are literarily nonsensical. Achebe suggests that Joseph Conrad promotes the dehumanization of blacks by evaluating their humanity relative to that of what Achebe perceives as a better-educated and more civilized culture. These perceptions are, of course, ones that belong to Achebe, as opposed to ones derived from Conrad’s oeuvre. Indeed, Conrad’s vivid depictions of African vitality amount to little more than a “dramatized ontological argument; a point of reference against which we may judge the depredations of the white man” according to the manner in which he denies the black man access to the means by which to exercise this vitality (Watts 198). In fact, given Achebe’s appraisal of Conrad’s artistic skill, he cannot seriously suggest that Conrad intends his depictions as anything other than ontologically charged anti-colonial devices. In other words, Conrad’s artistry and the degree to which he addresses African humanity should afford him the benefit of the doubt, just as it should have been afforded Don Imus some years ago, a staunch proponent of racial justice who issued a remark that was perhaps racially insensitive, though only to the extent to which it challenged the Rutgers women’s basketball team to transcend the insecurities posed by a preoccupation with racial identity.

Ultimately, Chinua Achebe’s critique of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness as a racist’s foray into racism of the highest order is a discredit to his own reputation and to the potential of those of African descent to transcend the manner in which they have been oppressed. In endeavoring to relegate Conrad and his work to an artistic realm in which genius can only be a function of moral consciousness subjugating itself to the basest form of prejudice, Achebe reveals his own deep-seeded prejudices and self-serving arrogance. To suggest that Achebe offers his critique in the service of his race is only to elucidate the manner in which racial paranoia overwhelms his capacity to appreciate Conrad’s art on its own terms. Indeed, it is not white people who are foreclosed from a meaningful evaluation of Conrad’s work, but rather Achebe himself who not only forecloses himself from such an evaluation, but who also arrogantly promotes the assessment of art and life from a strictly racialized perspective.

Works Cited

Achebe, Chinua & Phillips, Caryl. “Was Joseph Conrad Really a Racist?” Debate recorded in Philosophia Africana, Vol. 1, 2007, pp. 59-66.

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. Dover Press, 1990.

Watts, Cedric. “'A Bloody Racist': About Achebe's View of Conrad.” The Yearbook of English Studies, vol. 13, 1983, pp. 196-209.