Who Is Joseph Conrad Racist

In Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, one can draw many theories as to what

Conrad's views of African Colonization are. One of the most obvious and monotonous themes of

this novel would be African racism and discrimination. So, did Conrad write this novel as a way

to condone the acts of savage European imperialism and slavery, or, to make us realize what

they did was unethical? I believe he was a racist, and you will soon come to see why.

Picture yourself streaming down on the gloomy waters of the Congo River in the heart of

Africa. The water seems calm and the thick fog around you keeps your hair sprung up on the

back of your neck, while you have thoughts of the cannibal steamboat crews eating you while

you are
asleep. These are just some of the things that transpires in Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

Although events of this novel come across as blatantly racist, the real question is, was the author,

Joseph Conrad, racist?
After thoroughly analyzing the novel, I have concluded that Conrad

showed racist traits by using racial slurs, as well as glorifying slavery and the unequal treatment

of the native Africans in this book.

The novel's main character, Marlow, is hired by The Company, an English shipping

company. It is revealed that Marlow is a sailor/explorer himself, but had never sailed to Africa

before. The officials of The Company in England are so oblivious to everything happening, that

they can't even fathom the destruction and death caused because of their ivory shipping. Conrad

made this a clear example of how these European companies care for only wealth while

completely neglecting the environment and it's people and treating them as if they were not

humans. The racism here is shown because The Company lacks the acknowledgment of the

native Africans as people and treat them as property.

In Heart of Darkness, there is an emphasis and dominance in using racist language.

Marlow uses vocabulary such as nigger when referring to native Africans many times. I
believe

Conrad used this character, Marlow, as a way to express his racism towards the Africans. "The

fool-nigger had dropped everything to throw the shutter open and let off that Martini-Henry"

(45). The word nigger in this sentence said by Marlow and also from other people in the book

implicates the word as a common term used amongst their people in the book's time frame. The

word nigger has always had a degrading and racist meaning to it, so when Conrad chooses to use

this word in the novel, he is racist.

In another section of the novel Conrad blew the steam whistle to scare away the foolish natives. Conrad, in his writing, displays an attitude that the native Africans were niggers and were not intelligent or even people at all. In writing about this, he is uneducated about cultural differences. He does not know and understand the African people so he calls them niggers, which is extremely racist.
"I pulled the string of the whistle, and I did this because I saw the pilgrims on the deck getting out their rifles with an air of anticipating a jolly lark. At the sudden screech there was a movement of abject terror through that wedged mass of bodies." (Conrad 66)

The treatment of natives like slaves in the novel is tremendously racist. A normal person today would feed and pay those who work for them. It is considered morally right to do so. In Heart of Darkness, no one thinks it is wrong to not feed or pay those who work for you. It would be considered wrong to help feed the workers who are starving. Conrad raises no point in his book that this act is unacceptable. Conrad then believes it is okay. In Heart of Darkness, it is considered reasonable to make the natives at fault for things management has done. The manager sets Marlow's trade goods on fire and blames a native for the blaze. This act dehumanized the native much like a slave.

The unfair treatment of the native African people in Heart of Darkness is extremely racist. Marlow and other Europeans did not treat the natives like humans. Conrad made it sound like the unfair treatment of the natives was socially acceptable by the European culture. Conrad also wrote about how the natives were unaware of any sense of time.

"I don't think a single one of them had any clear idea of time as we at the end of countless ages have. They still belonged to the beginnings of time-had no inherited experience to teach them, as it were." (Conrad 40)
To say the natives had no understanding of time is dehumanizing. Even the most primitive cultures had some sense of time. Weather it simply knowing that when the sun goes down and then comes up, a new day starts. Conrad displayed the natives as things that spoke a primitive language and were not intelligent. Writing about this is extremely racist and offensive.

After giving much examples from the novel itself, you can see why Conrad was very racist. He instilled his racism into the character Marlow, and all the other European Company people that he worked for. It seems to me that Heart of Darkness is very much a racist novel, characterizing native Africans as nothing more than property to be used by the European trade companies if it's day.