YOU ARE NOT FREE OF BLAME MOTHERFUCKERS
We Need to Stop Using Racism As a Tool to Hide Our Racism
Racist ideologies are complex and invisible
As part of my ongoing mission to be respected at dinner parties, I have been studying creative writing
It’s a mission that led me to study Joseph Conrad’s novel ‘Heart of Darkness’ — a novel which, to be honest, aside from the spiritual euphemism, I find less appealing than sucking off a horse.
The main question on students’ minds seems to be whether Joseph Conrad was a racist.
We culturally weld Conrad to his novel. Besides being a boring fucker, the protagonist Marlow in the book is racist. Therefore the author is, by association, also racist. Maybe there are other clues to Conrad’s alleged racism, but, in a world where we can no longer write racist characters, how will we learn about racism from literature?
What is the end game? Will the death of racist characters in literature mean the death of actual racism? Are the two even connected?
Who would have the guts to write a racist prick into a book these days? As authors, aren’t we tying one hand behind our backs by censoring ourselves? If I write about a priest that fingers the anus of his altar boys, am I, by extension, that randy priest?
Let’s say that Conrad’s novel is racist. Does that render his entire being racist? Can there also be aspects of him that are anti-racist? Why are we so fucking obsessed with binary notions of good or bad? Don’t we all have a little bit from column A, a little bit from column B? — not to mention columns C-Z.
Isn’t it time to recognise that blindfolds are not the solution? Isn’t this assault of long-dead authors for their characters a distraction from the real issue?
The whole concept of ideology relies on invisibility.
And fuckers will say that Conrad’s ignorance or cultural situation is no excuse. But are those same people using their lynching of Conrad to cover their own shameful racist patterns?
Have you ever been overly friendly to a Black person, then subtly congratulated yourself mentally for doing so?
That's the invisible ideology at work.
There is a lot of finger-pointing going on and not too much self-reflection
Would the overprivileged people in my class act differently to Conrad, given the same conditioning? They certainly seem to think so. Hindsight makes people blind. Would Conrad have written the same book if he were alive today? It’s pretty fucking doubtful.
We don’t live in some pure age where ‘normal’ people are free of racism. Our whole damn society is built on racism, and every one of us had it drilled into us from an early age. It’s not something that stops overnight. It takes fucking work.
We sit here and bitch about Hitler’s master race concept or the Chinese ‘master race’ ideology, but how is ‘the West’ any different? How many people wept and wore flags and boycotted US companies during their illegal invasion of Iraq?
White people have always viewed other races as inferior to us. You might not want to feel that way. You might be desperately trying to change your worldview but look deeply. It’s all there.
Shaming Conrad and Heart of Darkness is a diversion from the white supremacist ideologies that we carry around with us every day.
And sure, we can deny it, but isn’t pointing the finger from our pedestal of purity just another form of prejudice?
Aren’t we just muted versions of the white colonialists in Conrad’s day?
Racism is the deliberate mental disadvantaging, disparaging or hatred towards another person based on their race or physical features such as the colour of their skin. It is not the celebration of that race or skin. Right?
When we look at green and blue, we don’t pretend they are the same colour
We don’t have to because green hasn’t been raping blue for six hundred years. But saying you don’t see colour is just a fucking white purist denial that allows you to egotistically prop yourself up as better than everyone else. Sure, you don’t see colour, but at the least, you feel it. It’s always there tickling your perineum, subtly controlling you.
White people like us are so afraid of racism
We are not fearful of being victims of it since it’s not something we generally experience. But we are afraid of being perpetrators of it.
And our outright denial makes us refuse to look in the mirror and realise that this thing we fear already fills our veins like sticky tar.
It starts when you are a child, and it’s drilled into you by parents, teachers, through the media, entertainment, advertising, marketing. It becomes such a part of you that even later in life, it manifests in your thoughts and you suppress it rather than asking yourself why it is there and working to uproot it.
A mental object buried doesn’t go away. It accumulates.
Racism is not something that we should blindly avoid just because we feel it is against some moral code. It is something that we should learn to despise deeply yet take ownership of as our personal conditioned ignorance. Only then can we have the courage to notice it hiding behind the rocks of our minds and try to flush it out.
Don’t think that the problem is over. It isn’t. And, don’t think it’s getting better. It’s getting fucking worse.
Police still target Black people and lock them into a future with hundred-hour work weeks paying less than twenty dollars a week — before, wait for it — TAXES.
And no, this is not fucking paranoia.
Look at the facts. It’s happening and not in private either. Slavery is happening before our very eyes, and we don’t give a fuck.
We are too busy drooling over virtual reality and kombucha and our so-much-darker-than-we-think investment portfolios.
You can point your purist finger back through time and find a million novelists with racist ideologies.
But wouldn’t you be better pointing at Washington and the so-called ‘leaders’ at the top of the chain who continue to support and contribute to the practice of Black slavery?
Then point the finger back toward yourself because ideology is invisible. It’s in you. Maybe it’s not your fault, but it’s still there, hiding in the cracks.
To get it out, you have to be fucking ruthless, and brutally honest with yourself and your history. It takes work to reverse your conditioning, not denial and a purist view of yourself.
But you can do it. We all can. Let’s get fucking real.
