Heart Of Darkness Racist Quotes

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Over the years, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad has been debated about its racial standing. Many have come to the conclusion that this novel is racist since it dehumanizes the Africans and portrays the Europeans as superior beings. Sharing his own views of the relationship between light and dark skin races, Francis Galton, made a claim that the white race, more often than not, believes it is more superior when interacting with an uncivilized culture. In Galton’s “The Comparative Worth of Different Races,” he expresses that “it is seldom that we hear of a white traveler meeting with a black chief whom he feels to be the better man” (Galton 226). In other words, Galton believes that when a European man interacts with an African native, the European behaves with the notion that he is supreme in relation to the other race even when interacting with the…show more content…
Others such as Marlow’s aunt perceived the Africans as souls that needed to be “weaned from their horrid ways” (Conrad 12) through the influence of the English culture. This idea, however, still stems from the Europeans having the high-minded, superior attitudes towards the natives. Inititally, the Europeans pitied the natives and believed it was their duty to “subdue” the Africans, but eventually the Europeans lost sight and did not consider the Africans to be human. There is much hypocrisy in the colonial effort since the Europeans originally wanted to educate and civilize the natives. However, according to the cruel acts casually inflicted among the Africans, the Europeans chose to ignore the very idea that the Africans had feelings and needs like their own to reassure themselves that exploiting another race was not immoral. Influenced by distorted good intentions to “civilize” the Africans, many of the Europeans became the very savages they were attempting to
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