american-holocaust

EPILOGUE2Slunaware of the racism on which it sharpened its iron tooth." And unawarebecause Conrad was himself "a thoroughgoing racist." 12For Conrad, as for all those many millions who have read his workwithout revulsion, it is African humanity that intuitively serves to symbolizethe worst-the most bestial and most ugly-of mankind's inner essence.Conrad knew his Western readers would understand without instruction,and he was right. No argument is necessary, description is enough:[S]uddenly, as we struggled round a bend, there would be a glimpse of rushwalls, of peaked grass-roofs, a burst of yells, a whirl of black limbs, a massof hands clapping, of feet stamping, of bodies swaying, of eyes rolling, underthe droop of heavy and motionless foliage. The steamer toiled along slowlyon the edge of the black and incomprehensible frenzy. The prehistoric manwas cursing us, praying to us, welcoming us-who could tell? We were cutoff from the comprehension of our surroundings; we glided past like phantoms,wondering and secretly appalled, as sane men would be before anenthusiastic outbreak in a madhouse. . . . We are accustomed to look uponthe shackled form of a conquered monster, but there-there you could lookat a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly, and the men were-No,they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it-this suspicionof their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howledand leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was justthe thought of their humanity-like yours-the thought of your remote kinshipwith this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough;but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was inyou just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise,a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you-you so remotefrom the night of first ages-could comprehend. 13"Well, you know, that was the worst of it-this suspicion of their notbeing inhuman"-for surely the purpose of this passage is to demonstrateas powerfully as possible just how absolutely inhuman the Africans trulyseemed, and how close to the murky borderland of the animal world theyreally were; thus the impact of the European's haunting sense "that therewas in you just the faintest trace of a response" to--and a "remote kinshipwith"-such brutal, monstrous beings. As Achebe says in a different essay:"In confronting the black man, the white man has a simple choice: eitherto accept the black man's humanity and the equality that flows from it, orto reject it and see him as a beast of burden. No middle course existsexcept as an intellectual quibble." 14 In fact, however, it is precisely that"intellectual quibble" that has poisoned Western thought, not only aboutAfricans, but about all peoples of non-European ancestry, for centurieslong past and likely for a good while yet to come. And therein lies the trueheart of Western darkness. For the line that separates Martin Luther's anti-