Lovecraft was quite racist even for his own time, I think. As you say, he was racist towards the Irish, who were seen as white by many in his time and place. and his obsessive demeaning of non white people, and genocidal fantasies, were much more racist than you'd find in the writings of, for example, Fitzgerald or Hemingway.
And of course, we're not as enlightened now as we'd like to think.
Lovecraft was quite racist even for his own time, I think. As you say, he was racist towards the Irish, who were seen as white by many in his time and place. and his obsessive demeaning of non white people, and genocidal fantasies, were much more racist than you'd find in the writings of, for example, Fitzgerald or Hemingway.
And of course, we're not as enlightened now as we'd like to think.
do you think it isn't in ours? who is our president?
and the rule among whom? Langston Hughes was alive then and writing; so were most of the Harlem Renaissance writers. It seems worth counting them.
I don't in general think "of its time" is a good argument or defense. Some people in Lovecraft's time were very racist; some weren't. Some people in our time are very racist; some aren't. How that racism is expressed exactly changes, but often not as much as you'd think; Lovecraft's fantasies about Black and immigrant crime remain very relevant and recognizable.
Victor Lavelle "Ballad of Black Tom" makes very clear the ways in which Lovecraft's racism is still very much relevant to our day.
Yes, I know all about Hughes et al. What I was saying was that it was the rule among white folks, writers and otherwise, to have racist at worst and condescending at best attitudes towards Black people. Especially if they came from the sort of New England gentry Lovecraft had as his ancestors.
Right, but my point is, itтАЩs still the rule. Most white people voted for trump.
Lovecraft was racist even for his timeтАжbut racism is not unusual or really frowned upon at any time in us history, including ours. So I think itтАЩs overly flattering to ourselves to represent the past as more racist in order to try to explain someone like lovecraftтАЩs beliefs.
And againтАжmany white authors of the time did not devote all their work to impassioned calls for racist genocide as lovecraft did.
Lovecraft was quite racist even for his own time, I think. As you say, he was racist towards the Irish, who were seen as white by many in his time and place. and his obsessive demeaning of non white people, and genocidal fantasies, were much more racist than you'd find in the writings of, for example, Fitzgerald or Hemingway.
And of course, we're not as enlightened now as we'd like to think.
His kind of racism was the rule of that era, rather than the exception.
do you think it isn't in ours? who is our president?
and the rule among whom? Langston Hughes was alive then and writing; so were most of the Harlem Renaissance writers. It seems worth counting them.
I don't in general think "of its time" is a good argument or defense. Some people in Lovecraft's time were very racist; some weren't. Some people in our time are very racist; some aren't. How that racism is expressed exactly changes, but often not as much as you'd think; Lovecraft's fantasies about Black and immigrant crime remain very relevant and recognizable.
Victor Lavelle "Ballad of Black Tom" makes very clear the ways in which Lovecraft's racism is still very much relevant to our day.
Yes, I know all about Hughes et al. What I was saying was that it was the rule among white folks, writers and otherwise, to have racist at worst and condescending at best attitudes towards Black people. Especially if they came from the sort of New England gentry Lovecraft had as his ancestors.
Right, but my point is, itтАЩs still the rule. Most white people voted for trump.
Lovecraft was racist even for his timeтАжbut racism is not unusual or really frowned upon at any time in us history, including ours. So I think itтАЩs overly flattering to ourselves to represent the past as more racist in order to try to explain someone like lovecraftтАЩs beliefs.
And againтАжmany white authors of the time did not devote all their work to impassioned calls for racist genocide as lovecraft did.