Lovecraft was a man of his time, and that time allowed people to spew racial epithets and use racist imagery without any 21st century notions of fairness or consequences. The motion pictures of his lifetime were even worse in their employment of them.
And it's not like he thought all white people were great. He wrote an extremely demeaning poem about the Irish in stereotypical dialect. And one of his stories involves a dim-witted "hillbilly" named Joe Slater becoming possessed by a much more erudite alien.
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, it’s still the rule. Most white people voted for trump.
Lovecraft was racist even for his time…but racism is not unusual or really frowned upon at any time in us history, including ours. So I think it’s overly flattering to ourselves to represent the past as more racist in order to try to explain someone like lovecraft’s beliefs.
And again…many white authors of the time did not devote all their work to impassioned calls for racist genocide as lovecraft did.
::Jefferson needs Sally Hemings, or he’d have no way to know the heights to which reason had carried him.::
'Tis pity Ms. Hemmings didn't have anything to say about it.
But, so long as a White Man moved ahead, eh?
Not sure, given how part of your thesis is that Racism is part of Enlightenment Scientific Rationality, where this specifically applies outside of "Yes, Thomas Jefferson repeatedly raped a Black female slave who he found attractive, and he was an Enlightenment Rationalist."
Huh. Pleasantly articulate and complex.
All it needs is some explicit connections to present experience.
Lovecraft was a man of his time, and that time allowed people to spew racial epithets and use racist imagery without any 21st century notions of fairness or consequences. The motion pictures of his lifetime were even worse in their employment of them.
And it's not like he thought all white people were great. He wrote an extremely demeaning poem about the Irish in stereotypical dialect. And one of his stories involves a dim-witted "hillbilly" named Joe Slater becoming possessed by a much more erudite alien.
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, it’s still the rule. Most white people voted for trump.
Lovecraft was racist even for his time…but racism is not unusual or really frowned upon at any time in us history, including ours. So I think it’s overly flattering to ourselves to represent the past as more racist in order to try to explain someone like lovecraft’s beliefs.
And again…many white authors of the time did not devote all their work to impassioned calls for racist genocide as lovecraft did.
Incredible commentary as always. Your media criticism is god-tier.
aw, thanks!
::Jefferson needs Sally Hemings, or he’d have no way to know the heights to which reason had carried him.::
'Tis pity Ms. Hemmings didn't have anything to say about it.
But, so long as a White Man moved ahead, eh?
Not sure, given how part of your thesis is that Racism is part of Enlightenment Scientific Rationality, where this specifically applies outside of "Yes, Thomas Jefferson repeatedly raped a Black female slave who he found attractive, and he was an Enlightenment Rationalist."