3 ms·
Point taken, and yes, that is a big difference, but specifically the actions of the black elites were super weird. More weird than you would expect from someone
by lsc 10y ago
Point taken, and yes, that is a big difference, but specifically the actions of the black elites were super weird. More weird than you would expect from someone who just postulates that when the chips are down, we run with our race brothers.
It was the weirdly sexualized race and gender based cannibalism that I think puts it over the line, not the actions of Joe, except in the context of the former.
I mean I see what he was trying to do, but rather than basing his African elites on anthropological evidence, or on real white cultures that were horrible to other races, (which would have gotten his point across better, I think,) he based them on the most disturbing (and to me, last believable or sympathetic) racial fears of the time, and because of that, it is kinda uncomfortable.
- ethbro 10y agoCurious to read it now, especially in the context of its time. 1964 was the same year the Civil Rights Act was passed. I imagine ideas of baser racial instincts were different when there were still lynchings and fear of sexual racial mixing. :(
- hguant 10y agoReading this reminded me of another great author who had an episode of weird racial views - Stephan King, in The Stand (which is absolutely one of my favourite books), had a chapter where he's detailing the horrors of society breaking down, and one of the events he catalogued was the mutiny of a bunch of black soldiers who then started killing their white compatriots in a grotesque gameshow. That very explicit fear of militant black men dates the book more than anything else. As someone born in the very early 90's, it's weird seeing evidence of people taking seriously these thoughts I've only seen caricatured.