Marlow's "Level" of Racism

OR Weak, Medium, and Strong Racism in Heart of Darkness

Peter Edgerly Firchow's essay Race, Ethnicity, Nationality, Empire postulates that there are three levels of racism: weak racism, medium racisim, and strong racism. Weak racisim, according to Firchow, is "the belief that races (however defined, including ethnic and national groups) do exist and that they help to account for social phenomina." (p. 238) Medium racism, summarized, is the belief that some races are superior. Strong racism is the belief that the superior races are entitled to supress or eliminate the inferior races. (238)

Firchow goes on to argue that Marlow's attitude toward the Africans in Heart of Darkness is no more than weakly racist. Firchow states that "it does, however, imply a temporary cultural superiority."(238) I am going to look at evidence in the text to see if Marlow is indeed only lightly racist towards the Africans.

One instance where I can see Marlow's attitude as only a "temporary cultural superiority" is in his assertion that Britain was once as wild as Africa. "Imagine him [a Roman officer] here [Britain] - at the end of the world, a sea the colour of lead, a sky the colour of smoke, [....] Sandbanks, marshes, forests, savages, precious little to eat fit for a civilised man, nothing but Thames water to drink." (6). Here, Marlow does his best to compare Britain to Africa, and even states that the primitive Englishman was a savage. What is unclear to me, however, is Marlow's ideas about the modern (to him, in 1899) English race as opposed to the primitive English race under Roman rule. Does he consider the modern English to be the same race as the primitive English? Or have generations of Roman, Saxon, and Germanic blood, which entered the Anglo race throughout the centuries after the Romans first set foot on Britain, evolved the race into something different, something superior? I am not comfortable projecting a mindset into Marlow's character, but I am aware that one school of thought at the time was that the Anglo-Saxon race was a superior due to it's mix of the best qualities of Europeans, and it was "manifest destiny" that the Anglo-Saxon absorb all other races (this book). Did Marlow think this?

I have a tendency to think that Marlow is more of a "medium racist". I combed the work looking for instances of humanity, or even relatability between Marlow and the African characters. The closest I see is in instances where African people are suffering. "They were dying slowly - it was very clear. They were not enemies, they were not criminals [....] Then glancing down I saw a face near my hand. [...] slowly the eyelids rose and the sunken eyes looked up at me, enormous and vacant, a kind of blind, white flicker in the depths of the orbs which died out slowly."(17) He goes on to describe trying to give the sick, dying boy a piece of bread, but the boy is too weak to take it. I particularly think the closest instance to relating to the natives is when a man on his boat get stabbed with a spear and Marlow watches him die: "We two whites stood over him and his lustrous and inquiringglance enveloped us both. I declare it looked as though he would presently put to us some question in an understandable language, but he died without uttering a sound..." (46). I, however, think that these feelings of mercy are no more profound than when a man sees a dying or suffering animal. His feeding of the sick boy reminds me of feeding a stray dog. Marlow's reaction to the suffering, dying man with a spear in his side reminds me of a man who kills his first deer.

Ultimately, I believe that Marlow is a medium racist character. I think there is too much use of terms like "improved specimen" (36) "creatures" (17) and "fool-nigger" (45) for me to conclude that Marlow feels no superiority towards the Africans. And while he goes on for a paragraph or two about relating to an uneducated white ship mechanic, (29-30) I struggle to find an instance where Marlow socializes with a single African. His communication with them consists of barking orders, and his descriptions of them are always physical instead of mental or emotional. While Marlow does condemn the treatment of Africans in the story, I think that simply marks the borderline between "medium racism" and "strong racism", not "light racism" and "medium racism".