File spoon-archives/phillitcrit.archive/phillitcrit_2000/phillitcrit.0008, message 63


Date: Wed, 09 Aug 2000 13:44:59 -0400
From: Barron <gebarron-AT-InfoAve.Net>
Subject: Re: PLC: Fairness to Faulkner


On 8/9/00 8:37 AM Howard Hastings wrote:

> Blacks can be identified by a distinct odor. If
> whites can, still they are not.
 
Yes they are.

....McCaslin with a lamp entered the back room where Boon slept-the little,
tight, airless room with the smell of Boon's rank unwashed body....

>And we can imagine how black readers
> might feel in reading such passages in the work of a great American
> novelists.

How does it make white people feel?

Finally, and to get away from the smell subject, I do feel that Faulkner was
a racist as determined by today's standards. I feel that his racism is often
magnified by the realism of his black and racist characters though. What
seems interesting to me, however, is that because he was a white southerner
we don't seem to look at his treatment of his white characters as a racial
group. I am widely read in Faulkner and reflecting back on his white
characters there are very few who warrant any admiration. They are often
heroic and epic, tragic and larger than life, but very few are admirable.
Most are despicable, greedy, ignorant, brutal, ambitious, racist, rapists
arrogant, petty, pitiable and deeply flawed. Why do these white protagonists
and antagonists usually stand in the criticism as examples on "mankind" or
"humanity" and not just whites? Why are their characterisitics so often
shared with all men and not attributed simply to their race as caucasians?
Whereas a black character who is lazy is an indictment of all blacks? Or a
black woman who simple perseveres is just an example of the author's
paternalistic pride? Is it purely because Faulkner is white? Why don't
critics examine Ellison and Zora Neale Hurston's work for racism against
whites? Why isn't a black man's scent in _Their Eyes Were Watching God_ and
example of racism? Hurston and Ernest Gaines both have very stereotypical
white characters. When Morrison writes about white brutaility against blacks
we accept it like we would a slave narrative but when Faulkner does it it
exposes his racism. I think the truth is that all of these authors have
racist tendancies, some are just villainized more than others.

I often feel some authors are villainized in academia simply because they
are white and canonized. Is this possible? Am I way off base here?

-- 
Barron



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