Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2000 15:37:45 -0400 (EDT)
From: Howard Hastings <hhasting-AT-osf1.gmu.edu>
Subject: Re: PLC: Fairness to Faulkner


On Wed, 9 Aug 2000, Barron 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....

Is this an example of a character being identified by an odor which any
unwashed person might have, black or white, or is it an exmple of a
character detecting the odor of a white man?  

> >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?

Some of them feel only that Faulkner is recording a "known fact," until
others point out that whites don't do this to other whites.   

> 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 not sure that's true.  Give a little time to get to the library.

  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? 

Some would be wary of that because black racism against whites has not
done nearly the damage that white racism against blacks has done.  And
the civil rights struggle has advanced to the point now where many whites,
at least, would be very wary of pointing out racism in black novels.  They
would certainly be accused of trying to mitigate or shift attention away
from white racism by equating the two.

  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.

Can you offer an example of someone who takes Faulkner, simply writing
about white brutality to blacks, as evidence of his racism? 

 I think the truth is that all of these authors have
> racist tendancies, some are just villainized more than others.

All might have racist tendencies. But not all are equally valued by
William Bennett. Also, it was white people who segregated blacks in the
south, and blacks who consequently suffered most from racism.  That is why
racism in white authors or the deflection of any recognition thereof might
draw more critical attention than racism in a few black writers long
ignored by the academy. 

Also, noting how racism creeps into an author's description is not simply
"villainization", especially where it involves the attempt to link close
literary analysis to other kinds of social analysis.    

> 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?

Yes, off base.  Your perception that the canon is often criticized where
it is presented as something that evolved naturally and outside the
politics of U.S. society--that is certainly valid.   Nowadays groups which
formerly had no say in the construction of literary curricula and canon in
this country now do, and many in those groups don't assume that if white
males choose a largely white male canon, this reflects only the inherent
quality of the works in question, nothing more.  But the objection here is
not that authors are "white and canonized."  The objection is to an
exclusive process which mystifies its own operations in the name of
universality.  



hh
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