----- Original Message ----- From: "Rusty Burke" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "REH Fans" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, January 03, 2002 8:46 AM Subject: Re: [rehfans] Howard and racism
> Scotty, Mark, I would love to see you argue your notions that a person is > not a "racist" who does not commit overt acts of discrimination, and > especially this charming notion that a person's "private" thoughts as > expressed in letters, journals, etc., do not count against them, only their > "public" utterances, against some African-American scholars who I think > could be relied upon to see things quite otherwise. There was a big flap a > few years back about H.L. Mencken's anti-Semitism, which tarnished his > reputation considerably, and that was entirely over the revelation of his > "private" expressions of bigotry. > As usual, your comments are always worth considering. However, I didn't say a person's private utterances are not part of the person's makeup, obviously they are. What is important is the fact that we have a private face and a public one, at least for most of us. In the case of a dead author we are studying 70 years post, if we did not have those letters to consider, how would it change our views? In the case of Mencken it obviously did., so too for Howard it implies a degree of racism in the modern sense that would not have been applied if the letters did not exist. Our logic in applying appraisal of an author is an evolutionary one and it is clear to me that it can change as more of an author is uncovered. Much of what I see labelled as racism in Howard I find merely descriptive, and others that can be viewed as racial in modern light, really ethnic disparity. As has been suggested, it depends a lot on personal interpretation I'm not sure about some of this, but in 1970 in Berkley, stopping at a Chevron gas station on my motorcycle, I've was ignored by the black attendant. He finally got around to me, sees my license plate, and asks if BC stands for Burbank, Calif. I said no, it was British Columbia, and I was Canadian. Man, you'd think the guy had found a long lost brother! The guy was all over me and friendly as all get out. So what was the difference between an American white boy and a Canadian white boy and is this racism or something else.? Is there some dual standard here, similar to HPL having Jewish friends but being anti-Semitic elsewhere? I think I'm going to let Mark chime in since it's his home turf, but I would postulate where does ethnic leanings verge over into racism and vice versa. Scotty Henderson
