Well,
just got back from holidays to see my mailbox inundated by that ol' REH
& racism thread. I am certainly not going to indulge in that same old
discussion again. As I had once written on the subject, one problem in
this discussion is that REH's most offensive racial remarks have not
been published, being either found in unpublished letters or expurgated
from the published versions.
So here follows a nauseating series of racist comments from
Two-Gun-Bob. If you still think REH was not a racist after that, nothing
will convince you.
Patrice
*************
REH/Tevis Clyde Smith, August 4, 1923: "Think of all the white races of
the world arrayed against all the dark races! That would be a war worth
seeing. A titanic struggle with color against color... Now a color war I
would enter glady with. Remember my opinion of wars in general but a
race-war is different. I don't even consider the Chinese of the same
race as we." (Unpublished)
REH/Harold Preece, 20 Oct 1928: "The King of Kings" gripped me. I
thought it was powerful, though I think Joseph Schildrkraut ran away
with the picture as Judas. And William Boyd that fellow is the most
human actor in the world. H. B. Warner lacked fire of course, but I dont
know who else could have done even as good as he did. Damn the Jews
anyway." (expurgated in published version)
REH/HP, Mar 1929: "You cant justify the existence of the Hebrew race to
me. [...] They are swine as far as I am concerned; a lot of dirty scuts
that didnt have the nerve to come to America until the Irish had killed
out the Indians and built the railroads. Then they came over and now
they sit up on their bulbous rumps and blatantly announce that they own
the damned country. Maybe they do; they'll never own Ireland.
(expurgated)
REH/HP, 24 Mar 1930: "I heard the travesty of Miami the other night. I
was disgusted. An English champion quits to a lousy Lithuanian and a Wop
referee disqualifies him. If the staunch old Anglo-Saxon breed has
reached such a pitch, what is the world to look to? But I hear the
Englishman has Jewish blood in him, which would explain it. There was a
time when Englishmen ruled the ring game." (expurgared)
REH/Howard Phillips Lovecraft, ca. Dec 1930: "I agree with you in
doubting that the seeds of cultural development are present in the
negroid race as a whole. They can ape and copy but that they could build
a civilization of their own, I doubt. Doubtless you are right in your
theory that the easy life of the tropics contributed greatly to the
negro's lack of progress." (expurgated from the published version)
REH/TCS, ca. June 1930: "We joined the club. Heh heh heh! I'm a member
of the Business Men's Athletic Club of San Antonio. Whee! Well, when I
looked around at the wops, spicks, Chinees and niggers who were among
those of my club brothers it gave me a big laugh."
REH/HPL, ca. Sep 1930: "Negroes are an interesting study."
REH/HPL, ca. Sep 1930: "The death rate [of Mexicans] is enormous, the
birth rate even more enormous. They live like rats and breed like
flies."
REH/HPL, ca. Oct 1930: "Of course, many of the older families, both
American and German, have held themselves apart from the rabble and
intermarried with their own race and with each other, but the later
arrivals from Europe tend to mix and mingle without rhyme or reason."
(expurgated)
REH/HPL, ca. Oct 1930: "the majority of our negro slaves were of a
comparatively low order of being. Living in the swamps and jungles they
could not have been otherwise." (expurgated)
REH/HPL, ca. Oct 1930: (after a Mexican has been murdered): "The
Cattlemen's Association sent out a detective - just why so much trouble
was taken about a Mexican I cannot understand."
REH/HPL, ca. Dec 1930: "I imagine the combination you mention � Semitic
nose, Mongol eyes, Aryan hair, etc., produces a weird effect, even more
so than the red headed niggers you occasionally see in the South. The
most inhuman hybrid I ever saw was ... in New Orleans. He - or it! � was
as black as any negro I ever saw, but had the slant eyes and broad
features of a Chinaman." (expurgated)
REH/HPL, ca. Jan 1931: "That Negroid-Jew you speak of must have been a
grotesque and amusing spectacle." (Unp.)
REH/HPL, ca. Feb 1931: "Altogether, Mexican tastes as a whole appeal to
me, though I cannot say that the Mexicans themselves do." (Unp.)
REH/HPL, ca. Feb 1931: "In New Orleans all this noise and argument isn't
confined to the Semites alone. I used to pass the Old French Market and
near the Italian women screeching and squabbling over pennies, and see
them grabbing and snatching in shameless greed until I was sick and
ashamed of the whole human race." (Unp.)
REH/HPL, ca. Feb 1931: "I feel a deep pity for that people [the Boskop]
- living in peace and friendliness - an unwarlike and pastoral race -
and suddenly confronted by a horde of black slayers as rude and
merciless as they were strong. It must have been a slaughter rather than
a war, and it's a damned pity that the Boskop people didn't have some
Aryan traits to stiffen their spines and train their hands in fighting.
I hate to think of white people being wiped out and enslaved by
niggers." (unpublished)
REH/HPL, ca. June 1931: "It's a dirty shame that the Polacks are selling
those fine old stone walls and replacing them with wire fences. Another
proof that traditions mean nothing to these aliens, who bring their own
traditions with them and callously trample on those of the land they
pollute by their presence."
REH/HPL, ca. Dec 1931: "Whitehead's information about the negroid strain
in the modern Danes struck me as rather ludicrous. That's a mating of
Poles with a vengeance! The Scandinavian and the nigger, the extremes of
development." (unpublished)
REH/HPL, ca Jan 1932: "I hardly think I'd feel any embarassment at
social contact with such persons as you mentioned [inhabitant of the
West Indies] - the cultured aristocratic ones, of course. Though if any
should seek to pay court to a sister or daughter, I'm afraid i'd resort
to primitive Nordic tactics, regardless of the suitor's quarterings.
Somehow this reminds me of the breeding of negro girls for concubines
which was once practised in New Orleans . .. Their owners had an eye to
posterity and mated them with as much care as they might have given to
the breeding of their race horses... After a few generations such girls,
the vestige of negroid blood in their veins scarcely discernable,
carefully raised, well taught in the arts of love, knowing no will save
that of their masters, made mistresses and slaves not excelled by any
Eastern seraglio. They brought fancy prices, and they were worth it."
(unpublished)
REH/HPL, ca Apr 1932: "Just now my interest in the Far East is centered
on that trial in Honolulu, which makes me ashamed of my own race. How a
white man can stand up in court and prosecute a white woman, before the
scum of the Orient, with Orientals in the jury, is more than I can
understand."
REH/HPL, ca May 1932: "That Hawaii business is a rotten reek in the
nostrils of decent men... I don't know whether an Oriental smells any
different than a nigger when he's roasting, but I'm willing to bet the
aroma of scorching hide would have the same chastening effect on his
surviving tribesmen... As for the attorney, for any white man who is low
enough to crucify an outraged child of his own color before a mongrel
swarm, a roll down a hill in a barrel full of safety-razor blades is too
good for him." (unpublished)
REH/HPL, ca. Aug 1932: "My Socialist friend spoke bitterly of the
fickleness of the Mexicans - whose ignorance is so abysmal it's almost
impossible for a white man to comprehend it." (unpublished)
REH/HPL, ca. Sep 1932: "The Old French Market in New Orleans is... an
old landmark that seems to me should be preserved. It smelled like hell
- what with the fish, lobster, wops etc."
REH/HPL, ca. Oct 1932: "You know a coyote nor a buzzard never will touch
a Mexican's carcass - they can't stand the pepper he ate in his
life-time."
REH/HPL, ca Jul 1935: "I�ll admit it seemed strange to me to see
Mexicans being treated on the same footing as white people. You can
certainly tell the difference in the bearing of Mexicans, Indians,
negroes and other dark races the instant you cross the Texas line.
Texas, whatever its virtues or faults, is a white man�s state,
and that fact is reflected in the manner of the non-white races. They
know their place.
[..] I was pretty mad already, for one thing because I don�t like to see
a nigger displaying insolence toward a white man..."
(unpublished)
