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The Brown Daily Herald

Letter: U. should re-think Africa focus

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Published: Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Updated: Tuesday, October 13, 2009

To the Editor: 

We were surprised to recently read that Brown University is planning to expand Africana Studies (“In hiring, hallmark of a broader push on Africa by University” Oct. 6). 

We have to wonder what could possibly lead Brown administrators and faculty to think they have neglected this area. Brown has a Department of Africana Studies with 14 full-faculty members — not counting seven visiting and affiliated professors. In addition, Brown has the Third World Center, the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America and the Africa Group Colloquium, and the University recently sponsored the Focus on Africa speaker series as well as the Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice. All are related to Africana studies. 

We are especially concerned over the hiring of Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe to the faculty of the Africana Studies Department. Achebe is known for denouncing British author Joseph Conrad as a “bloody racist” and claiming his book Heart of Darkness “celebrates” the “dehumanization” and “depersonalization” of African people. 

The University should consider more creative ways to teach its students about the classics of Western literature than calling them racist. Students deserve to appreciate great books on their own merits, without having them cut down into caricatures of European colonialism.

Stephen Beale ’04
Christopher McAuliffe ’05
Travis Rowley ’02
Sept. 12

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4 comments Log in to Comment

R M
Mon Jan 18 2010 00:18
Liana Nisimova, it's possible to be against colonialism and still be racist. Joseph Conrad compares a black person working on a modern ship to a dog wearing breeches. Would you also say that Rudyard Kipling wasn't racist because "The White Man's Burden" is about helping the poor benighted savages, not taking their resources?
Liana Nisimova
Wed Jan 13 2010 21:56
Although I am not supporting or refuting the statement made by the authors of this letter, I would like to point out to the commentator as a student who read Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and studied it extensively with th guidance of a very liberal teacher, the book was far from racist. It was a SYMBOL and an exaggeration (literary device) used to expose the EVILS of colonialism. The fact that it would be labeled as a racist book is proof that said person has never read the novel or has acutely misinterpreted its message.
R M
Tue Oct 13 2009 17:15
"Great books on their own merit" was the curriculum for centuries before anyone pointed out that Heart of Darkness was, ahem, really, really racist. (Or that other books were racist, sexist, etc.) Hardly "creative." A book can be well-written and interesting and still be really, really racist. Just like I'm sure Mssrs. Beale, McAuliffe, and Rowley are lovely, intelligent people in their personal lives, while still being the sort of people who write letters to the newspaper complaining that the University is trying to represent people of color in the curriculum.
Brown_Daily,Leora_Cieplinski@brown.edu
Tue Oct 13 2009 16:41
Hiring Chinua Achebe is an excellent achievement for a University. He has made immense contribution to African thought and literature and a University is exactly the kind of place that should welcome healthy an dynamic discussion about colonialism and world history. We've come along way from simply accepting "great books on their own merit" and instead, can look at works of literature in context and interrogate them to spawn further discussion on historical and present day realities. The authors completely miss the point with a clearly narrow understanding of any of the resources they mention to support a claim that hiring a prominent thinker and writer was a bad decision for a world-class University. Furthermore, they do not have a thorough understanding of Achebe and his influence. He's certainly known for much more than commenting on Joseph Conrad.

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