Was HPL really a racist?

[justhinking]

So how come everyone's so sure we're less racist in general? I think these days we're just more politcally correct (ie afraid to be honest about our views), let's us keep our biases unchallenged so long as we don't present them directly. Personally I'm against the whole political correctness thing - it's the attitudes behind words that are offensive, not the words themselves surely? There's also the fact that even without being racist many people have simply shifted the emphasis to culture and belief in their own innate cultural superiority.

To get back to the issues at hand though I think that really HPL was writing in a different time but also writing to acheive certain effects - to many people in the culture he was writing for places like the Middle East, Africa, Asia and the pacific islands were all somewhat exotic, mysterious, dark, foreboding places (it's the alien and unfamiliar which inspires terror, surely something HPL makes something of a point of). Equally use of rural folk hiding dark and terrible secrets presents the familiar and non-threatening as alien so it's a literary device as well. I don't think that HPL dwells heavily on racial or cultural issues, rather he uses cultural biases already inherent in the culture and time he was writing in to achieve certain elements of tone and foreshadowing in his works.

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by justhinking

So how come everyone's so sure we're less racist in general? I think these days we're just more politcally correct (ie afraid to be honest about our views), let's us keep our biases unchallenged so long as we don't present them directly. Personally I'm against the whole political correctness thing - it's the attitudes behind words that are offensive, not the words themselves surely? There's also the fact that even without being racist many people have simply shifted the emphasis to culture and belief in their own innate cultural superiority.

To get back to the issues at hand though I think that really HPL was writing in a different time but also writing to acheive certain effects - to many people in the culture he was writing for places like the Middle East, Africa, Asia and the pacific islands were all somewhat exotic, mysterious, dark, foreboding places (it's the alien and unfamiliar which inspires terror, surely something HPL makes something of a point of). Equally use of rural folk hiding dark and terrible secrets presents the familiar and non-threatening as alien so it's a literary device as well. I don't think that HPL dwells heavily on racial or cultural issues, rather he uses cultural biases already inherent in the culture and time he was writing in to achieve certain elements of tone and foreshadowing in his works.

Nice post there, and there's certainly some truth to it. However, if you go and read Lovecraft essays, his poetry, his letters ... he was often quite viciously racist. "Vitriol" doesn't even begin to cover it, in many cases (see, for instance, some of his letters in the recent Letters to Rheinhart Kleiner, or his letters to Frank Belknap Long about New York's lower East Side, just from a visit, before he lived there -- let alone those he wrote to his aunts when he was living in New York -- at one point even his aunt Lillian took him to task for his extreme views, and that is really surprising! And this really does tie in very strongly with his fiction, as well... "The Shadow over Innsmouth" is a story based entirely on the idea of miscegenation, and its effects toward "devolution" -- the horror lies in the protagonist's not only accepting this part of his heritage, but finally glorying in it.

And any look through his poetry you'll find numerous racist slurs, slanders, and bigoted ethnic remarks, from "Ye Ballade of Patrick von Flynn" to "To General Villa", to the now-infamous "On the Creation of Niggers". It's an unfortunate fact, but a fact. And this is one aspect of his thought where Lovecraft showed very little, if any change, as he went through life, despite the fact that already there was a turn in the tide among the scientific community on this -- it hadn't reached its height, by any means, but the sorts of views he espoused were indeed becoming eroded by scientific evidence rather quickly; and in nearly every other area of his life, he made adjustments for new information that challenged his views -- but not this. This was blind prejudice, nothing more.

However, that said... yes, he was writing for another time, and from a different perspective. And he did use these feelings to create some powerful fiction that doesn't have to be read as racist, necessarily (though it's darned near impossible to avoid that with such things as the "Six Shots in the Moonlight" chapter of Herbert West -- Reanimator, or "The Horror at Red Hook", for instance). And, while it's no excuse or defense -- as an historical figure, none is really needed at this point, however regrettable the views were -- he was hardly alone among the literati in having such views. T. S. Eliot expressed views every bit as pungent as HPL; so did Ezra Pound. Yet one doesn't see that much criticism of them for those views. I think that's because Lovecraft still has a lot of "fans" rather than the sorts of readers who would normally read and publicly discuss Eliot or Pound. It's the price of a certain sort of fame.

I've no problem admitting Lovecraft's fault here -- he was a big enough man otherwise, and a good enough artist, that it by no means overshadows his work. And, overall (there were apparently some actions he took in school where outspoken anti-Semitism was concerned) he was the soul of generosity and kindness when he dealt with people even when they may have belonged to ethnic groups he disliked. It was his expression of those views on paper that has kept them alive today, not his actions otherwise. As you say, our time tends to be hypersensitive to this because of our peculiar historical associations with such (World War II, the various genocides undertaken since then, which have so quicly become public because of the speedy access of information, whereas in other ages it might have taken years, decades, or even centuries for the facts to come out). And I'll agree that I am extremely dubious that racism (or, better, ethnophobia) has done much more than gone underground, considering how easily it erupts periodically when a society is undergoing stress. I don't think we're anywhere near as civilized as we like to think. In some ways, I think we're considerably less civilized (albeit more technologically advanced, and having more scientific knowledge) than some earlier periods in history... at least, where the literate are concerned.

But, as I said, I don't think we need duck the issue where Lovecraft is concerned. If we can get past our own prejudices on this front, I think we'll find there's much more to be gained by reading him as he was, taking the blemished and the fair, and simply seeing him as he was, not as either a saint or a devil, but a very intelligent and complex man who refuses to fit into any easy mold....

[gigantes]

wow... interesting thread, and a most compelling summary, JD.

i've mainly just enjoyed his stories and not studied him much as an overall human being, but i definitely think there is merit in evaluating him by the standards of his time instead of dragging him into the harsh and judgemental light of our own times.

[justhinking]

Originally Posted by j. d. worthington

But, as I said, I don't think we need duck the issue where Lovecraft is concerned. If we can get past our own prejudices on this front, I think we'll find there's much more to be gained by reading him as he was, taking the blemished and the fair, and simply seeing him as he was, not as either a saint or a devil, but a very intelligent and complex man who refuses to fit into any easy mold....

Excellently put, this part in particular I liked, and a very thorough and interesting post. You also encouraged me to read some poems of HPL's that I hadn't previously read. It's obvious that Lovecraft did make some highly racist comments and clearly held ideas based on 18th-19th century pseudoscience and was a unrestrained anglophile. On the other hand I'd say that some of his resistance to changing these ideas were thoroughly engrained and added to by a seemingly anti-modernist approach to the world. From the way in which I read his works it seems to me more an artistic device in his stories rather than a particular attempt to introduce racial overtones (though of course it's an interesting question as to how much it shadows and affects his choices in this regard, the ideas of eugenics clearly hold interest for him and he explores them).

As you noted miscegenation is often at least a minor or background theme (and in the case you mentioned a rather larger part is given) but I'd also say that he seems to look at it more from the point of effective horror writing than from a persuasive or polemnical one. He seems to me to be more trying to evoke a certain terror and foreboding with themes of mental and physical degradation and corruption that extends and worsens over generations and in which humankind is shaped and twisted to better serve or amuse dark forces (which incidentally helps give scale and proper scope to his more alien and ageless horrors) than trying to espouse racist views. It is in that sense probably a bit telling as to his views that he manifested those fears in that particular way but as you note they was hardly an unusual views (even or perhaps particularly amongst the more literate section of society). Of course that's just my opinion but it's the impression that I at least get from reading his work - all in all I think that his work isn't particularly racist, despite certain over tones and approaches to the issues and regardless of exactly what views Lovecraft himself held (something that's ultimately impossible to truly know anyway).

As to the way some people judge Lovecraft and others - well in a way it's kind of ironic that culturally we openly tend to have an attitude of false superiority over people of other cultures and times for having openly attitudes of false superiority over other people (and their cultures). And in the end let's face it you don't have to agree with a person's attitudes to greatly enjoy their writing.

PS All of that said it is kind of sad that his work is featured amongst many white supremacist sites (amusing in light of his views on degenerate white trash), I suppose that we can at least take comfort that it might make them into more literate racists at least - there's always hope, no?

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by justhinking

Excellently put, this part in particular I liked, and a very thorough and interesting post. You also encouraged me to read some poems of HPL's that I hadn't previously read. It's obvious that Lovecraft did make some highly racist comments and clearly held ideas based on 18th-19th century pseudoscience and was a unrestrained anglophile. On the other hand I'd say that some of his resistance to changing these ideas were thoroughly engrained and added to by a seemingly anti-modernist approach to the world. From the way in which I read his works it seems to me more an artistic device in his stories rather than a particular attempt to introduce racial overtones (though of course it's an interesting question as to how much it shadows and affects his choices in this regard, the ideas of eugenics clearly hold interest for him and he explores them).

Yes, that's a point that I don't often see raised, but Lovecraft did have a strong belief in eugenics -- and that was very common in his day, even among the well-educated, a lot of the scientific community, etc. That one could make for some interesting articles on his work and thought.

As you noted miscegenation is often at least a minor or background theme (and in the case you mentioned a rather larger part is given) but I'd also say that he seems to look at it more from the point of effective horror writing than from a persuasive or polemnical one. He seems to me to be more trying to evoke a certain terror and foreboding with themes of mental and physical degradation and corruption that extends and worsens over generations and in which humankind is shaped and twisted to better serve or amuse dark forces (which incidentally helps give scale and proper scope to his more alien and ageless horrors) than trying to espouse racist views. It is in that sense probably a bit telling as to his views that he manifested those fears in that particular way but as you note they was hardly an unusual views (even or perhaps particularly amongst the more literate section of society). Of course that's just my opinion but it's the impression that I at least get from reading his work - all in all I think that his work isn't particularly racist, despite certain over tones and approaches to the issues and regardless of exactly what views Lovecraft himself held (something that's ultimately impossible to truly know anyway).

Well, Lovecraft openly espoused certain forms of racist ideas in his letters -- he frequently said that both blacks and Australian aborigines were biologically inferior. While with some of the other ethnic groups he shifted his arguments more toward keeping cultures separate rather than basing them on biological grounds (though with his more intimate correspondents he continued to argue on the biological grounds as well), when it came to those two groups he always saw them as midway between homo sapiens and the ape. That, unfortunately, he stated quite bluntly and baldly on various occasions. The only mitigating factor was that he didn't wish them to be treated with any cruelty; but he was adamant about "the colour line", having been not only influenced early on by his family's (and the upper-crust society of Providence's) views, but also by a book he read when very young, called The Color Line: A Brief in Behalf of the Unborn, by William Benjamin Smith; Lovecraft even wrote a poem, "De Triumpho Naturae", dedicated to Smith, at a young age.

Now, if we can step back from our own emotional aversion to the sorts of views espoused here, I find this aspect of Lovecraft's thought very interesting because it is the one area where he never allowed the scientific evidence to influence him to any notable degree; and I think the reasons for that are many and complex. But also I find it fascinating that it wasn't a simple-minded racism that he brought to his creative work, either. Racist it was but -- as you point out -- it was not in general polemical or preachy. It was simply a part of the fabric of the whole but, because it was seldom brought into sharp focus as racism rather than horror, it is easy for a lot of people to be totally unaware of it.

The other aspect of this is something that ties in with another part of his views, and what informs a great deal of the horror of his tales: that we really aren't as much a separate species as we like to believe, that we can all-too-easily slip backward on the evolutionary scale (his views on temperance are tied into this, by the way, as he saw drink not merely as socially undesirable and disruptive, but as something that would genuinely degrade the individual and their offspring genetically, pushing them back down that ladder; cf. his "More Chain Lightning" and other essays on the subject); and, if he saw certain groups of human beings as being closer to that plane already, then miscegenation would encourage such a devolution. He was always aware how much of our genetic heritage we carry around with us, and how easy it is for the "more highly evolved" traits -- the more intellectual, civilized, etc. -- to slip and for us to behave barbarically and brutally. That's the theme of "The Rats in the Walls", really -- the genetic past reaching out to claim De la Poer (and, as he is a synecdochical figure, by extension, the rest of humanity) and drag him back down to that primal, bestial level -- hence the use of the various dialects in that one paragraph of speech, to show his incredibly rapid descent from a highly-cultured modern man to the pithecanthropoid -- inside, if not out. The horror of it is increased, of coure, because he chose to use the first-person narration here, so we make that descent with De la Poer -- urged on by the ghostly rats (which we are left to wonder whether they are "real" spiritual phenomena -- after all, the cats react to them but, interestingly, the other humans do not... is this because they are not yet on their downward trend, or ...? -- or whether they are symbols of his own creation, taken from the inherited memories or from his fascination with the legends of the army of rats that devastated the countryside after the destruction of all the ancient family save his own ancestor, and exist only in his mind, because of the intimate connection of that ancient rodent army and his family's past).

So with "The Shadow over Innsmouth" -- the miscegenation here is also a way of descending that evolutionary ladder -- as Zadok Allen had said, we all came out of the sea, and it only takes a little change to go back again, to the primal forms of life, and lose what makes us genuinely human. (A theme which was shared by quite a few horror writers following Darwin -- notably Arthur Machen with his "Novel of the Black Seal", "Novel of the White Powder", "The Great God Pan", and "The White People" -- the beast is always there, and only needs the door opened a little to sweep away everything that has come since.

So this was a part of Lovecraft's racism, I think -- after long study and considerable thought: that keeping the various ethnoi apart, reducing the mixing of the "races"; helped insure the stability of both the culture (or cultures, as he did later feel that there was genuine worth in several cultures -- just that they should each be kept separate lest they degrade each other and become a mongrel culture) and the "race". It's still a question as to whether there's any substance to the argument about cultures, but biologically I'd say it's been proven to be unsound.

Nonetheless, as you say, it wasn't a simple sort of racism; it wasn't just "white supremacy"... though it began that way, I'd say -- he was an ardent Aryan in his earlier years, and never entirely lost that; but it was much more complex in that it was also concerned with preserving the human against the beast in all our backgrounds. (See "Facts in the Case of the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family", where it is hinted, for instance, that this primeval city of "white apes" are actually the progenitors of all white races ... and that, again, we can slip back down that slope so easily.)

As to the way some people judge Lovecraft and others - well in a way it's kind of ironic that culturally we openly tend to have an attitude of false superiority over people of other cultures and times for having openly attitudes of false superiority over other people (and their cultures). And in the end let's face it you don't have to agree with a person's attitudes to greatly enjoy their writing.

I'd say that's a common fault with human society -- we always think we are more sophisticated, more adult, more educated, etc. than our ancestors -- "We're living in the enlightened 19th centry, man; no one believes in such things anymore!", etc. -- when frankly the change are more apparent than real. They're much more surface than we like to think. Our essential emotional makeup hasn't changed much during the whole of human history, nor is likely to, really, at least if we take that to mean at base. And that is, in part, because we've only been human for a rather short time, really; the evolutionary changes that would allow any major alterations in our basic emotional structure -- barring one of those period "evolutionary leaps", which were quite possibly brought on by extreme environmental factors threatening extinction (which make one wonder -- is global warming going to be the threshold for the next such leap? Or some other event?) -- such changes take a lot longer than the entirety of recorded human history. The rest is veneer; put us under enough stress, and that veneer gets stripped away, I'm afraid. This may be a good thing, as it may enable us as a species to survive; but it also threatens our existence at times, and certainly isn't often connected to the things that we hold to be most "uniquely human".

PS All of that said it is kind of sad that his work is featured amongst many white supremacist sites (amusing in light of his views on degenerate white trash), I suppose that we can at least take comfort that it might make them into more literate racists at least - there's always hope, no?

This is something I wasn't at all aware of. Interesting. Yes, he'd be appalled, as he had no use for such; as said, he didn't wish any cruelty toward other races -- he merely wanted there to be a strict boundary and would prefer that each be kept within its own country really, save for a very moderate amount of interaction -- a thoroughly impossible ideal, even if it were a good one -- which it isn't; it's the interactions that prevent stagnation and foster new views and new ideas, new possibilities. He thought some violence might be necessary to initiate the separation, but -- save in his most emotionally distraught moments, when he was at his wits' end in trying to survive -- he never spoke of wanting anything of the sort.

As for it making more literate racists ... that's debatable. I grew up in a town where such was pervasive, and I'm afraid that, if HPL resisted the scientific evidence to question his views, they are a thousandfold more adamantine-skulled. But I suppose one can always hope....

[burntogold]

Especially after seeing the white ape comment, I guess we can summarize the answer by saying that Lovecraft doesn't exactly have much hope for humanity in general.

To Cthulhu, we probably all taste the same.

[dustinzgirl]

People need to consider the culture of the times when calling someone a racist.

That is all I have to contribute.

[ghyle]

Originally Posted by burntogold

To Cthulhu, we probably all taste the same.

Half-baked, no doubt.

[ghyle]

Just a side note, I have an essay on race in the early poetry of Lovecraft, that may be published later in Lovecraft Annual.

[kaelcarp]

To me, it's not so much that he was racist as that he was xenophobic. This is really obvious from his writing. Anything that deviates from everyday experience is generally depicted as dangerous or scary. Racism can be seen as part of that, but just a small part. I think Lovecraft basically had a fear of that which he did not understand. So much of his writing points to this. He saw science as a tool for better understanding things, but he was even afraid of that in some ways. He seemed to have a deep-set idea that anything outside his own regular experience was something not as good.

I love his writing, but to me this is one thing about it that has always bothered me.

[j. d. worthington]

The interesting thing about this is that HPL began more this way than he would later be; not so much the racism issue (which did modify, but not always that much), but in general. He opened up more, and began to take in more and more experiences, and altered his opinions and discarded a lot of his pricklier attitudes. Even when he was more prone to resist the new, if it was something that was of worth, once he was exposed to it, he usually set about understanding and assimilating it into his worldview. Quantum physics was one such (as was relativity)... though this did not mean he always took such things to heart, so to speak. But I'm not sure fear fits him during his last decade or so; although he certainly emphasized that in his writing, it being the sort of writing it was. However, even there, you'll find it moved increasingly into awe, wonder, mystery, and the feeling of the supernal and sublime, rather than simple fear itself.

[kaelcarp]

Originally Posted by j. d. worthington

The interesting thing about this is that HPL began more this way than he would later be; not so much the racism issue (which did modify, but not always that much), but in general. He opened up more, and began to take in more and more experiences, and altered his opinions and discarded a lot of his pricklier attitudes. Even when he was more prone to resist the new, if it was something that was of worth, once he was exposed to it, he usually set about understanding and assimilating it into his worldview. Quantum physics was one such (as was relativity)... though this did not mean he always took such things to heart, so to speak. But I'm not sure fear fits him during his last decade or so; although he certainly emphasized that in his writing, it being the sort of writing it was. However, even there, you'll find it moved increasingly into awe, wonder, mystery, and the feeling of the supernal and sublime, rather than simple fear itself.

That's a good point. Actually, the story you can most see his change of heart in (and one of his most underrated stories IMO) is "In the Walls of Eryx". It's one of the rare times he evokes some sort of sympathy for the monsters. This also happens a bit in At the Mountains of Madness, in which the shoggoths are seen somewhat sympathetically in the end, even if they are kind of scary.

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by kaelcarp

That's a good point. Actually, the story you can most see his change of heart in (and one of his most underrated stories IMO) is "In the Walls of Eryx". It's one of the rare times he evokes some sort of sympathy for the monsters. This also happens a bit in At the Mountains of Madness, in which the shoggoths are seen somewhat sympathetically in the end, even if they are kind of scary.

Hmmm... I've never seen the shoggoths as sympathetic; the Old Ones, yes, but not their protean protoplasmic replacements. Actually, the Great Race are presented with a fairly sympathetic eye, as the civililzation they have is the highest ideal of such Lovecraft ever expressed, either in his fiction or his essays and letters.

Speaking of which, flipping through The H. P. Lovecraft Dream Book last night, I came across this quote from one of his letters, which may throw some light on why, even as he expanded and became increasingly more open to experiences, places, and people, fear still played such a large factor in his fictional work. This is in a letter to Harry Otto Fischer (the original, incidentally, of Leiber's Grey Mouser), on the subject of fears and phobias. After relating the sorts of problems he had with this growing up (Lovecraft really was one of the great dreamers or, to use Joshi's phrase, "nightmarers", in literary history), he concludes:

Now, in the sere & yellow leaf (I shall be 47 in August), I seem to be rather deserted by stark horror. I have nightmares only 2 or 3 times a year, & of these none ever approaches those of my youth in soul-shattering, phobic monstrousness. It is fully a decade & more since I have known fear in its most stupefying & hideous form. And yet, so strong is the impress of the past, I shall never cease to be fascinated by fear as a subject for aesthetic treatment. Along with the element of cosmic mystery & outsideness, it will always interest me more than anything else. It is, in a way, amusing that one of my chief interests should be an emotion whose poignant extremes I have never known in waking life!

[kaelcarp]

I actually meant that the elder things, not the shoggoths, are sympathetic. My fingers and my brain were out of sync, I guess.

The quoted letter is interesting. I think Lovecraft went through what most adults go through in that regard, except that 2 or 3 nightmares a year is probably more than most average adults!

While reading Lovecraft, I've sometimes thought his characters reacted with too much fear or revulsion to things. I have always kind of chalked this up to Lovecraft's own xenophobia coming through in the way his characters act. If he was much more open and less fearful by the end of his life (and by fearful I partially mean something more like tentativeness or great reluctance to accept new ideas), he often still depicted characters who experienced fear as he once had.

[j. d. worthington]

I'd say that's partly it. Partly it's also a philosophical stance, as a lot of what he's depicting is based on the "decline of the West" idea (which, with reservations, he had an affinity with), along with the idea set forth in the opening sentence of Supernatural Horror in Literature, that "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown".

When it comes to race, however, that's the sticking point with Lovecraft. Though he did modify many of his views on this to varying degrees, he never truly let go of his ethnocentric views; and in the case of blacks and Australian aborigines, even there what modification there was was minimal... though he did become less vitriolic and a bit more paternalistic in his descriptions of them in his last years.