• Ricky Rigatoni@piefed.zipEnglish
    60·
    2 天前

    I love it when I read something incredibly racist but have no idea because the stereotypes and slurs they’re using don’t even fucking exist anymore.

  • VerilyFemme@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    16·
    2 天前

    Robinson Crusoe was one of my favorites as a kid. Tried rereading that recently and the whole reason he was ever on a ship that could get wrecked in the first place was he wanted to buy slaves.

  • Amarlune@lemmy.zipEnglish
    9·
    2 天前

    My favorite historical racial slur is from south America. They’d call one tribe rubber people becasue theyd make rubber

  • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    27·
    2 天前

    I started rereading Catch-22 for the first time in like 20 years (it’s so funny), and was a little taken aback to see the n-word in the very first chapter.

    It was, of course, being used in a satirical way that mocked a racist character from Texas. But even then I was like whoa. Came out of nowhere.

    • mctoasterson@reddthat.comEnglish
      21·
      2 天前

      Important distinction of course.

      There is a difference between how Twain or Heller uses it vs. someone just unironically dropping N bombs.

      • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        4·
        2 天前

        Oh for sure. However, in this case, that particular joke didn’t really land with me and I think it could have gone without it.

    • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
      12·
      2 天前

      Stephen King uses the N-word in dialog as a blatant “this character is a piece of shit” cue.

        • DagwoodIII@piefed.socialEnglish
          12·
          2 天前

          So racist he put Pam Grier in a role originally written as a White woman?

          And made a movie about slaves killing their masters?

          We should have more racists like that.

        • Soggy@lemmy.worldEnglish
          9·
          2 天前

          I doubt he’s a racist. For one, Samuel L Jackson vouches for him. But mostly the actual content of his works and his obviously provocative choices. He knows how the dialogue makes various characters look and he’s not shy about being rough and edgy to generate the impact he’s looking for. Nobody would ever accuse him of being a subtle filmmaker but he understands humans.

  • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
    15·
    2 天前

    My all-time favorite racist author is HP Lovecraft. White American man in New England? Not even close to good enough. He’s got to be all that and from the right “stock”.

    I get the impression that old HP didn’t so much hate as fear the “other”. I know, hate and fear are mostly the same thing under the hood, but Henry seemed really frightened of anyone not up to his standards of “decent human being”. He seemed to think mankind was going to devolve into degeneracy. Probably comes from the popular notion of eugenics at the time. Seriously weird dude.

    • Don Piano@feddit.orgEnglish
      12·
      2 天前

      I like the interpretation of Shadow Over Innsmouth as him processing the shocking fact that his great-grandmother might not have been English but… Welsh

      • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        2 天前

        YES! The man was the OG hater. :) It really tickles me reading his work.

        “Hold up. Was that family not white enough?!”

        And he wasn’t merely talking shit like hating on the Irish. HP hated on ALL the peoples!

  • NovaVeles@lemmy.worldEnglish
    51·
    2 天前

    Well can you tell me of a better way of knowing it is classic literature? Usually if I want racist slurs I have to go to my parents house.

  • rumschlumpel@feddit.orgEnglish
    133·
    2 天前

    That says more about your language’s classic literature and society than classic literature in general.

    • CrimeIsLegalNow@ani.socialEnglish
      17·
      2 天前

      Somewhat for English speakers. It’s a huge problem in Victorian era literature in particular but the insanity is mostly contained within a few centuries.

      The problem in terms of English literature specifically is that the first English novel. Robinson Crusoe, was written in 1719 and is largely a rant about how English colonialism is better than Spanish colonialism because English people are better at keeping their slaves alive, and it was popular enough that all the early adventure novels kind of just copied that vibe.

      You go back a couple more centuries though and you’ve got black knights in Arthur’s court and the explicit message is that it doesn’t matter what color a person’s skin is (as long as they’re Christian)

      I’ve read more than enough world literature to know that every culture has its cringe periods. Meiji Era Japanese literature is a particularly wild period imo, you’ve got authors exactly as the meme described and then they swerve into “and that’s why all non Japanese should be our sex slaves, that’s what this newfangled Marxism is for”

      • T156@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        2 天前

        I rather imagine that some of it is also just that the world has moved on, euphemism treadmill and all.

        I’ve read more than a few things where there’s a few terms that were clearly meant to be complimentary, that became offensive, and might be archaic enough that their impact has largely gone.

        Like some of Herge’s depictions for people outside Europe, or the odd novel that describes someone as “a credit to his race”.

  • Wirlocke@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    71·
    2 天前

    “I will weave together a beautiful philosophy that shows that all men are equal and then lazily scribble in why people with dark skin are the exception.”

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 天前

    Depends on the author. Some of the writing styles are anachronistic due to their age and can be a bit of a slog, but that’s often compounded by the authors being insufferable twats who felt the need to make their prose “flowery” and verbose assuming that everyone would be as in love with their words as they were with themselves.