Was C.S. Lewis a Racist?

[Quixote1818]

I came across this review at Amazon.com and found it interesting. I have never read his book The Last Battle so I am not sure what to make of this review.

Thoughts?



5 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
Not much to recommend it., August 28, 2006
By Joe W "jw" (Winston-Salem, NC) - See all my reviews
I think that the real point is being missed by asking whether or not C.S. Lewis was racist. The question is, what is the effect of the books on their target audience; namely children between eight and twelve years of age. What will the impact of reading about the Calormene darkies on a child.

I read these books when I was eight. As was intended I identified with the boys fighting against evil and treachary in the service of Narnia, etc, etc etc. Then in the middle of "The Last Battle" I hit the word "darkies". And I knew that he was talking about me. There was a sense of betrayal and shame and disbelief. It was a kick in the stomach.

As a eight year old black boy, I had no greater world view, nor a concept of a person being the "product of his times." Nor did I understand that he was probably (like it really matters) deriding Arabs and not blacks.

Its not a question of whether or not Lewis was a racist. We and our children will read many books that have some sort of bias. There is no help for it. But this man and this body of work was presented to a child as an embodiment of the worth of our society. A body of work that apparently finds some children worthless. That may or not have been his intent, but such an ambiguous message should not be touted as being so unambiguously Christian or so absolutely moral.

Setting aside religious and racial issues, this is not a well written book. Its not horrible, but the narration wanders and unlike the earlier novels, there are no clear personalities between characters. They tend to speak with one voice; that of the narrator.


Link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/0007202326/sr=1-1/qid=1181494026/ref=cm_rev_next/104-7121669-2813521?ie=UTF8&customer-reviews.sort%5Fby=-SubmissionDate&n=283155&s=books&customer-reviews.start=11&qid=1181494026&sr=1-1




Here is another review that says the same thing:


4 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
Some horrible messages, in my opinion, but may be blunted by parental guidance, April 3, 2006
By L. S. Jaszczak "servant of the secret fire" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
I have to state for the record that I was probably irredeeemably prejudiced against this book by things I read about it beforehand. I wasn't crazy about The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe but I actually did enjoy the middle books in the series. To me, however, this one seems to send some really horrible messages, and I just hope kids don't pick up on them. First, there seems to be a tinge of the Victorian sentimental "good children dying young" meme. Secondly, dark-skinned people (also known as "Darkies") are just bad by nature, and only one of them, evidently, is worthy of heaven (or the Narnian version of it). Thirdly, in the first book Edmund was ready to betray his siblings to certain death and is forgiven; in this one Susan is presumably cast into the outer darkness for being a normal teenage girl. (One essay I read suggests that she may still have a chance, but the implication is there.) None of the "good" people seems more than mildly disturbed by this - shades of the saints enjoying a ringside seat watching the suffering of the sinners in hell, or it is more "out of sight, out of mind"?

At the very least, since most children wouldn't want to read all but one of the series, I would suggest that parents talk to them about some of the more problematic parts of this book, particularly the ending, which some childen might find disturbing, however rosy and feel-good the presentation may be.

Apart from that, there is some good action and description, although the plot seems more disjointed than those of the other books.

[WiseButAngrySara]

1. Gosh, I had no idea about this writing. I would have to say

absolutely not, but I've not read all of his works.

Was Shakespeare a racist or an anti-Semite? Is Cindy Sheehan an anti-Semite? I would answer emphatically no in these later examples.

[xchrom]

2. i become so dispirited when i read some things --

people -- i sometimes think -- simply don't know how to read anymore -- and they don't know how to equip our children how to read.

of course he was a racist.

but without adequate attention being paid to how children read -- how to digest content and context -- then everything becomes an assault.

this media age has dissolved our ability to handle these works -- to understand them -- the time they were written by whom -- and where the important metaphors and allegories lie.

ezra pound was a character of horrifying racist sentiments -- he was also a profound poet -- but i needed to LEARN how to read him -- and understand him with intelligence.

just my two cents.

[The Magistrate]

3. To My View, Sir, Yes

The "Narnia" books struck me as repellent on too many levels to quickly list, and the racist attitudes they embodied were one of the worst features of them.

[Coventina]

4. *sigh* Not this AGAIN!

One of those Calormene "darkies" is the heroine of "The Horse and His Boy" which is book 5 of the series.

Lewis was probably "racist" to the extent that every man of his class and position in the British Empire at the time was racist. That's not really an excuse, but I think that he went out of his way to make sympathetic characters in books that didn't look like him. (Women, etc.)

I think he did very well for an uptight and shy Cambridge don.

[mrcheerful]

5. I don't know if Lewis was a racist or like most of whites used words that were accepted

at the period of american history. Remember Lewis died before 1965 when words like darkie or coloreds were used to describe people of african decent. By todays standards it would be considered racist, but in the post 1965 world it was acceptable.

[Quixote1818]

7. Good point, but what about what this rewiewer says here

This is from the second review posted above:


Secondly, dark-skinned people (also known as "Darkies") are just bad by nature, and only one of them, evidently, is worthy of heaven (or the Narnian version of it).

Even if the word didn't have any real racist meaning why is it that the "Darkies" don't get to go to heaven and are evil by nature? Sounds rather disturbing.

I am not convinced that he was racist but this sure pushes the envelope even for that time period.

[Coventina]

8. Well, considering that the Calormene city of Tashbaan is in heaven

would seem to indicate that more than one made it to heaven.

see page 225 of "The Last Battle".

[mrcheerful]

9. True but also remember there were 2 views about people of african decent that Lewis grew up with

The first was africans had no souls so therefore they could not enter into heaven. The second was that african peoples went to another heaven separate from the white heaven, which a few african descendent's could get into the white heaven by being exceptionally good. Fredrick Douglas was one such african that was granted that "gift". I read that someplace during my teen years when doing a history project on the civil war. Btw, I also heard the same thing from a sunday school teacher in the 1960's. The same guy also told me that there was a cat heaven and a dog heaven, that were seperate to keep dogs from chasing cat's, lol. And then the church wonders why I haven't stepped foot inside of it in the last 30 years. Remember during the period that Lewis spent his life in whites had very little interaction with african people, they mainly worked and done business with african americans, but they lived in a seperate world outside of the business. Those who didn't grow up during those years don't realize just how seperated whites and african americans lived. As a youngster I remember even up here in michigan that the public swimming pools either were all white or all black and you never saw the 2 groups sharing the same public area's. Around 1963 or 64 I remember a black family in a white public park, the white cops came and forced them to leave. It was also odd that every cop that I seen in my child hood were white. Btw, the schools I attended up until my JR. year of high school there were no african americans in them. I graduated in 1975, my school district was white and the district north of the one I was in was mostly african american.

[treestar]

6. Some say every white person is a racist

Here it depends on the context, though. Especially where the characters are imaginary. "Darkie" in that context may not mean anything about race.

I always like Star Wars, where there are so many creatures of different types that the black and white characters are the same - homo sapiens. Lando and Mace Windu and Han and Luke are all human surrounding by all those other creatures, and the race difference just goes away.

Nowadays, someone is going to consider you a racist if you approach the issue at all. One of my relatives who is a teacher got into trouble merely for admitting that her father was racist as where many whites in the prior generations! Which is exactly true and what the victims of racism complain about, but have a white person mention it and it's racist in itself!

[Bullet1987]

10. So just because lynchings were considered "the norm" in the American South

for a long time...should they be excused? C.S. Lewis was a racist from what I can see. Period.

[treestar]

11. Huh? I said nothing like that.

:wtf:

[KamaAina]

12. Oh, nerts. People say this about Tolkien, too.

because the "Swarthy Men" fought on the side of the Dark Lord.

As a matter of fact, the two were acquainted while at Oxford. Next, I suppose, we'll find "evidence" that they founded England's first and only klavern. :sarcasm: Sheesh.

[mrcheerful]

15. Easy to do when you don't take history into account. Notice the broad brush stroke, from a few to

all whites were racists. They don't even look at what happened to people that stood on the african americans side. I remember reactions that I got for kissing a african american girls cheek when I was 5, in 1962. Over reaction at it's best.

[Alexander]

13. Weren't Tolkein and Fleming also racists?

I remember coming across the n-word quite often while reading the James Bond novels. And I seem to remember reading that Tolkein had some views that we would consider racist.

Heck, Abraham Lincoln was also a racist. He made no secret of the fact that he thought white people were superior and that black people should not enjoy all the same rights.

[KoKo]

14. Call for a ban on his books then....or don't read them....

:shrug: He's dead... what else do you want? People will read him or not...unless you want his books taken out of libraries then what's the point of this post.

[mrcheerful]

16. Flame bait?

[KoKo]

19. Yes....I thought..."flame bait."

:shrug:

[TahitiNut]

17. Lewis' work reflects much of the contemporary sectarian 'thought' of the time.

Faith/religion is probably more often corrupted by sectarian social attitudes than sectarian/political activities improved by faith/religion. Lewis was immersed in the attitude that Man was the objective of Creation, that the Universe was Man's inheritance, and that Woman served merely to please Man. Such is the stuff of overly secularized religion. And there's the "land of Nod." As time proceeds, we should probably be thankful that this has become distasteful as soon as it has. It'd be far worse to regard it as acceptable, imho.

[yurbud]

18. I remember reading Lewis apology for this, at least in the Pilgrim's Regress

I can't remember if he apologized for the anti-Arab angle.

[Tesha]

20. Without a doubt.

You only need to read about the Calormenes and Tash (sp?).

Tesha