>>Chinua Achebe, father of modern African literature, has long argued
>>that
>>>Joseph Conrad was a racist. Caryl Phillips, an admirer of both
>>>writers,
>>>disagrees.
>>That seems like kind of a silly debate. How many European
>>aristocrats of the Victorian era would we not consider somehow
>>racist today?
>
>
>This is way beyond silly. The word "racist" as used here and
>everywhere else seems to have degenerated into nothing but an empty
>insult. Any usage of the term "racism" or "racist" not accompanied by
>a clear concise definition makes the effusion of which it is part
>unworthy of notice.
Achebe has been writing and talking about Conrad and Heart of Darkness since the '70s and effusion does not describe what he's been writing or saying about it. Effusion does describe what you say here quite well though.
The tagline from the article I linked to was clipped in the above and this part was left out:
>[Phillips] meets Achebe to defend the creator of Heart of Darkness
>but finds their discussion provokes an unexpected epiphany
So like I said before, it's not a debate but a discussion.