The Rascist and the not so rascist

Joseph Conrad, author of Heart of Darkness really does have a ‘heart of darkness' and as Chinua Achebe says, "Conrad was a bloody racist."
The book Heart of Darkness dehumanizes Africans and divides humankind into two, the civilized and uncivilized. As Achebe describes, "Heart of Darkness projects the image of Africa as ‘the other world’, the antithesis of Europe, and therefore of civilization…" Conrad creates images of the African world being the opposite of Western civilization. Conrad goes further in the book to describe the Africans as more like animals than people. He uses the word black non-stop while describing their physical features as well as the word "nigger". The best example for this can be taken from Achebe response, where from a personal record Conrad Says, "A certain enormous buck nigger encountered in Haiti fixed my conception of blind, furious, and unreasoning rage, as manifested in the human animal to the end of my days. Of the nigger I used to dream for years afterwards. A black figure stood up, strode on long black legs, waving long black arms"
Achebe says, "Conrad is concerned not so much with Africa as with the deterioration of one European mind caused by solitude and sickness." It’s evident through Conrad’s writings that the mentality of Marlow, the fictitious character and Conrad’s mentality is one in the same. Achebe also says "The real question is the dehumanization of Africa and Africans which this age-long attitude has fostered and continues to foster in the world." This can be portrayed when Conrad described the, " death like indifferences of unhappy savages," as well as when he gives them animal attributes, " They walked erect and slow... Black rags were wound round their loins, and the short ends behind waggled to and fro like tails." He removes their right to be considered human. This is definitely racist.
Conrad’s racist character can be defended though because he was born and lived during a time where African Americans were not treated as equals to Englishmen and Europeans. Simply, Conrad had the same mindset as other people did during that time period. Another defensive argument could be that the book is fiction and should be read as a fictitious work.