DISGRACE / RACISM

When reading Disgrace, it didn’t strike me to be as racist as Heart of Darkness. There wasn’t a constant usage of words describing Africans like shadows, figures, etc. Although after reading Out of Africa, there were some examples of how it was. ‘In the new regime whites could “lose their cards, their weapons, their property, their rights, and their dignity, while “the white women will have to sleep with the barbaric black men.” This line does strike out to be racist referring to the black men as barbaric. It portrays black men as if they were less like humans and more like savages and animals.
Another part that was pointed out in Out of Africa was how “the novelist cared more about animal rights than human rights.” The animals were well taken care of being walked, fed, caressed and being appreciated. After the dogs were shot during the incident, David Lurie was the one who buried them. He described one of the dogs “with the hole in its throat still bares its bloody teeth. Like shooting fish in a barrel, he thinks. Contemptible, yet exhilarating, probably, in a country where dogs are bred to snarl at the mere of a black man.” It sounds like dogs were brought up to dislike black men as though they were the dangerous, vicious animals, not the dogs themselves.
I began questioning if perhaps it displayed racism. “As for him, he does not mind the attention. Let them know I am still here, he thinks, let them know I am not skulking in the big house. And if that spoils their get-together, so be it. He lifts a hand to his white skullcap. For the first time he is glad to have it, to wear it as his own.” Was David trying to prove that after the incident he was strong enough to move on with his life, or was he displaying the “power of whites.” The skullcap was white and he wears it as his own… like representing his own people? Maybe.