The Race Case of Disgrace

I am a bit torn between whether or not Disgrace is actually racist considering it could be taken as either a racist work or a non-racist. What would first make me skeptical about the possibilities of the novel being a racist work, would be that authors generally might have a bias when they're writing (such as when we looked at the article on Grace Paley) but would not actually be racist. The Times article pointed out very important points what would go either way for the argument.

I would personally have to say that I did not get the racist vibes from reading Disgrace that Coetzee was a racist (does that sentence make sense?). When the scene in chapter 11 happens, he doesn't describe the black men in a racist way (barbarians, niggers, etc.) and actually says that one of them is handsome: "The taller of them is handsome, strikingly handsome, with a high forehead, sculpted cheekbones, wide, flaring nostrils."

Yes, the possibility of the character being a racist, having been from the older generation of Africa exists, but after what he experiences, his thought process could be influenced by the fact of what they did. Yet, even if the character were indeed a racist, why would he have described whatever his relationship was with in such a way? Or why even have relations with her in the first place? I think that there are certainly points to which you can argue that Coetzee might be a racist, but in the end it made me think about the allusions made my Marxist and Feminist critics, but of course, I could dead wrong since I don't know much about Coetzee.

If I did believe that Coetzee was a racist, I would be just as enraged about his award of the Nobel Prize as the ANC are.