[Liberty Ship]

I assume that next we can expect an assault on Joseph Conrad.

[ponygirl]

I'll never forget choosing a passage from Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" to do a research paper on in college. I knew my paper was an A when I turned it in and when my (black) professor handed it back to me, she had given me a B... with no other comments on the entire paper. So I went to see her about it.

The passage I had written about was about the African mistress and how she was depicted as very primal in Conrad's book. Why did I get a B? Because what I wrote was "racist" towards black women. It wasn't that perhaps Conrad's viewpoint was "racist," but MINE apparently was, even though the entire paper focused on Conrad's depiction of the woman and was illustrated with quote after quote from the actual work.

After 30 minutes of back and forth argument, she could not point to a single phrase I had written where I had interjected my personal feelings towards black women. She couldn't have, because I hadn't written any. My entire paper focused on Conrad's description of the woman, not my feelings about her. She still refused to bump the grade up. Not only could she not point to an instance of my "racism," but I realized as we were discussing the book that she didn't even know the freaking book. At all. My guess was she'd never been able to bring herself to even read it.

That was probably the point that I started to become a conservative.

[Tenniel2]

Good one, Shipper.

The (ahem) Slave of the Narcissus, coming to your local bookmonger any day now.