Tintin and the Culture Wars

Published in 1931, Tintin in the Congo has suddenly become controversial. The British Commission for Racial Equality urges that this volume of “racist claptrap” be removed from bookshops everywhere; “It beggars belief in this day and age that any shop would think it acceptable to sell and display Tintin in the Congo ,” since it contains such “highly offensive” portrayals of Africans.

The writer of the N.B. column in the TLS wonders why the Commission is not similarly exercised by the racist depictions of American Indians in Tintin in America (“Death to the Paleface,” they chant) or the racist depictions of Scots in The Black Island . He wonders why the negative depictions of black people are singled out for special indignation, and also asks “why it is not stated more often that the most negative images of black people today derive from the antics of rap singers, exhibiting the trappings of misogyny, violence and gross materialism.”