Coetzee-the white robed writer or a simple misconception?

Coetzee didn’t really come off as racist to me. While reading “Disgrace” I didn’t really think of race that much. I must have read right over the part about the rapist being black, I mean I read it; it just didn’t light any racist light bulbs above my head. The NY times article made me reconsider my optimism. Perhaps the book is racist, but that doesn’t mean the author is. I don’t know Coetzee; I can’t say for sure what his feelings towards other races are. I have only read one his of novels, I am by no means an expert on him. This may sound harsh, but I often return to this idea when dealing with the motives of authors, and my statement is basically “so what!” People are racist, its real people act that way towards other people. The book was, if anything, racists towards both blacks and whites. The whole novel plays on the stereotypes. I could understand why someone would call the book racist, innocent white family gets attacked by three angry black men, sounds pretty bad, sounds like the black characters are being portrayed as villains only.

We shouldn’t forget the beginning of the book; David Lurie is anything but innocent. The guy is, simply speaking, a dick. He uses women because he realized that he only needs sex rather than some form of compassion. He is smug and arrogant and stubborn and rude to his co-workers. He doesn’t understand what it means to be a friend and in turn refuses to have any. If Coetzee played with the stereotype of evil black man, then he also played with the stereotype of evil white man.

Coetzee was just writing about stuff that happens. People steal and rape people. Would the story have been so compelling had the rapist just been another white family. Would David have felt as out of place and useless as hid if everyone was like him. The whole point was that the rapists were black. Coetzee shouldn’t deny the racism, cause its there, but my point is that it’s not wrong. A story that involves racism doesn’t make an author racist. An author has a difficult job, He has to take many different kinds of people and write about them, he has to give the voices and personalities. Coetzee wrote about what he knew. Yes there are similarities between David and Coetzee; they are both old white guys who lived in Africa. The question the article asks is how deep these simalrties go, but the question I ask is, “who cares?” The best part of literature is controversy. We may never know what Coetzee full intent was with “Disgrace” he can deny it all he wants, but people will continue to dig through each word in the story in hopes of cracking the racist agenda.