Coetzee’s Disgrace has been accused of misrepresenting racial relations in South Africa by providing a very limited perspective of blacks, but calling the author a racist is a stretch of our rights as readers. Authors do have responsibility when it comes to views they bring forth in their texts, but racism in Disgrace comes across as an opening for discussion, not a doctrine the author asks readers to accept.

According to a New York Times article, the African National Congress accused Coetzee of “representing as brutally as he can the white people’s perception of the post-apartheid black man.” This argument has been voiced by several others. However, it has also been countered.

The African National Congress accused Coetzee of portraying post apartheid South Africa as a place where “whites lose their cards, their weapons, their property, their rights, their dignity” while “the white women will have to sleep with the barbaric black men.” This accusation is well founded in the novel’s protagonist’s daughter, Lucy, who is raped by three black men, impregnanted, and keeps the baby without pressing rape charges. She says, “Perhaps this is what I must learn to accept. To start again at ground level. With nothing…like a dog.” However, Lucy’s view is just one opinion in the face of readjustment which is occurring in post apartheid South Africa. The author is presenting it, perhaps even for readers to disagree with. Coetzee’s narrator does not hint that Lucy’s line of thinking is correct. Coetzee himself may see it as dangerous. Authors often present things to readers to bring them out into the open and let the readers pass judgment on it.

The other main accusation against Coetzee is that he fails to give voice to the black characters. Novelist Nadine Gordimer said that in Coetzee’s novel, “There is not one black person who is a real human being.” Chris van Wky says, “The white characters are fleshed out, the black evildoers are not.” I tend to agree with these thinkers to a certain extent. I feel I know much more about Lurie, Melanie, and the other white characters as individuals than I know about any black character. And what we do learn of black characters may be perceived as negative. For example, Petreus is a polygamist and a bit sexist, as revealed when he says he hopes his wife has a boy because “girls are expensive.” However, we do learn negative things about white characters, such as David Lurie’s rape of Melanie. While the narrator is most closely tied to Lurie, the attitude of the book still condemns him for the deed because of diction qualifiers such as “even” about Melanie even helping Lurie in the act, and the presentation of her “struggle.” In this way, the novel simply reveals truths. The reason the perspective is mostly white is probably because Coetzee himself is white and the novel examines post apartheid South Africa using a middle aged white man as the focal point.

Despite the evidence for Coetzee’s novel being racist, there are others who disagree. South African noveleist Damon Galgut said that Coetzee, “actually broke a taboo by speaking about it in those terms.” Relations in South Africa are complex and slippery, and Coetzee was just illustrating. Homi Bhabba calls Disgrace, “a work of open seems” and feels that the power lies in the ambiguity between Coetzee himself, the narrator, and David Lurie. I tend to agree and feel that Coetzee’s ambiguities and allegories serve to remove himself from the novel as much as possible. He is offering readers a snapshot observation, and it is up to them to sort through it. I feel some of the racism in the book is intentional and meant for readers to think. Ultimately the novel does not tell readers how to feel.

Authors certainly have responsibility for what they write. Hitler’s Mein Kampf is a work of literature, but its value is degraded because it is a work of hate. Disgrace is hardly Mein Kampf. It may highlight hate, but it is not a work of hate.