A Nigerian-born professor tears apart Joseph Conrad's revered, classic novella and accuses Conrad of being a "'thoroughgoing racist."' It's pretty rare for an academic to make such a blunt, even offensive, statement about a VIA (very important author). If this were a boxing match, let's just say there'd be a lot of blood on the ground and it wouldn't be Achebe's. (Of course, Conrad's already long gone, so it's not exactly the fairest fight either.)
If Conrad's use of Africa "'as setting and backdrop"' is part of what makes him a "'racist"' in Achebe's mind, then is it ever possible for a Western writer to create a story about a foreign land and have it not be racist?
Achebe does point out that since Conrad's story is pretty complex—with a story within a story and a narrator behind a narrator and all—that maybe people could view the "'racist"' attitudes as the character Marlow's view and not Conrad's. But Achebe's not totally buying that idea. Is he being too harsh on Conrad, especially since Conrad's book came out before the twentieth century (and all the PC movements that came with it) even began?