Inadvertent Alienation

Throughout history, there has been racial prejudice within literature. These depictions, in text and image, influenced thought and belief in Western culture continually. The alienation of different races severely affected how each culture was perceived within history.

 Each illustration, description, reference and stereotype shown to the public created or maintained a racial format, per say, for others to follow. Sometimes furthering these ideas were not even meant to be prejudice. Gates described how literature has altered the term "race" into something more than just appearance between  people. He claimed that "the relation between "racial character" and these sort of characteristics has been inscribed through tropes of race, lending the sanction of God, biology, or the natural order to even presumably unbiased descriptions of cultural tendencies and differences" (5). This suggested belief that their differences are completely naturally made, and not the work of years and years or stereotypes made by others furthers racism and the ignorance to itself in literature.

Hum exemplifies tropes of race, as Gates called it, with his references to Nast's cartoon of the supposed inclusion. The message of the cartoon is to promote equality with the phrase "fair play for all men" but the ingrained stereotypical depiction of the Chinese man immediately differentiates himself compared to the other people in the photo. Hum states how "Nast emphasized racialized features in the visage of the Chinaman, which in turn highlighted the cultural differences at the heart of racial slurs he sought to combat" (200). His motive was to be inclusionary and yet the ingrained racism created the opposite effect, alienating the Chinese man in the image. The racial gaze brings the audience to notice all the differences between people, further separating them mentally.

Both Gates and Hum divulge into the alienation of race in literature. Gates explains how most people of color could not write, and therefore had next to no say about the racial gaze in literature, as they could not participate. Europeans seemed to see writing as a privilege, thus alienating other races from bringing their beliefs into the written world (9). Hum further expresses this idea in stating that the racial gaze that Europeans formulated "influences how we make sense of what we see by reinscribing the dominant culturally authorized values and beliefs" (193). This perpetuates the notion that the European culture is dominant, both in the literature realm and in reality, which caused further racism and disconnect for hundreds of years.

Nast's comics and other literary texts in the past were affected by racial gaze and design. These conceptions would build off of each other until the racism was not even deliberate, but ingrained in the minds of writers.