“Casual Racism In Victorian Literature” by Carolyn Betensky: Summary and Critique

1. Casual Racism as a Teaching Challenge

• Betensky describes how teachers of Victorian literature frequently encounter racist references in texts. Initially, these references are discussed, but over time, they become normalized and unnoticed:

“We learn, like the Victorians, to take it for granted.” (Betensky, p. 723)

• The essay explores how racism appears incidentally in many works, not just those thematically centered on race and empire.

2. The Pervasiveness of Casual Racism

• Casual racism is deeply embedded in Victorian literature, appearing in everyday descriptions and offhand comments rather than forming a major thematic concern.
• For instance, in East Lynne (1861), a character uses the phrase “with a Jew’s eye,” a casually anti-Semitic remark that is not central to the novel:

“The slur doesn’t stand out as especially egregious to anyone familiar with Victorian culture.” (p. 724)

• Casual racism in these texts is offensive but often overlooked, unlike the explicit anti-Semitism in Oliver Twist (1839), where Fagin’s Jewish identity is central to the novel’s depiction of criminality.

3. Victorian Racism as a Cultural Norm

• Victorian literature reflects the widespread racism of the time, much of which was unconscious or unexamined. This raises the question of how contemporary scholars and students should engage with it.
• Scholars have traditionally focused on how imperialism is central to Victorian literature, but casual racism, which appears in texts that are not explicitly about race, has been largely ignored.
• Betensky questions:

“How do we contend with the pervasive instances of Victorian racism that do not dominate our readings of the texts in which they appear?” (p. 725)

4. The “Speaker’s Benefit” and the Problem of Historical Distance

• The essay draws on Michel Foucault’s concept of the “speaker’s benefit,” wherein modern readers take pride in acknowledging the racism of the past to feel morally superior.
• This creates a false sense of progress, implying that contemporary society has evolved beyond racism:

“Calling the Victorians repressed is thus not a neutral nor merely an erroneous act… it represents an important investment on the part of those who propagate it.” (p. 732)

• By contextualizing Victorian racism without acknowledging ongoing racism today, scholars risk reinforcing the illusion that contemporary society has fully transcended racial prejudices.

5. Implications for Teaching and Antiracist Pedagogy

• Betensky discusses how casual racism should be addressed in the classroom.
• She critiques the tendency of educators to note racism in texts but then instruct students to “bracket” their reactions in favor of “sophisticated reading.”
• She acknowledges her own past failures:

“I had always wanted students to recognize racism when they saw it but had been asking them, at the same time, to take that recognition and bracket it.” (p. 730)

• She argues for a pedagogical approach that connects Victorian racism to contemporary systemic racism.

6. Case Study: “Infestation” in The Moonstone

• Betensky highlights an example from Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone (1868), where an Indian character is described as part of a group that “infests the streets.”
• She draws a comparison between this and modern political rhetoric, such as Donald Trump’s 2018 tweet about immigrants “infesting” the country.
• The use of dehumanizing language persists, illustrating the continuity of casual racism from the Victorian era to the present.

7. The Risk of Ignoring Racism in Literature

• Ignoring casual racism in Victorian literature has two key dangers:
  1. It alienates students of color, forcing them to endure repeated exposure to racist content without discussion.
  2. It trains all students to accept systemic racism as normal or irrelevant.
• One of Betensky’s students reflects on how racism should be addressed upfront in classroom discussions:

“Every instance of racism needs to be taken seriously. If, as educators, we decide not to discuss the racism within these texts because of our own discomfort… then we shouldn’t be teaching them at all.” (p. 742)

8. Conclusion: Toward Strategic Presentism

• Betensky advocates for a “strategic presentism” approach, which balances historical context with contemporary relevance.
• Scholars should not simply historicize Victorian racism but use it to help students understand ongoing racial injustices.
• The study of Victorian literature should challenge students to recognize that racism is not just a thing of the past:

“Noticing, thinking, and talking about casual racism in Victorian texts is not even radical. It’s really the least we can do.” (p. 741)

1. Postcolonial Theory

• Expands the scope of postcolonial critique beyond empire-focused texts

• Postcolonial literary criticism often examines the central role of empire and colonialism in shaping literature. Betensky extends this focus by highlighting casual racism in texts that are not primarily about empire.
• Key Quote: “As opposed to texts with full-on explorations of race or nation, the ones that interest me here are the texts that are not typically read in this connection.” (p. 723)
• This aligns with Edward Said’s (Culture and Imperialism) argument that imperialism shapes even those texts where it is not explicitly foregrounded.
• Challenges the notion that racism must be explicit to be significant

• Postcolonial critics like Homi Bhabha and Gayatri Spivak have argued that racism is embedded in language and culture. Betensky builds on this by showing how even minor, throwaway references reinforce racial hierarchies.
• Key Quote: “The throwaway reference to supposed Jewish greed is not an intrinsic element of the novel, whereas in Oliver Twist, by way of comparison, the depiction of Fagin is explicitly, extensively, and thematically anti-Semitic.” (p. 724)

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2. Critical Race Theory (CRT)

• Foregrounds the concept of ‘casual racism’ as a systemic issue rather than an individual failing

• Betensky aligns with CRT’s premise that racism is structural and systemic, rather than a collection of individual prejudices.
• Key Quote: “Casual racism is no less structural or systemic than the racism that demands and has undergone in-depth analysis.” (p. 726)
• This complements Cheryl Harris’s (Whiteness as Property) argument that whiteness operates as an invisible system of privilege.
• Calls for a shift in literary pedagogy to address embedded racism

• Betensky critiques the way Victorian literature is often taught in a way that dissociates contemporary readers from its racism. She urges a pedagogical approach that connects historical racism with modern systemic racism.
• Key Quote: “By insisting on the historical specificity of Victorian racism… I had been instructing students to think, falsely, that we stood in an evolved relationship not only to Victorian racism but to racism, period.” (p. 730)

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3. Historicism and Presentism (Strategic Presentism)

• Reframes the role of historical context in analyzing racism

• Betensky critiques traditional historicism, which aims to understand texts purely in their own time, arguing that this approach can lead to the erasure of racism’s ongoing impact.
• Key Quote: “If we portray the Victorians as if they were different from us in their ignorance and in the throwaway casualness of their racism… we are effectively portraying our own culture as one that has, to some unexamined degree, transcended racism.” (p. 733)
• This aligns with Fredric Jameson’s (The Political Unconscious) argument that literature must be interpreted through both its historical conditions and its ongoing ideological effects.
• Supports ‘Strategic Presentism’ as a method for engaging with Victorian racism

• Betensky builds on the V21 Collective’s idea of “strategic presentism,” which calls for actively connecting past texts to present-day issues rather than treating them as historically distant.
• Key Quote: “Strategic presentism offers a path toward contemporary relevance that does not cast aside historical specificity so much as it reframes our relationship to it.” (p. 738)

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4. Reader-Response Theory

• Explores how different readers experience casual racism in texts

• Betensky argues that whiteness as the default position in literary studies affects how racism is perceived in Victorian texts. Readers of color are more likely to notice and be affected by casual racism than white readers.
• Key Quote: “For the students who are the most sensitive to every nuance of racism in contemporary discourse, ignoring casual racism in the texts we teach constitutes a betrayal.” (p. 735)
• This aligns with Stanley Fish’s idea that interpretation is shaped by the reader’s background and identity.
• Critiques the ‘sophisticated reader’ model in academia

• Betensky examines how students are trained to bracket their moral reactions to racism in Victorian literature in the name of scholarly detachment.
• Key Quote: “I had been asking them, at the same time, to take that recognition and bracket it.” (p. 730)
• This echoes Louise Rosenblatt’s (The Reader, the Text, the Poem) view that emotions and ethics are central to literary interpretation.

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5. Foucauldian Discourse Analysis

• Applies Foucault’s concept of ‘The Speaker’s Benefit’ to discussions of Victorian racism

• Betensky adapts Michel Foucault’s argument (from The History of Sexuality) that modern speakers construct their own self-image by positioning themselves as more enlightened than the past.
• Key Quote: “Disavowing Victorian repression has an analogue in disavowing Victorian racism. When we tell our students that Victorian culture was deeply racist… we reap a collective speaker’s benefit.” (p. 732)
• Questions how power operates in literary studies through discourse

• Betensky critiques the “veil of ignorance” that scholars sometimes impose by separating Victorian racism from contemporary issues.
• Key Quote: “Encountering purged words in Victorian texts without noting these continuities allows the triumphalism of the speaker’s benefit to go unchallenged.” (p. 734)
• This aligns with Foucault’s (Discipline and Punish) argument that discourse is a means of social control.

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6. Pedagogy and Antiracist Education

• Advocates for pedagogical methods that highlight casual racism in Victorian texts

• Betensky argues that Victorian literature should be taught in a way that makes students critically aware of both past and present racism.
• Key Quote: “How do we contend with the pervasive instances of Victorian racism that do not dominate our readings of the texts in which they appear? How, in other words, do we remark the unremarkable?” (p. 724)
• Emphasizes the importance of pre-reading activities

• One of Betensky’s students suggests that teachers should “frontload” discussions of racism before students read the text, so they are better prepared to notice it.
• Key Quote: “A unit on Wuthering Heights should include… what it meant at that time to call a character ‘gipsy,’ and how this was a construction of race and identity.” (p. 742)

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Conclusion: A Multidisciplinary Contribution

• Betensky’s work bridges literary studies, postcolonial critique, critical race theory, and pedagogy, offering a new framework for understanding casual racism in literature.
• By challenging historical contextualization as an excuse for past racism, she redefines the relationship between Victorian texts and contemporary racial discourse.
• Her work contributes to ongoing debates in academia about race, privilege, and the role of literature in shaping societal norms.

1. Overemphasis on “Casual” Racism at the Expense of Structural Racism

• Some critics argue that Betensky focuses too much on incidental racist remarks rather than the deeper systemic and institutional racism that shaped Victorian literature.
• By emphasizing casual racism, the analysis may obscure the broader, more deliberate racial ideologies at play in empire-building and colonial discourse.

2. Risk of Overgeneralization About “The Victorians”

• Betensky acknowledges the problem of lumping all Victorians together but still frequently refers to “the Victorians” as a collective.
• This broad characterization risks flattening the diversity of opinions on race within Victorian society, including abolitionist and anti-imperialist perspectives.

3. Presentism and Moral Judgment

• Some scholars argue that Betensky’s approach leans towards presentism, applying contemporary racial frameworks to historical texts without fully accounting for their historical contexts.
• The essay sometimes implies that Victorian racism should be analyzed through modern moral judgments, which could lead to anachronistic readings.

4. Lack of Engagement with Non-Western Perspectives

• While Betensky critiques how Victorian texts treat racial others, she does not sufficiently incorporate perspectives from scholars of color or postcolonial theorists outside the Western academic tradition.
• This could limit the scope of the analysis, particularly when discussing how racialized subjects resisted or reinterpreted racist narratives.

5. Overemphasis on Pedagogy Over Literary Analysis

• The essay is heavily focused on how educators handle racist elements in Victorian literature rather than providing a detailed literary theoretical framework.
• Some critics may argue that it lacks a rigorous engagement with existing literary theories on race and empire (e.g., postcolonialism, critical race theory).

6. Ambiguity in Defining “Casual Racism”

• The concept of “casual racism” is somewhat nebulous in the essay—sometimes referring to incidental slurs, sometimes to broader ideological undercurrents.
• A clearer theoretical definition of how casual racism differs from structural racism or unconscious bias could strengthen the argument.

7. Limited Consideration of Counterexamples

• The essay focuses on examples where casual racism is ignored or normalized but does not sufficiently engage with Victorian texts or figures who actively challenged racist ideas.
• Works by authors such as Mary Seacole or Frederick Douglass, who responded directly to Victorian racism, are absent from the discussion.

8. Implications for Modern Readership

• Betensky suggests that recognizing casual racism in Victorian texts should lead to deeper discussions on modern racism, but critics argue she does not fully explore how this would work in contemporary literary studies.
• The essay could provide more concrete strategies for how contemporary readers and scholars should navigate these texts beyond merely acknowledging their racist elements.

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Overall Summary of Criticism

While Casual Racism in Victorian Literature offers an important lens for analyzing racial discourse in Victorian novels, it has been critiqued for:

• Potentially overshadowing systemic racism with a focus on incidental slurs.
• Overgeneralizing Victorian attitudes toward race.
• Leaning into presentism.
• Lacking engagement with global perspectives.
• Prioritizing pedagogy over literary theory.