However, for a long time it was denied, or danced around, by well-meaning people, including Jews, who wanted to give Mencken the benefit of the doubt in weighing his racial tolerance against his racial insensitivity. But even former defenders, such as Joseph Epstein, have also come to this conclusion after viewing the posthumous evidence.
Mencken respected the civil rights of blacks, but thought them inferior. He liked Jews and had many Jewish friends, but subscribed to the stereotype that they were pushy and consequently brought on the troubles that befell them.
. . .His anti-democratic, anti-American, pro-German sentiments loom much darker and less benign here than in previous biographies.
But, the best source on Mencken and racism is Mencken himself.
I admit freely enough that, by careful breeding, supervision of environment and education, extending over many generations, it might be possible to make an appreciable improvement in the stock of the American negro, for example, but I must maintain that this enterprise would be a ridiculous waste of energy, for there is a high-caste white stock ready at hand, and it is inconceivable that the negro stock, however carefully it might be nurtured, could ever even remotely approach it. The educated negro of today is a failure, not because he meets insuperable difficulties in life, but because he is a negro. He is, in brief, a low-caste man, to the manner born, and he will remain inert and inefficient until fifty generations of him have lived in civilization. And even then, the superior white race will be fifty generations ahead of him.
Mencken believed that people of African descent were inherently inferior. He would be considered a 'scientific' racist by today's standards. Furthermore, he opposed efforts to remove the Negro from what he considered the race's natural, savage state.
. . .the negro, no matter how much he is educated, must remain, as a race, in a condition of subservience; that he must remain the inferior of the stronger and more intelligent white man so long as he retains racial differentiation. Therefore, the effort to educate him has awakened in his mind ambitions and aspirations which, in the very nature of things, must go unrealized, and so, while gaining nothing whatever materially, he has lost all his old contentment, peace of mind and happiness.
Article comments
1 - Mac Diva
A reader of the entry in which Al Barger quotes Mencken (in a very Bargerian way) asked about putting the writer into perspective. Though the length of a blog entry precludes an in-depth look, I believe this one explains Mencken's views on race, and how they influenced his life and writing, fairly well.
If you are not up on Mencken, I don't think it necessary to rush to the library and load up on books. His reputation as a writer is pretty much history. The American Mercury articles, for which he was most famous, did not travel well and now are of little interest. Mencken has had a slight rebirth, along with Ayn Rand and other writers with conservative leanings, but that is more political than literary. Unless you are a paleo-conservative, your time can be better spent.
2 - Mac Diva
I happened across this essay, H. L. Mencken: Neo-Confederate, at Lew Rockwell.com. I don't agree with everything in it, but think it does say useful things about Mencken's relationship to the South. I am not sure Mencken would want to be claimed by the neo-Confederate movement, though. They are not genteel enough.
3 - Mac Diva
There is an another online essay citing Terry Teachout's analysis of Mencken here. It includes reference to Mencken's over identification with Germany, which led him to praise Nazi leaders later in life, among other interesting material.
This passage captures the big picture well:
4 - bhw
Diva, I'll be checking out Mencken in more depth in a few weeks after things settle down here for me. That last quote you posted kind of summarizes what I've read about him thus far, that he was a walking contradiction in many ways.
5 - Mac Diva
Thank you, bhw. I was beginning to wonder if posting information about H.L. Mencken from solid sources is a bad thing-:). Where can one go and see mainstream literary criticism dismissed as 'making up facts'? Only at BU. U? Un-critics.