Question

Read the excerpt from "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness” by Chinua Achebe.

The Christian Science Monitor, a paper more enlightened than most, once carried an interesting article written by its Education Editor on the serious psychological and learning problems faced by little children who speak one language at home and then go to school where something else is spoken. It was a wide-ranging article taking in Spanish-speaking children in America, the children of migrant Italian workers in Germany, the quadrilingual phenomenon in Malaysia and so on. And all this while the article speaks unequivocally about language. But then out of the blue sky comes this:

In London there is an enormous immigration of children who speak Indian or Nigerian dialects, or some other native language.

I believe that the introduction of "dialects," which is technically erroneous in the context, is almost a reflex action caused by an instinctive desire of the writer to downgrade the discussion to the level of Africa and India. And this is quite comparable to Conrad's withholding of language from his rudimentary souls. Language is too grand for these chaps; let's give them dialects!

Based on the details in the excerpt, what is the primary purpose of this passage?

to provide an example of persistent racism
to describe the spread of multilingual speakers
to point out the failings of the Christian Science Monitor
to reveal problems in London’s schools

Answer 1

to provide an example of persistent racism

Achebe uses the Monitor passage to show how the writer's choice of the word "dialects" downgrades African/Indian languages and reveals an instinctive racist bias, comparing it to Conrad's portrayal.