Tonyblack said:
One of the most casually racist characters in Discworld is Fred Colon. He doesn't even realise he's being racist. Terry uses that to show how ridiculous his attitude is.
I remember that scene from
Jingo, where Vimes takes Colon aside to explain to him why terms like "towelhead" are not diplomatic, and then Colon's discussion with Nobby afterwards about the importance of names. The thing is, Pratchett still makes Colon a likeable guy without condoning what he does. That's no small feat, considering Colon is essentially an idiot know-nothing-know-it-all coward with surprisingly bigoted views of other races and species.
What I find distracting, though, is how Pratchett's attitude towards the "racist" jokes changes as the books go on. In
Witches Abroad, there's a whole extended scene that relies on dwarves caring more about gold than about other dwarves, whereas the same point becomes an issue of contention in
The Truth, where Goodmountain uses belief in it as an example of how prejudiced humans are towards dwarves. More broadly, I remember a footnote in one of the earlier books about "black joining up with white to gang up on green", which was basically a throwaway cynical joke, and yet it becomes more seriously treated when it reappears later as the theme of an entire book in
Jingo.
You get the impression he was a little bolder with his jokes early on, playing with the topic before fully digesting it. :think:
