Racial Bigotry in Postcolonial Literature
A Study of Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18034/abcjar.v12i1.764Keywords:
Racism, Bigotry, Hazara, Pashtun, Discrimination, The Kite Runner, FearAbstract
This article aims to unveil the caustic reality of racial bigotry that is the root of suffering for the people of minority races. Racism is not inherently benign, but the presence of a sense of superiority, one of its defining characteristics, exacerbates the situation. The novel The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini delves at the discriminatory actions between Pashtuns and Hazaras, portraying racism as a construct that arises solely from human distinctions. This article argues that racial discrimination leads to depression, helplessness, and low self-esteem among people of the weakest races, while on the other hand, it encourages people of superior races to boast about their own rigidity and principles. Khaled Hosseini portrays a dystopian society, and the lives of its inhabitants revolve around one thing: fear of intimacy. The qualitative method is adopted to mirror the conflicts, both internal and external, that force the so-called superior and inferior races to maintain an invisible but impenetrable wall between them. This article delineates the harmful side of racial bigotry, which leads people to judge others and develop a tendency to justify destructive actions that make people's lives miserable. This article also tries to show how racial bigotry, the legacy of colonialism, has grasped the minds of the people and made them follow only the hollow principles of racism, which are seen through their behaviours and distorted thoughts.
Metrics
Downloads
References
Anderson, E. W., & Dupree, N. H. (1990). The odium: Basis of Afghan nationalism. London: Pinter.
Arthur, J. (2007). Race, equality, and the burdens of history. Cambridge University Press.
Ashcroft, Bill, et al.(1989). Theory and Practice in Post-colonial Literature. London and New York: Routledge.
Banton, M. (1980). The idiom of race: A critique of presentism. Research in Race and Ethnic Relations, 2, 21-42.
Berger, P. L., & Luckmann, T. (1991). The social construction of reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge. London: Penguin.
Changezi, Sofie Haug, and Heidi Biseth. (2011)."Education of Hazara Girls in a Diaspora: education as empowerment and an agent of change." Research in Comparative and International Education. vol. 6. no.1,79-89.
Chen, K. (2019). A study of Amir's psychological change in The Kite Runner. English Language Teaching, 12(5).
Chiovenda, M. (2015). The dispossessed and the oppressed: Hazara identity and ethnic politics in Afghanistan (Doctoral dissertation, University of Connecticut).
Dovidio, J. F., Hewston, M., Glick, P., & Esses, V. M. (2017). Prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination: Theoretical and empirical overview. The SAGE Handbook of Prejudice, Stereotyping, and Discrimination (pp. 3-28). Web. November 25, 2017.
Emir, D. (2010). A postcolonial analysis of J.M. Coetzee’s two novels: Waiting for the Barbarians and Life and Times of Michael K. (pp. 71-80).
Fanon, F. (1967). Black skin, white masks. Grove Press.
Fathi, T. (2017). The analysis of psychological conflicts of the main character in Khaled Hosseini's novel The Kite Runner.
Harpviken, K. B. (1996). Social networks and migration in wartime Afghanistan. Journal of Refugee Studies.
Hossain, A. S., & Zohdi, E. (2006). The Kite Runner and the problem of racism and ethnicity. International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences, 74(2300-2697), 33-40.
Hosseini, K. (2013). The Kite Runner. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
Hucal, S. (2016). Afghanistan: Who are the Hazaras? Retrieved from https://www.google.com/search?q=Hazaras+have+been+systematically+discriminated+against+by+the+Pashtuns+and+others+during+the+Afghan+pre-+war+period%22%C2%94+(Thomas+Rutting%2C+co-director+of+the+Afghanistan+Analysts+Network). Accessed 18 August 2021.
Kabeer, H., & Chaudhury, P. (2020). Afghan minorities and ethnic tension in The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. European Journal of Molecular and Clinical Medicine, 7(3), 1415-1425.
Kumar, A. (2018). Racial dehumanization of Hazaras in The Kite Runner of Khaled Hosseini. International Journal of Creative Research Thoughts, 2(1).
Macionis, J. J. (2011). Sociology (14th ed.). Pearson.
Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1848). The Communist Manifesto.
Pager, D., & Shepherd, H. (2008). The sociology of discrimination: Racial discrimination in employment, housing, credit, and consumer markets. Annual Review of Sociology, 34(1), 181-209. Princeton University.
Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books.
Saidi, A. A. H. A. (2014). Post-colonialism literature: The concept of self and the other in Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians: An analytical approach. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 5(1), 95–105. https://doi.org/10.4304/jltr.5.1.95-105
Suryani, L. E., & Praptawati, D. (2019). Racial or ethnic groups that are considered equal will be treated fairly, whereas those that are considered unequal or different will be treated differently.
Tischler, H. L. (2010). Introduction to sociology. Wadsworth Publishing.
Tyson, L. (2006). Critical theory today. New York: Routledge.
Wahab, S., & Youngerman, B. (2010). A brief history of Afghanistan. Faculty Books and Monographs, (19). https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/facultybooks/19
Yetman, N. R. (1999). Majority and minority: The dynamics of race and ethnicity in American life. Allyn and Bacon.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Hasi Akter, A.S.M. Mahbubur Rahman, Md. Lutful Arafat, Md. Faisal Haque
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
