The Question of Race in "Moby Dick"
The Question of Race in "Moby Dick"

Summary/Abstract: The question of race in Moby-Dick used to be a controversial one. The dispute began in the early 1960s, when Charles H. Foster first “reinterpreted” the text as an indictment of the Fugitive Slave Law and the Compromise of 1850. Ever since Carolyn Karcher’s Shadow over the Promised Land (1980), critics have agreed upon the fact that Melville, though occasionally expressing culturally ingrained racist stereotyping (Stone 355; E. Simpson 32), created in Moby-Dick a radically antiracist text (Morrison 18; Karcher 27). Ishmael’s discourse often undercuts certain aspects of the myth of white supremacy; it claims that values may also be found outside western culture and that society’s very survival may ultimately depend on how well the lesson of tolerance and fellowship has been learned.

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