Heart of Darkness, was it racist?

By Garden

I’m on my third read of Heart of Darkness and, honestly, it’s still not easy to get through if you’re a non-native English speaker (which is kind of ironic since Conrad apparently wasn’t a native speaker either). I can’t really tell what Conrad’s doing—like, is he actually criticizing colonialism, or is he secretly on the pro-colonial side just based on how he talks about the people in the Congo? Maybe it’s meant to be irony, but I don’t know how that would work in a clear way. Also, why is it even called Heart of Darkness—what’s the “darkness” supposed to mean exactly? I feel super lost. I’ve read both Said and Achebe’s takes, and then I saw David Denby’s piece that basically dismisses both of them, but even then their arguments still feel like they hold up to me. What do you all think?