SLSL 'Low-lands' racism?

[jbor]

The thing with Bolingbroke isn't whether or not a middle-class white man
finds the description "racist" or not, or finds it offensive, it's how a
black person would respond to it (and, specifically, an American black
person in 1960). A Negro dump watchman in a pork-pie hat who is a bigamist
and an alcoholic is a particularly condescending and offensive stereotype.

But the issue is more than just the representation of the Negro in the
story. The centre of gravity in 'Low-lands' is white middle-class Flange.
All the other characters (apart from Bodine, who, quirky though he is, is
supposed to be a manifestation of "normal" - i.e. white middle-class -
wackiness), including Nerissa, are like aliens. They're either crazed or
depraved or comic buffoons or inscrutably exotic - archetypally 'Other' in
Foucault's terms. One of the things which Pynchon uses to underwrite their
strangeness, or alterity, is ethnicity.

McAfee in 'TSI' is a much more rounded character than Bolingbroke. Ditto
with McClintic Sphere in _V._ One thing which I'm pretty certain Pynchon did
read some time shortly after writing 'Low-lands is Ralph Ellison's
_Invisible Man_.

best