Not long after the wave of debate about the racist and xenophobic attitudes of Torbjørn Egner and Astrid Lindgren died down, a new racism debate emerged. This time in England, anti-racist groups labeled the cartoon “Tintin in the Congo” as racist.

A cruel stereotype

A spokesperson for the organization told the British newspaper the Guardian that the book contained cruel and racist stereotypes, and believed that booksellers could not sell the cartoons. This caused the Borders bookstore chain to remove the comic book from the children’s section of its stores.

The book was first published in 1931, and contains, among other things, a scene in which Tintin becomes the leader of an African village because he is a “good white man”. Another scene shows a black woman saying no to Tintin, saying “White people are great”.

Naive, not racist

– This is very insulting, said a spokesman for the organization.

Tintin’s publisher denies that author Hergé was a racist, but admits that he was naive.

– He was very young when he wrote this, and had a naive attitude. He didn’t know anything, said Marc Roadwell, who represents TinTin’s current rights holders.

– Marked by prejudice

He believes Hergé was colored by the bourgeois and paternalistic stereotypes that characterized Europe in the 1930s.

– Hergé himself later said that the Kongo book was influenced by the prejudices of the bourgeois society in which he grew up. He only knew things about the countries he had been told about. This story is a product of its time, and the intent is not to offend or hurt anyone, Roadwell said.