Superiority of Races in Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt

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Superiority of Races in Babbit

Hatred, intolerance, prejudice, and narrow-mindedness are all terms that can be applied when describing someone who is a bigot. By these terms George F. Babbitt, the protagonist in Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt, and many of his acquaintances are quite the bigots toward all those that appear different than he is especially immigrants and minorities in America. The blame should not be placed squarely on these men's shoulders for possessing such hate filled beliefs, but their opinion of the matter is generated from the accepted notion, which had been approved of and passed down through the generations, that immigrants and minorities are far less superior than the "native" white men who have "always" lived in America. The irony of this subject in the book is that although men of Babbitt's stature openly shared and joked with one another about their superiority to all other races, not one would ever admit that he was even by a small degree a bigot. By showing this to the reader Lewis was making the point that even though there were few that openly admitted to being a bigot almost everyone had some type of bigotry inside because to him it was an essential part of human nature. Even though there is still racism in today's society it is not as widespread as it was during the time in which Lewis wrote. Therefore Lewis' view of human nature is not entirely accurate when applied to modern society.

Although Babbitt never publicly articulated any racist type comments, his ideas toward immigrants and minorities could easily be affiliated with that of racial supremacy. Although there was a brief period in which Babbitt did sympathize with the immigrant...

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