Here is an excellent and readable analysis of a failed attempt by a Congolese national based in Brussels to persuade a Belgian court to ban the 1930s book Tintin in the Congo on (basically) the grounds that it promoted and still promotes racist hatred.

The legal move failed:

This is all the more important since the fundamental problem with the claims is that they would simply open the floodgates for innumerable additional prohibitions, if they were to be allowed. Tintin in the Congo is undoubtedly offensive to many people, but if its contents are brought under the prohibitions of the Anti-racism Act, then an endless list of other works would also wind up in the crosshairs. This is true for most religious books, as well as many of the great literary works, and the writings of virtually all great thinkers of early modernity. Allowing a legal ban on such speech therefore implies the abolition of freedom of expression itself.

All things considered, it is puzzling that the applicants opted to pursue a judicial solution in this case. In doing so, they could only lose. It was clear, from the start, that the comic’s contents – albeit offensive – did not amount to a violation of the anti-racism legislation; let alone that this would be the case for publishing and distributing it…

Meanwhile in a New York public library the book is kept locked away, so extraordinarily offensive are said to be its contents. Not only its banal and awful representation of Africans: also the passage where Tintin drills a hole in a rhinocerous – and blows it up with dynamite!

Here are some Google images from the book. It’s safe to say that any such book is unlikely to be written now.

As the first article notes, all this negative ‘politically correct’ criticism is having the predictable effect: soaring sales for the book:

Precisely because Mondondo and the Cran opted for a legal solution, the applicants were routinely portrayed as overly sensitive, ‘politically correct’, and bent on censorship. Even the Centre for Equal Opportunities – the Belgian agency responsible for enforcing the federal discrimination legislation – warned against “over-reaction and hyper political correctness”. In other words, the legal approach has not given rise to the desired critical discussion about the comic itself.

On a separate but not unrelated note, what about the C19 German Inky Boys who spitefully teased the Black-a-moor and were turned as black as ink themselves?

It’s easiest (and more importantly wisest) just to be realistic and honest. Attitudes and prejudices do change – let history do the job and gradually swallow up myriad earlier primitive prejudices and their written form.

All of which said, it might be thought a bit much to have clumsy colonialist racist iconography still proudly displayed in an Ambassador’s residence.