Thanks for your comments.

I don’t think the racism is what keeps Americans from treating Hergé (or any comics artists) as art. Our response to this kind of thing is a deplorable tendency to rewrite history with misguided “political corrcetness”, and sweep it under the rug as if it never happened. (For example, most of the Warner Brothers cartoons done during the Second World War that purposely featured angry stereotypes of Japanese and German characters are now only available in censored versions, as if to say the originals never existed, we’ve always been a tolerant, racially accepting and politically correct culture… sure. This is called “revisionist history” and is most often engaged in by dictatorships. The fact that proponents of this kind of censorship don’t see it as such genuinely scares me.)

I haven’t seen the Pompidou exhibit, but I would hope they would handle this aspect of his career by displaying it in context.

Hergé later apologized for his racial stereotypes, (and some fairly blatant anti-Semetic characters), and said that he was fortunate to have outgrown the naïveté that colored his judgement when he was younger. Most of us can retract or move past things we said at an earlier age, but artists and others whose works or words are on record must deal with those records.

I think attempting to hide this kind of personal or cultural history, whether out of the pressures of righteous indignation, embarrassment or so-called “political correctness” is a mistake. We do a terrible disservice to those who sacrificed and moved mountains to affect change in society to pretend that the cultural environment they worked so hard to change didn’t exist, or is simply too impolite or embarrassing to mention.

I applaud your approach to allowing your son to read Tintin after putting the attitudes in context for him.

How is this handled in the Pompidou exhibit?

We allowed our son to read and enjoy Tintin but only after reviewing, explaining and deploring his attitudes toward Africans.
I guess Herge was reflecting the Belgian colonial outlook of his day.

Interestingly he is typically respectful of other non-European cultures (Asian Indian, indigenous Latin American, etc).

Right your are. Corrected. Thanks.