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[quote=Anonymous]https://www.mentalfloss.com/literature/books/everything-wuthering-heights-says-about-heathcliffs-race
[QUOTE]Things get more pointed in Chapter 4, when Heathcliff’s origins are explained. Mr. Earnshaw brings home "a dirty, ragged, black-haired child" from Liverpool, claiming he "picked him up" in the streets and even asking whether the boy had an owner. Mrs. Earnshaw’s reaction is blunt: she calls him a "gipsy brat."

Heathcliff doesn’t appear to speak English at first, either. Nelly Dean, the family’s housekeeper and a secondary narrator, recalls that he repeated "some gibberish that nobody could understand"—a term often used at the time to dismiss non-European languages. She also describes him as “dark, almost as if it came from the devil” and an “imp of Satan,” linking his appearance to fear and moral suspicion.

The novel keeps piling on. In Chapter 6, Mr. Linton refers to Heathcliff as [b]"a little Lascar, or an American or Spanish castaway."[/b] At the time,[b] "lascar" was a term used for Indian and Southeast Asian sailors—and sometimes their children—employed or trafficked by the East India Company.[/b] Being labeled a castaway from the Americas or Spain (including the Caribbean) only reinforces the idea that Heathcliff is not meant to be read as a white English boy.

Heathcliff’s arrival point isn’t random. "Wuthering Heights" is set decades before its publication, during a period when Liverpool was one of Britain’s busiest slave-trading ports. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, [b]ships from Liverpool transported an estimated 1.5 million Africans across the Atlantic[/b] under brutal conditions.
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