6 January 2011 Rose is a rose is a racist

Does One Word Change 'Huckleberry Finn'?

What's wrong with altering a classic if some readers feel assaulted by offensive words?

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/01/05/does-one-word-change-huckleberry-finn/dumbing-and-numbing-down-jim



Dumbing and Numbing Down Jim

Updated January 6, 2011, 10:33 AM

David Matthews is the author of “Ace of Spades,” a memoir, and "Kicking Ass and Saving Souls: a True Story of a Life Over the Line," a forthcoming biography.

The word is the word. In many ways, it's America. It's confounding, infuriating, degrading, and, sometimes, necessary. Even lyrical (in the right context, one need only listen to early Richard Pryor, or Biggie Smalls, or Dolemite).

Removing that single word from the text relieves the reader of doing any heavy lifting.

The word "nigger" should sting. It's part of the bloodied soil of America, yet another legacy of slavery still with us a hundred-plus years after the fact.

Huck Finn is an historical document. What a tragedy if a modern reader, deprived of the context the word provides, were to conclude that 'Slave Jim' was the equal of 'Nigger Jim.' A slave, without the proper historical guideposts, could conjure the lowly born, the unlucky member of the wrong caste, or maybe victim of some feudal system. There is no equivalency between slave and "nigger," which is an American invention. It's a word that denies humanity, and along with it justice and mercy.

Dumbing and numbing down 'Nigger Jim' to 'Slave Jim' etiolates the crushing, dehumanizing institutional forces against the character, and minimizes Huck's enlightenment. The reason Huck is such an enduring character is that he represents the best and worst of his time. He was able to skewer the inherent absurdity of slavery, while ostensibly being a member of the ruling society.

Removing that single word from the text, while sparing those too sensitive to get past it, relieves the reader of doing any heavy lifting. Great books -- or any work of art -- require that the reader meet the author half-way. Huck Finn is a serious literary work. It is not a children's adventure book, nor a Rockwellian portrait. As intended, it is a scathing indictment against slavery, hypocrisy, gender roles (sure, why not), and class.

It is the successor to the Odyssey, and the precursor to "Catcher in the Rye." I understood little of Huck Finn when I was in high school, a little more in college, and still more is revealed to me, when I pull it from the shelf every few years. I'll run out of capacity before Huck Finn runs out of lessons.



These books -- and others like them -- should not be retrofitted to make modern readers comfortable. Modern readers are already too comfortable. Lazy, even. If the word "nigger" keeps one from reading Huck Finn, then one lacks the critical skills to appreciate all the book has to offer.

Cassi Creek:

The New York Times and Mark Twain have provided excellent material for today’s mutterings. Twain’s Huck and Tom captured the culture of pre-Civil War Missouri in a manner that deserves preservation in its original form. He grew up on the Mississippi, worked on the Mississippi and Missouri, learning not only the treacherous shoals, sand bars, sawyers, and currents that changed with every rainfall; but also learning the attitudes and cultures of Missouri’s populace, which have changed far less throughout the years since he wrote of them than we would hope and expect. As any good pilot, he had a memory like a steel trap that captured everything he heard and saw.

Missouri in those days was a slave state, noted for the Dred Scott court decision and the border wars with Kansas, a free state. The cross-border violence eventually triggered the Army to force the evacuation of Missouri counties bordering Kansas. From this part of Missouri grew the guerilla forces of the Civil War, Quantrill and others; the James Gang, and other instruments of hatred that were carried forward into modern times.

http://www.legendsofamerica.com/ks-bleedingkansas.html



General Order No. 11 is the title of a Union Army decree issued during the American Civil War on 25 August 1863, forcing the evacuation of rural areas in four counties in western Missouri.

The order, issued by Union General Thomas Ewing, affected all rural residents regardless of their loyalty. Those who could prove their loyalty to the Union were permitted to stay in the region, but had to leave their farms and move to communities near military outposts. Those who could not do so had to vacate the area altogether

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Order_No._11_(1863)

Missouri’s government tried to secede during the Civil War but was blocked by Grant from doing so. The southern half of the state was essentially a southern state, populated by Scots-Irish who left the Appalachians looking for land to farm but didn’t want to farm the low prairies, and couldn’t legally farm the Indian Nations. They didn’t necessarily own slaves but supported the practice of slavery.

My mother grew up in the Missouri boot heel. She recalls a lynching taking place in the town of Oran. Harry Truman defied an immense number of KKK members in Lamar. When I began school many Missouri towns still had segregated schools. The western tier of counties still is split into Pro-Union and Pro-South attitudes, discernable at a casual glance by the age of public buildings and the town squares. There is much, far too much, of the culture Twain knew in Missouri even today.

I didn’t grow up in Tennessee but I had family who lived in NW Tennessee. Any book or movie about small town Southern USA in the 1920s – 1960s would accurately describe their lives and their perceptions of the world around them. They were benign in their racism compared to others of their time. But they were products of their time and culture.

Today, we are afraid to use the offending word, “nigger.” This may be the only time in my life I have written it although I have lived through the progression “Colored” > “Black” > “Afro-American.” The word has now become heavily used in popular music, a practice I find wrong unless the users have decided that I am allowed to use it as well. There cannot be two sets of rules regarding language and culture unless everyone is able to use both sets of rules. There are descriptive, racist words I find offensive. So I don’t use them. I would prefer no one else use them but I lack that right to censor others speech. In my opinion, that is a universal. If “nigger” is so offensive that whites may not use it, then it is equally offensive for blacks to use. If it is used, the person using it surrenders any right to censor the speech of others. Hatred can be sneaky.

I don’t have to look that far to find racism comparable to that described and condemned by Twain in today’s world. We’ve made slavery illegal, at a horrible cost in human live that was justified as few wars ever are. We’ve made segregation illegal, spent billions trying to close education gaps only to founder on cultural reefs. The picture painted by Twain was highly accurate and to edit out any of his choices of words is historical revisionism, one of the truly great sins.

Today we have our first black POTUS. Today we have a resurgence of political obstructionism mostly driven by the racism we deny exists. We have a political party willing to let millions starve, willing to abolish health insurance reform, willing to demolish a more effective FDA, and willing to ignore the need for infrastructure repairs; because it was proposed by a black man in the White house.

We don’t have weekly slave auctions today – unless we consider athletic contracts a form of servitude. We’ve opened schools, careers, and most aspects of American life to all our citizens. The civil rights activists of the 50s and 60s fought an incredible battle for all of us. It’s a shame to see their gains disregarded as they are by many today. It’s even worse to see those gains being whittled away by elected officials who would be perfectly at home in the era of Huck Finn.

Thank you, Mr. Clemens, for documenting a time and place in American history, in providing us a look at what we need to outgrow.