New Controversy Over Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and
the "N-word" (2 articles)

1. 10 Reasons Why the Slurs Should Stay in `Huck Finn'
   (Marcia Alesan Dawkins in Truthdig)

2. Why Jim Needs to Remain Huck Finn's "Nigger"
   (Kai Wright in ColorLines

==========

10 Reasons Why the Slurs Should Stay in `Huck Finn'

By Marcia Alesan Dawkins

Truthdig

Posted on January 6, 2011

http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/huck_finn_dawkins_20110106/

It's not surprising that the latest edition of Mark Twain's
paired classics, 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and
Huckleberry Finn,' will remove all traces of nigger and
Injun from its pages when our leaders confuse books with
bars, Charles Dickens' words with Leo Tolstoy's, and omit
slavery from Confederate History Month. Our leaders
obviously aren't reading. So why should we care about an old
book like Twain's? Here are 10 reasons.

    1. It's Mark Twain. You know, the guy who said, 'The
    difference between the right word and the almost right
    word is the difference between lightning and a lightning
    bug.' If he had wanted other words used, he would've
    used them.

    2. Tampering with literature even if it's not Mark
    Twain's. It's a simple case of censorship and it's a bad
    idea. What's next? Perhaps we will remove references to
    the Moors from Shakespeare. Wait - Thomas Bowdler is
    halfway there. He edited Shakespeare's profanity and
    sexual content in the interests of younger readers.

    3. Erasing racial epithets doesn't erase race or racism.
    Actually, not talking about the 'hurtful epithets'
    perpetuates racism because we're never allowed to make
    corrections. The desire to be less racist doesn't give
    us the right to erase someone's words. Being less racist
    would mean that we'd be able to face those words and
    recognize their repugnance as a sign of how much we're
    evolving.

    4. It eliminates teachable moments. We're teaching our
    children that no one should talk about race, not even
    dead or fictional people. We're doing this because we
    adults don't know how to talk about race. It's like
    saying, 'I don't really know how to explain this ... so
    forget it.' It's a good thing that people like Isaac
    Newton, Copernicus or Thomas Edison didn't give up so
    easily.

    5. Freedom of choice. If you find this book offensive,
    don't buy it or read it. There are plenty of books that
    none of us have an interest in reading for one reason or
    another. We don't rewrite them. We simply choose not to
    read them. We don't let others make that choice for us.

    6. There were other options. Alan Gribben, the book's
    editor, could've rewritten the story from a different
    perspective or context, like Gregory Maguire wrote
    'Wicked.' He could've rewritten 'Huckleberry Finn' from
    Jim's point of view to explain why these two terms are
    offensive. Or, he could've written a foreword that
    struggles truthfully with race, racism and the
    questionable terms in the book.

    7. You can't fight censorship with censorship. Twain's
    critics said that they didn't want their children
    exposed to hateful speech, so the book was banned in
    some places. Now Gribben is censoring Twain's words in
    order to fight that censorship. His goal of 'introducing
    Twain's work to new readers' implies that his freedom of
    speech gives him the right to do so. But Gribben has
    conveniently plowed over Twain's freedom of speech in
    the process. After all, Twain isn't here to comment.

    8. We're not talking about the words that will replace
    nigger and Injun. While this could be an effective
    marketing ploy, the publishers should be as open about
    what they've added to the book as they are about what
    they've deleted. Fairness suggests that potential buyers
    and readers of the book should know how Gribben decided
    what the 'less offensive words' would be.

    9. Offensive terms are being invented and popularized
    right now. Why pick on historically offensive terms when
    offensive 'buzzwords' are being invented today by living
    people? This week MSN's 'Business on Main' featured '10
    Buzzwords You Need to Know.' No. 2 on the list was
    Jennifer Lopez. Usage: 'I wouldn't mind seeing a little
    more Jennifer Lopez (highly desirable rounding bottom of
    a stock's price on its way up) on the NASDAQ.' The use
    of Lopez's name in this context is definitely
    problematic, yet readers are told they must know about
    and even use it.

    10. It's coming from the 'New South.' Actually, NewSouth
    is the name of the publisher. But some research I'm
    conducting reveals that there is a quiet movement called
    the New South that is about rewriting history, reviving
    the Confederacy and erasing the historical fact of
    slavery's existence. Though the publisher does not
    appear to be connected to this New South movement, and
    doesn't appear to have racist intent, it's hard to
    ignore a shared revisionist impulse.

But the most important reason to stay true to Twain's words
is this. We've been reading 'The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn' and 'Tom Sawyer' for over a century and it hasn't
stopped us from passing civil rights legislation, ending
segregation in public schools, passing the Voting Rights
Act, engaging in interracial relationships, appointing
nonwhite members to the Supreme Court or electing nonwhite
political officials, including our current president. So
why, in 2011, do we suddenly need to change Twain's books?

I think it's because our desperate desire to free ourselves
of racism has given way to the wishful thought that we've
gotten beyond race. We believe that acknowledging race gives
way to the inevitabilities of anger and retribution instead
of the possibilities of healing and forgiveness. We're
wrong.

And we're not beyond race either. There. I've said (and
written) it.

[Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Ph.D. is Visiting Scholar at Brown
University. She is interested in public policy, diversity,
education, and communication.  Her forthcoming book, 'Things
Said in Passing,' looks at racial passing as a model for
identity formation and communication in the U.S. from the
late nineteenth through early twenty-first centuries. She
lectures, writes and consults on these and other issues
related to contemporary communication.]

=========

Why Jim Needs to Remain Huck Finn's "Nigger"

by Kai Wright

ColorLines

January 5, 2011

http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/01/why_jim_needs_to_remain_huck_finns_nigger.html

We've got our first official race flap of 2011-and it
involves something published in 1884. Folks have long been
freaked out by the 200-plus times Mark Twain used the word
"nigger" in his classic novel "Huckleberry Finn," and as a
consequence the book is rarely taught in high school these
days (or so I'm told; that's where I first encountered it
decades ago). So a well-meaning Auburn University scholar
named Alan Gribben has said, enough already, let's just take
the offending words out. Gribben has adapted the novel for
New South Books, which announced this week it will release a
version in which "nigger" is swapped out for "slave";
"injun" is scrubbed as well. The new version will be
published in a companion volume with "The Adventures of Tom
Sawyer."

People are pissed, of course.

Here's what Gribben told Publisher's Weekly:

    "This is not an effort to render Tom Sawyer and
    Huckleberry Finn colorblind," said Gribben, speaking
    from his office at Auburn University at Montgomery,
    where he's spent most of the past 20 years heading the
    English department. "Race matters in these books. It's a
    matter of how you express that in the 21st century."

    [snip]

    "After a number of talks, I was sought out by local
    teachers, and to a person they said we would love to
    teach this novel, and Huckleberry Finn, but we feel we
    can't do it anymore. In the new classroom, it's really
    not acceptable." Gribben became determined to offer an
    alternative for grade school classrooms and "general
    readers" that would allow them to appreciate and enjoy
    all the book has to offer. "For a single word to form a
    barrier, it seems such an unnecessary state of affairs,"
    he said.

But Gribben's effort to make the book teachable has,
ironically, papered over the relevant lesson. The tragedy,
as Melissa Harris-Perry articulates on the "Countdown" clip
below, is not that the word "nigger" appears in the text,
but that we think it's not appropriate to discuss our
nation's racism honestly until college. It's abstinence-only
education for race. It's also indicative of a culture that
has reduced racism to words, rather than ideas and actions.
Elon James White puts it well at Salon:

    Our society has a problem speaking truth about our
    attitudes toward race. When the book "Game Change," for
    example, included comments by Harry Reid saying that
    Obama could win the presidency because he was a "light-
    skinned Negro with no negro dialect unless he chose to
    have one," many people had a conniption because you're
    just not allowed to "say" that. Was it true? Absolutely.
    Scientific studies have proven a bias - among blacks and
    whites - against dark-skinned people, but for a
    politician to state a truth about America and race was
    unacceptable.

Here's Harris-Perry breaking down why Twain's Jim needs to
stay a "nigger."

	MSNBC's Keith Olbermann And Melissa Harris-Perry:
	Mark Twain Censored - 01/04/11

	http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65Ixz_M3rVE
	
[Kai Wright is the Editorial Director of ColorLines. He's an
Alfred Knobler Fellow of The Nation Institute; his
investigative reporting and news analysis appears regularly
in The Nation, The Root and The American Prospect, among
other publications. He is also author of Drifting Toward
Love: Black, Brown, Gay and Coming of Age on the Streets of
New York, as well as two books of African-American history.]

==========

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