In A Word...The N-word, That Is

dharma69

So....

I'm guessing one or two of you folks have heard the news about Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn" and how some new editions of it are going to look in the future. Gotta say it took me by surprise and then, in no short order, pissed me off. So as the token black Pearl Jam fan around these parts (yes, I jest...I think) I thought I'd broach the subject and see where this goes...

In A Word...The N-word, That Is

Feel free to chime...or don't. Whether you think it's a mark of our progress as a society or whether you think it's PC going ass crazy, I suspect you have at least a singular thought. Even if it's "I don't care."

Godfather.

I read the story,pointless in my opinion,you can't change history.

Godfather.

polaris_x

i hadn't heard but based on what you wrote ... i would be against it ... i understand the power of words and the effect it can have on people ... but i also believe in context ... if there is no malice or ignorance behind the use, it should be taken as such ... but, it's much easier said than done ...

arq

Godfather. wrote:

I read the story,pointless in my opinion,you can't change history.

Godfather.

+1

UpSideDown

Are these new editions just for school purposes?

Either read the book as it stands, or don't.

Who has the time and motivation to be driving this movement?

dharma69

Huck Finn has been gradually disappearing from grade school reading lists for a while because some people- parents, students, educators- take issue with the pervasive use of the word throughout the book. Part of an LA Times story reads:

"Here we go again: This week, NewSouth Books, a publisher based in Montgomery, Ala., announced plans to release an omnibus edition of Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" with a couple of offensive words removed. Most prominent, of course, is "nigger," which appears 219 times in "Huckleberry Finn" and has been the source of repeated efforts to ban or restrict the novel since it was published 125 years ago. In this new edition, the word in question has been replaced by "slave."

Loa Angeles Times

BinauralJam

PC going Ass Crazy. I think it's disrespectful to black people and all they've had to overcome, Feels like the man trying to clean up history to put himself in a better light.

i also dont like changing classics

Not to mention the N word is still being used in lots of books published everyday.

keeponrockin

I believe the language used at the time is part of the book, and changing it changes the context. What are we gonna do next, change anything in Shakespeare we find offensive?

norm

if you are at all a competent teacher, you should be able to teach huck finn as is and explain and discuss the n-word and why it was used...twain wasn't a rapper from south central...he wasn't using it for salacious purposes...it was the times

Nothingman54

Having a hard time reading your blue font on the app

jamma

I read this book as a child in elementary school and loved it. Even at that young age, I knew it was wrong to treat people badly because of their skin color or for any reason and I knew that was the writers intent, to show us this. Its a part of history and a classic and should be left alone.

mikepegg44

this is gross.

lets see, should we cut out all of the sexual references in shakespeare? Should we stop teaching romeo and juliet? aren't we supposed to be moving to a culture that has no problem discussing race related issues?

How on earth do you get the delicious irony out of Huck's father if all his words are changed...this is unreal.

If you think it is offensive, why don't you ask the kids? Parent's suck...they all have fat kids because they are afraid to let them run around the neighborhood, they are raising kids who live at home until 28 because they have been coddled for 20 years prior to trying to branch out...This is just the latest example of the uneducated masses finding issue where there is none
pretty interesting read about twain below. was he a racist at some point, probably more a sign of the times than anything else, I don't believe he had the hate of a racist at anytime. But more than that he was a literary genious and those who haven't read a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court do yourself a favor. Fuck these people. It is art. You cannot change art because it offends. What a better time in a young persons life to be confronted with the buffoonery of racism.

Part 2: Was Mark Twain a Racist?

For over thirty years critics of Mark Twain have called attention to the racial epithets in Huckleberry Finn as an example of the inherent racism of the author. African Americans in particular have objected to the book and in many school districts (most recently in Dallas) have either banned the book or forced the districts to make available alternate literary selections for any objecting student.

Was Huckleberry Finn a racist book? Or more importantly--was Mark Twain a racist? The answer lies in an examination of the life of Mark Twain and in the content and intent of his most controversial book, Huckleberry Finn.

If upbringing is any guarantee of the racial attitudes a man will exhibit, then the early life of Mark Twain seemed to be an ideal breeding ground for a racist. Growing up in the slave state of Missouri, Twain's father was a slave trader several times in his many occupational ventures.

After his father's death Twain spent several summers with his uncle, John Quarles. His uncle owned twenty slaves and Twain had a close-up view of slavery in action.

While working as a printer up North in 1853, Twain made a racist remark in a letter to his family. According to biographer Justin Kaplan Twain wrote: "I reckon I had better black my face, for in these Eastern states, n_____s are considerably better than white people."

Another remark made by Twain in 1872 would also be construed by critics today as being racist in nature. After his book Roughing It quite literally got off to a rough start in its initial book sales, Twain was overjoyed when he William Dean Howells wrote a favorable magazine review. Twain said to a friend: "I am as uplifted and reassured by it as a mother who has given birth to a white baby when she was awfully afraid it was going to be a mulatto."

Part of this early racism stemmed from the financial frustrations of growing up in a poor Southern family. Twain's poverty as a youth made him very aware of differences in social class. As Twain later noted in his autobiography: "The class lines were quite clearly drawn and the familiar social life of each class was restricted to that class."

Twain also witnessed the brutal murder of a slave in Hannibal that affected him deeply. The man was killed by a rock-throwing white man for the crime of "merely doing something awkward."

His summers at his uncle's Missouri farm proved a bonanza for his future writing endeavors. He learned slave stories, folklore, and speech patterns that would be lost today without his help. Twain denoted his careful use of colloquial language in his preface to Huckleberry Finn:

"A number of dialects are used, to wit: the Missouri negro dialect; the extremest form of the backwoods South-Western dialect; the ordinary 'Pike-County' dialect; and four modified varieties of this last. The shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion, or by guess-work; but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several patterns of speech."

An examination of Twain's Civil War record also sheds some light on his Southern feelings about defending slavery and toward what he called the white "tainted aristocracy."

According to Twain: "I was a soldier two weeks once in the beginning of the war, and was hunted like a rat the whole time."

After two weeks in the field he had learned more about retreating "than the man that invented retreating." According to biographer Kaplan instead of saying "War is hell," he (Twain) said "to hell with war," and he left for the safety of Nevada.

Even more revealing was the probing question he asked in 1877 at a banquet honoring Union veterans. He said, "What was the fighting all about, anyhow?"

This hardly seems the war cry of a diehard Southerner, but rather the feelings of a desouthernized Southerner. Twain's feelings about freedmen in his later years were filled with humanism and contempt for people who mistreated them. In 1901 he was horrified to hear about lynchings in the South and even in his homestate of Missouri.

Determined to do something about it, he wrote a magazine article condemning the practice. Entitled "The United States of Lyncherdom," the satirical article begged compassionate missionaries to "leave China, come home, and convert these Christians."

Fearing the reactions of Southerners he put the article in his pile of posthumous manuscripts. He reasoned: "I shouldn't even have half a friend left down there, after it was issued from the press."

And a careful examination of Huckleberry Finn proves that the book is not racist. After all, one of the main themes of the book is a white boy helping a runaway slave--hardly a racist theme.

Perhaps the most convincing evidence of the non-racist content of the novel is in the scene where slave catchers are rowing toward Huck and Jim who is hidden on the raft. The slave catchers ask Huck, "Is your man white or black?" Huck struggles mightily with the customs of his race and then bravely blurts out, "He's white."

For a Southern white man who grew up with slaveowners it would probably be impossible not to find some elements of our 20th century definition of racism. However, to call Mark Twain a racist is a fallacy and does a disservice to the contributions he made in the area of colloquial speech, folklore, and narration.

Mark Twain was far from being a racist. People who still persist in calling Mark Twain a racist should reread Huckleberry Finn and especially Twain's preface: "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot."

polaris_x

i think we have a moving train consensus on this subject ...

woohoo!

mikepegg44

polaris_x wrote:

i think we have a moving train consensus on this subject ...

woohoo!

crap...

what I meant to say above was good, mark twain's book should be rounded up and burned so that no copy ever remains of this disgustingly racist work that has no point but to indoctrinate white youth with feelings of hatred and minorities with a feeling of inferiority hopefully culminating in a destruction of the will of the minority to live and thusly will be much easier to lynch. also Kids have a right to be sheltered forever from all the bad things in the world.

I still firmly believe the majority of Americans are against garbage like this

polaris_x

mikepegg44 wrote:

polaris_x wrote:

i think we have a moving train consensus on this subject ...

woohoo!

crap...

what I meant to say above was good, mark twain's book should be rounded up and burned so that no copy ever remains of this disgustingly racist work that has no point but to indoctrinate white youth with feelings of hatred and minorities with a feeling of inferiority hopefully culminating in a destruction of the will of the minority to live and thusly will be much easier to lynch. also Kids have a right to be sheltered forever from all the bad things in the world.

I still firmly believe the majority of Americans are against garbage like this

too late! ... consensus! ...

BinauralJam

mikepegg44 wrote:

polaris_x wrote:

i think we have a moving train consensus on this subject ...

woohoo!

crap...

what I meant to say above was good, mark twain's book should be rounded up and burned so that no copy ever remains of this disgustingly racist work that has no point but to indoctrinate white youth with feelings of hatred and minorities with a feeling of inferiority hopefully culminating in a destruction of the will of the minority to live and thusly will be much easier to lynch. also Kids have a right to be sheltered forever from all the bad things in the world.

I still firmly believe the majority of Americans are against garbage like this

But what about all the books published recently/last decade or so, by black authors that not only use the N word but use it regularly?

mikepegg44

polaris_x wrote:

mikepegg44 wrote:

polaris_x wrote:

i think we have a moving train consensus on this subject ...

woohoo!

crap...

what I meant to say above was good, mark twain's book should be rounded up and burned so that no copy ever remains of this disgustingly racist work that has no point but to indoctrinate white youth with feelings of hatred and minorities with a feeling of inferiority hopefully culminating in a destruction of the will of the minority to live and thusly will be much easier to lynch. also Kids have a right to be sheltered forever from all the bad things in the world.

I still firmly believe the majority of Americans are against garbage like this

too late! ... consensus! ...

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

mikepegg44

BinauralJam wrote:

mikepegg44 wrote:

polaris_x wrote:

i think we have a moving train consensus on this subject ...

woohoo!

crap...

what I meant to say above was good, mark twain's book should be rounded up and burned so that no copy ever remains of this disgustingly racist work that has no point but to indoctrinate white youth with feelings of hatred and minorities with a feeling of inferiority hopefully culminating in a destruction of the will of the minority to live and thusly will be much easier to lynch. also Kids have a right to be sheltered forever from all the bad things in the world.

I still firmly believe the majority of Americans are against garbage like this

But what about all the books published recently/last decade or so, by black authors that not only use the N word but use it regularly?

cannot tell if you are being serious.... :eh:

BinauralJam

Yes, i mean i work with black people and they all read and trade these books, there like Urban Stories, written by and for black people, they use the N word like i use Dude.

mikepegg44

BinauralJam wrote:

Yes, i mean i work with black people and they all read and trade these books, there like Urban Stories, written by and for black people, they use the N word like i use Dude.

right but I was kidding with what I wrote. I really don't think it is the same for people who have been damaged by the word and those who use it to do the damaging...hope that makes sense, have gone dumb and could not think of a better word than damage.

That argument is rather tired anyway. It is too logical to die, and it is too wrong to ever make a difference in actual debate.

BinauralJam

mikepegg44 wrote:

BinauralJam wrote:

Yes, i mean i work with black people and they all read and trade these books, there like Urban Stories, written by and for black people, they use the N word like i use Dude.

right but I was kidding with what I wrote. I really don't think it is the same for people who have been damaged by the word and those who use it to do the damaging...hope that makes sense, have gone dumb and could not think of a better word than damage.

That argument is rather tired anyway. It is too logical to die, and it is too wrong to ever make a difference in actual debate.

i misunderstood, i think were on the same page.

polaris_x

BinauralJam wrote:

i misunderstood, i think were on the same page.

yes ... everyone on the same page ... consensus!

catefrances

i read about this... ridiculous. i will now go out and round up all the copies of huck finn i can find.

Cosmo

Hey Dharma... Happy New Year... see you at the next gig... whatever gig that is.
...
Regarding Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn and Mark Twain... in a word... CONTEXT.
What is the context in which the word is being used? Nigger Jim and Injun Joe were fictional characters in a book about a time in American History when those terms were used as adjectives by the characters living in the South during the time of slavery. That is the context... The South, during slavery and relatively illiterate poor country folk. Huck Finn, who was raised to believe that slavery was natural and abolition was wrong, befriends Nigger Jim and discovers that race doesn't matter and the worth of a man's character... his honor and his freedom does. The term was never used by Huck Finn in hatred.
An YES... it would be extremely offensive if anyone were to use those terms as adjectives today... even in the South... by dumb fucks. Hypocritical? Not when the context is taken into consideration... with the greatest consideration being... it is 2011 today, not 1860.
So, changing literature in the name of what? Political correctness? I say leave the original content and inject the human intellect and focus on the story... instead of getting hung up on a word.

catefrances

Cosmo wrote:

Hey Dharma... Happy New Year... see you at the next gig... whatever gig that is.
...
Regarding Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn and Mark Twain... in a word... CONTEXT.
What is the context in which the word is being used? Nigger Jim and Injun Joe were fictional characters in a book about a time in American History when those terms were used as adjectives by the characters living in the South during the time of slavery. That is the context... The South, during slavery and relatively illiterate poor country folk. Huck Finn, who was raised to believe that slavery was natural and abolition was wrong, befriends Nigger Jim and discovers that race doesn't matter and the worth of a man's character... his honor and his freedom does. The term was never used by Huck Finn in hatred.
An YES... it would be extremely offensive if anyone were to use those terms as adjectives today... even in the South... by dumb fucks. Hypocritical? Not when the context is taken into consideration... with the greatest consideration being... it is 2011 today, not 1860.
So, changing literature in the name of what? Political correctness? I say leave the original content and inject the human intellect and focus on the story... instead of getting hung up on a word.

yep. consensus. :thumbup:

dr0ptheleash

Guess what. I remember reading this when I was young, and although I am older, I remember it. But, I remember STORY, not that the n-word was used 219 times.

pickupyourwill

dharma69 wrote:

the token black Pearl Jam fan around these parts (yes, I jest...I think)

I don't know anything about the new cover and the N-word, I apologize. All I can say there is that I hope it doesn't put our society back a hundred yrs or so b/c that would suck.

I just wanted to say, girl, that I know what its like to be a token friend as well, and while I've heard that term used by blacks and whites both in jest, the reality of it, is still disappointing at times. peace & love

Dirtie_Frank

Good Story about this:

http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-536638?hpt=Sbin

It is simply ridiculous that people are looking at taking words like the n-word out of books like Huckleberry Finn & Tom Sawyer. This is American history for goodness sakes. We have kids running around using that word like it's a term of affection because they don't know the history. Teachers are scared enough to challenge the youth on this word and now if we take it out of the books they won't have to. Furthermore, as a writer, I would never want anyone to change words of my texts whether I'm alive or gone. We as writers pour our hearts into our work. Editing these texts is essentially rewriting them. We should not be politically correct about our history. For all of American history's positivity and negativity, it's still our history. Let's not try to whitewash it

CAVSTARR313

Scary... I keep wondering when someone will go through all the old posts on this board and change them to their particular liking.. Hey, it will kinda be like MAD LIBS.. Remember those???

Fight The Power!!!!

even flow - question mark

All I know is dat all my nigga's won't be none too happy if we have to stop using that word in our songs. Word!

Jason P

Next up: Dick and Jane will be revised to Richard and Jane. Although the main intent is to keep a room full of first graders from giggling every time someone reads "dick" aloud.