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 OFFLINE | Actually I saw something pretty interesting about this on the news yesterday. They were talking about the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.....and how SOME school districts were taking it off of their "read" list because of some of the words in the novel. Now the publishing company has "changed" the "n" word and reprinted the novel.
As we first reported in March, a publishing company in Alabama says that schools don't have to change their reading list because they changed Huckleberry Finn. Their newly released edition removes the N-word and replaces it with "slave." It's a bold move for what is considered one of the greatest works in American history.
Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn is a classic set before the Civil War. The story is told by Huck, a white boy escaping an abusive father, and about his adventures with a black man named Jim, escaping slavery. Huckleberry Finn is set along the Mississippi River. In it, Twain used the N-word 219 times. To some people, the word gets in the way of the story's powerful message against slavery; to others, Twain is simply capturing the way people talked back then.
"Are you censoring Twain?" correspondent Byron Pitts asked Randall Williams, co-owner and editor of NewSouth Books, publishers of the sanitized edition of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn that replaces the N-word with the word "slave." "We certainly are accused of censoring Twain," Williams replied.
It's aimed at schools that already ban the book, though no one knows how many have. Williams says they are not trying replace Twain's original, N-word included. "If you can have the discussion and you're comfortable havin' the discussion, have it. Have it with it in there. But if you're not comfortable with that, then here's an alternative for you to use. And I would argue to you that it's still powerful," Williams said.
The new edition drew powerful reactions from Twain scholars, the press and ordinary readers - and it's worth noting most of the articles don't spell out the word, either. The new edition drew powerful reactions from Twain scholars, the press and ordinary readers - and it's worth noting most of the articles don't spell out the word, either.
"What's it say that people have been so passionate about it?" Pitts asked. "I think it says that race continues to be a volatile and divisive subject," Williams said. In this passage, Huck says the word three times in two sentences: "Jim was monstrous proud about it and he got so he couldn't hardly notice the other niggers. Niggers come miles to hear Jim tell about it and he was more looked up to than any **** in that country."
"What do you think of Huckleberry Finn?" Pitts asked author David Bradley, who teaches at the University of Oregon. "It's a great book. It's one of the greatest books in American literature," Bradley replied. He says the key to understanding Huckleberry Finn is through Twain's use of language, as the friendship between Huck and Jim unfolds. "When Huck comes back to that raft, he says, 'They're after us.' He doesn't say, 'They're after you.' He says, 'They're after us.' And that's the moment when it becomes about the American dilemma, it becomes about, 'Are we gonna get along?'" Bradley said.
School districts struggling to teach Huckleberry Finn have called in Bradley. He believes strongly in teaching Twain's original text. "One of the first things I do is I make everybody say it out loud about six or seven times," Bradley said. "The N-word?" Pitts asked. "Yeah, '****.' Get over it," Bradley replied, laughing. "You know. Now let's talk about the book."
"The publisher says they are providing a service," Pitts told David Bradley. "They are," Bradley said. "There are school districts that won't deal with Huckleberry Finn, and they remove this word and now they're able to have their students read and deal with Huckleberry Finn," Pitts remarked.
"No. It's not Huckleberry Finn anymore," Bradley said. "We're talkin' about students: What are we teaching them? This may be their first encounter with slavery. It shouldn't be their only one. But that's one of the reasons we can't mess around with it. There is a reality there that you cannot avoid."
"But do you lose that reality when you take out the N-word and replace it with 'slave'?" Pitts asked. "Yeah. 'Slave' is a condition. I mean, anybody can be a slave. And it's nothin' for anybody to be ashamed of. But '****' has to do with shame. '****' has to do with calling somebody something. '****' was what made slavery possible," Bradley explained. Randall Williams told Pitts the word is poison.
Asked if he used the word, Williams said, "Oh, I used to. I grew up sayin' the word. It was all I knew. I never gave it any thought." Williams runs NewSouth Books in Montgomery, Ala. - cradle of the Confederacy and where Jim Crow was once king. Williams, a son of Alabama, says the civil rights movement changed him as it did much of the South. For him, the subject of race and the N-word goes beyond any debate about the book. It's also about how far the South has come. "We learned to think differently about it and thank God we did," Williams told Pitts. "I mean the movement didn't just free, you know, black southerners. I mean it freed white southerners too." "Freed you from?" Pitts asked. "Freed us from the sin of...you know, this...a big sin," Williams said.
"Kids use it... artists use it, the black rap artists use it, as you know, as I well know. Brothers use it all the time...when they talk to each other," Pitts said to David Bradley. Bradley told Pitts, "I love it."
"'You're my ****, man.' Look, in every group, there are words that you use, there are inflections, there is knowledge about what a word means to you, or to me, or how I mean it when I say it that is not an insult. I think one of the things that offends white people about it is that they can't say it. They say, 'Well, is it because of my inflection, or is it because...' It's, 'No, because you're not us.' Jeff Foxworthy says, you know, 'You can't make jokes about a redneck unless you are one.' You can't say '****' unless you are one, and unless you are willing to accept everything that goes with it, which is a lot of good stuff, you know? And that's what they want, they want that good stuff," Bradley said.
Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/06/12/60minutes/main20066924.shtml#ixzz1P9hZLjbn
Wonder if we've become too "sensitive" to that word -- as I don't hear too many white people complaining about being called "honkey" or "cracker"...which they are called by black people.
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Political Correctness?
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Originally Posted by Mary Kirkpatrick:
