Culture Shock
First They Came for the N-Word
A new version of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn takes out more than 200 instances of the n-word and replaces them with “slave.”
Without getting into why slave is also offensive, this is a bad idea.
I know. “The n-word”—as it has been sanitized—is wholly disturbing, one that reminds us of a shameful era of our history.
Let’s not forget, or in this case rewrite, history. The story occurs in antebellum Missouri. Americans owned slaves and referred to them by one of the few words that still causes chagrin when it’s uttered. It’s not a nice thing to think about, but it happened.
Changing literature smacks of Winston Smith, the protagonist of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Winston sits in an office all day and removes references to people who have been relegated to “unperson” status by the totalitarian state. They are dead, more than likely shot in the head, but the Inner Party also wants them erased. A document or record bearing the name of the persona non grata is cut out and thrown into the incinerator. He excises them from ever having been.
Changing the words in Huck Finn is no different.
This is a slippery slope. First it’s the word; then it’s the book; finally, it’s the writer. Start banning or censoring books, and before you know it, the fire department is torching your house.
Of course, the language in Huck requires context so people don’t assume Mark Twain was just some jerk who hated black people. School children need to know our history; they need to talk about it. But removing words disses Mark Twain, condescends to students, and ignores history and, most importantly, the people who suffered through it. And if we forget the past, we’ll just have to do it over again.
Leave it alone.
[Editor’s note: John Bear has been deemed too offensive and has been deleted.]
- well put [ Thu Jan 20 2011 2:12 PM ]
"This is a slippery slope. First it’s the word; then it’s the book; finally, it’s the writer. Start banning or censoring books, and before you know it, the fire department is torching your house."
eloquent and true.
- The Negro "Lightning" [ Mon Jan 24 2011 8:22 PM ]
Mr. Bear
Your perspective belies your age. Excellent piece. Mr. Clemens did a remarkable job of getting the book published in the first place and had to cash in a lot of previous genius work to do so.
A personal story: I was genuinely dumb-struck to hear my Grandma's use of the n-word casually and cavalierly tossed around during our two visits to Arkansas every year. It was the 60's and they lived in a trailer in rural "hooter-town". One may think that she was a bigot and worse, mean, but she wasn't. A kind lady and generous. She never drank, but farmed and lived a simple life. She was tough enough to survive a masectomy in the 1970's, among other maladies and eventually lived to the age of 94. A full 20 Thanksgivings past what I expected.
The irony: Her husband (My Grandfather) was the hardest working man in the history of mankind. He literally worked himself to death and passed on less than a year after he retired. He repaired tractors for the International Harvester shop in that farming community. Back then, farms were locally owned by your neighbors. He worked six days a week, fifty-one weeks a year. He left home in the middle of the night in order to fix stuck tractors during growing seasons and harvest.
The end: His loyal helper was a Negro named Lightning. That was the only name he was ever referred to. I thought that was also wrong, but theirs was a society that didn't involve integration. Both reported to work every day for decades and probably knew little of each other. Their work involved nightwork during bad weather and frankly, it could be dangerous. All over... in all the counties. Miles on the road.
She loved her husbands' helper, though she used that despicable word. What can I say? It's history and I can't re-write it.
Regards
Mike
- And so the book famous for having been written in the vernacular of its time [ Tue Jan 25 2011 10:48 AM ]
is no longer written in the vernacular of its time. I love it when people fix things for everyone's good.
