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Originally Posted by pokkeherrie
No, they shouldn't. Certainly not for political reasons.
Why not add footnotes or an introductory essay explaining the historic context of the word "nigger" instead? Censoring it completely is basically falsifying history.
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Correct. Is there at least a disclaimer on the revised edition?
I bet this Alan Gribben guy is feeling a bit like a twat now. But then again, is this all that different than a censored version of a raunchy film on television? I guess so, since it's presented in an educational environment, but perhaps the novel shouldn't be taught to students until they've reached high school or college level, where they'd have a better understanding of the word's context.
I wonder if people will be getting wiled up like this, 50 yrs from now, when they're teaching The Empire Strikes Back in a classroom, and they get to the scene where
Han shoots first.
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Originally Posted by Glice
Also, why wasn't Twain racist? Because he's a good writer? Because he's a canonical great? Because his books, from our perspective, 'subvert' racial relations? He's a writer. Writers know words. If he was British (where the word nigger only accrued its negative connotations much later) it'd be a different matter. I don't have a problem with him being a racist, per se, but I don't really think that 'oh, he wasn't a racist, so it's alright for him to say nigger' is a decent defence.
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"Twain was undoubtedly anti-racist. Friends with African American educator Booker T Washington, he co-chaired the 1906 Silver Jubilee fundraiser at Carnegie Hall for the Tuskegee Institute – a school run by Washington in Alabama to further "the intellectual and moral and religious life of the [African American] people". He also personally helped fund one of Yale Law School's first African American students, explaining: "We have ground the manhood out of them [African Americans], and the shame is ours, not theirs, and we should pay for it." And his repeated use of that derogatory term in Huckleberry Finn is absolutely deliberate, ringing with irony. When Huck's father, poor and drunken white trash by any standard, learns that "a free nigger ... from Ohio; a mulatter, most as white as a white man ... a p'fessor in a college" is allowed to vote, he reports: "Well, that let me out ... I says I'll never vote agin ... [A]nd the country may rot for all me." It is very clear here whose racial side Twain is on. Similarly when Aunt Sally asks if anyone was hurt in a reported riverboat explosion, and Huck himself answers "No'm. Killed a nigger," she replies, "Well, it's lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt." The whole force of the passage lies in casual acceptance of the African American's dehumanised status, even by Huck, whose socially-inherited language and way of thinking stands firm despite all he has learnt in his journey down-river of the humanity, warmth and affection of the escaped slave Jim – the person who truly acts as a father to him."
- source:
The Guardian