Huck Finn and the Sanitizing of History

I've waited a few days to comment on the controversy surrounding a new edition of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn that has recently been released. Edited by Alan Gribben, who is a Professor of English at Auburn University at Montgomery, Alabama the new volume has changed the way a particularly offensive term is said in the book. In the said volume, the word "nigger" is replaced with the word "slave". Based on Michiko Kakutani's article Light Out, Huck, They Still Want To Sivilize You from January 7, 2011 the word nigger appears over 200 times and it forms the name of one of the main characters in the story: Nigger Jim. For those of you who have not read the story, it is based in the Antebellum South of the United States during the mid-19th Century and the dialogue in the book is a reflection of the speech of the time.

I'll be the first to say that the word "nigger" might be one of the most repulsive words (if not the worst) in the English language. I do see where Professor Gribben is coming from when he says he wants to spare "the reader from a racial slur that never seems to lose its vitriol". To see an older black person flinch when hearing a young person repeatedly say the word in their presence further proves that point. In addtion, Professor Gribben believes that in changing the words in question the book would no longer be blacklisted from many schools reading curriculum due to language and content. But as a Historian, I see this as being a major issue. Bad enough there are states that are changing History to reflect a particular religious and/or moral point of view. Changing language and content in older books to reflect modern sensitivities provides a disservice to today's youth.

Similar to the point of view that I held in my blog post To Print or Not to Print from February 5, 2010 with the potential printing of Adolph Hitler's Mein Kampf in Germany, I firmly believe that the covering up of History will only lead to continual distortion and a lack of knowledge of said history. I believe that children today have the potential to be the most intelligent of children since so much information is at their disposal at the click of a few keys where kids in my generation had to do more "leg work" to access said information. Keeping that potential intelligence in mind, I feel that censoring literature takes their intelligence out of the equation.

As a teacher or a parent, you can be against the use of the offensive language and let it be known, but to just erase it from the reading material just takes away the potential for positive discourse between you and your students and children. I believe in order to be a successful teacher and/or parent is being able to explain the uncomfortable along with the comfortable. In terms of Huck Finn, explain why the word is offensive in a way that the kids will understand and maybe you'll find that with the proper explanation, kids know what the word means and choose whether to use the word or not. I found a series of documentaries made by Michael Schuman called The N Word Documentary and it is available on YouTube at the Moshen Picture Production film channel. I'd recommend for you to check them out.

FH

For Further Reading:
- Click Here to access Michiko Kakutani's article Light Out, Huck, They Still Want to Sivilize You from the New York Times dated January 7, 2011
- Click Here to access Alec Harvey's article Auburn-Montgomery professor Alan Gribben not shocked his editing of Twain classics drawing fire from the Birmingham News dated January 5, 2011 for Professor Gribben's editorial point of view concerning Mark Twain's Huck Finn.