NewSouth Books is coming out with an edition of Huckleberry Finn sans the dreaded "N" word. The idea behind it is that the word prevents the book from being taught in today's classrooms.
Yes, the word is offensive. But its derogatory nature is not a recent development. Twain used the word to mock people who thought of black Americans as less than human. The people who used that word in the antebellum South most often were prejudiced, under-educated and insecure.
We covered Huck Finn in high school and I got to hear choice passages read aloud by my awesome English teacher, complete with character voices. I honestly can't remember how he even got around the "N" word. I think he used a less offensive word or just skipped it all together. I don't remember because no one made a big deal about it. He didn't spend an hour explaining to us why Twain used the word. He didn't have to.
We all knew that it was one of many words that was acceptable at one point in history. These days, it's not ok to go around calling people N***** Jim. People are categorized by their race less and less often in our relatively enlightened society. This is in large part because of authors and activists like Twain who threw bigotry in peoples' faces in order to show them how wrong it was.
But go ahead and mangle literature because people are too weak to deal with a dead writer's opinions or our nation's history. If you're too stupid to skip a word when reading aloud or replace it with another one (which is the only thing this new edition is good for), you probably shouldn't be teaching our children anyway.
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