The N-word

The N-word is one of the most explosive words around in today’s society. So it makes sense that a book that uses that word 219 times would be also handled as explosive material.

And so Mark Twain’s classic, “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” finds itself in the midst of another censorship controversy . Alabama publisher, NewSouth Books, is releasing a new version of the classic novel, only with the word “slave” replacing the “N-word.”

Let me preface my opinion on this new, censored text with the fact that I am a white girl who has never been subject to prejudice for who I am. So I clearly can’t appreciate all the sensitivities of racism.

But I can appreciate an author and his work. I can appreciate that Mark Twain – an avid anti-racist in his time – used the N-word precisely because it was shocking and horrible. Readers should be so shocked and horrified by such racism that they re-commit to keep such bigotry and hate squarely in the past.

Replacing the N-word with the word “slave” is not only inaccurate but downplays just how racist our country was at one time. I want my children to see the stark truth of history. How else can they truly understand how far we’ve come toward equality, and appreciate how much farther we still have to go?

I do applaud NewSouth Books for good intentions – trying to bring “Huckleberry Finn” back into classrooms after many schools have banned the book for offensive language. That’s a worthy goal, and honestly the real problem is the book being banned in the first place.

But I’m OK with my child reading every last word of the original version. What I’m not OK with is rewriting history to purge our society of past sins – or worse yet, to pretend those sins never happened at all.

What do you think of the new, censored version of “Huckleberry Finn”? Which version do you want your kids to read?