Beware of the Book! Censorship

[Deleted]

When will people learn? Trying to censor something only makes people want to read it/watch it/listen to it even more.

[garnet927]

New edition of "Huckleberry Finn" being published without the n-word.

[huntergrayson]

It's also removing the slurs towards Native Americans. Salon has a great essay this censorship is so completely fucked up. To quote them:

America is afraid of its past. Whether it's how it treated Native Americans, women or black people, it is constantly trying to reframe, color or flat-out ignore major aspects of our history. America, in its constant obsession with being seen as "awesome," will actively try to Photoshop its own historical portrait. The fear is that to acknowledge the past is to take the blame for it. If we take the word "nigger" out of the classic "Huckleberry Finn" then our kids won't see it and then we don't have to talk about it. 

America talks about race like scared parents talk with their kids about sex. We're vague, sometimes terribly misleading and on occasion leave out huge aspects of the situation that would allow kids to make better decisions about how they conduct themselves. If we continue with our horrendously skewed and willfully ignorant interpretations of history, we will find ourselves with a generation that's woefully misinformed and it will be completely our fault.

I realize that it is very commonly taught as part of children's literature. And the language is going to cause extreme discomfort and banning and whatnot. But if you aren't ready to discuss and acknowledge the realities of what racial relations were back then -- and talking about how once "acceptable" language becomes offensive is a part of talking about what society deems "acceptable" changes -- then don't teach the book, period. In any form. It isn't just a light-hearted romp through Huck's adventures. It is also very much about race.

[Smilla]

The censoring of Mark Twain and Huckleberry Finn is killing me. KILLING me. As much as I hate CNN, I liked that one of their morning anchors just read a comment from a viewer likening this to cutting up Shakespeare and replacing "all of the murders, betrayals and hurtful words" with "gentle shrugs."

Idiots.

[smockery]

It makes one wonder what will become of books like Frederick Douglas' Narrative .... Will they edit that one to change the casual killing of a slave into the master taking away the guy's ice cream or something?

[chonies]

Someone on EW made a point that a lot of school districts outright ban books with words like the words being replaced in Huck Finn, and that is often why the book is challenged--not because of the content, but because of the language (in theory...) and the editor of this edition was trying to find a way around that. I see the point of that argument to some small extent; I wonder how many people read the book and can't see past the language, therefore missing the message. I am not at all a censorship apologist, nor am I arguing that delicate sensibilities need to be coddled, but it was an interesting point.

That aside, since the book is in the public domain, it would also be interesting to see what other liberties people might take with it. And I mean "interesting" in the polite way someone might respond to a personal trainwreck.

[divasahm]

The only time I ever did anything at school to warrant a phone call to my parents happened in the first grade. The first day of school happened to be the first day of full desegregation for the entire school district, and everyone was walking on eggshells to avoid any conflicts or unpleasantness. My teacher had told us to keep a book (library or one of our own) in our desk for silent reading time, so one day I picked up my dad's copy of "Huck Finn" and brought it to school. (I was already reading at a middle-school level.) My teacher saw the book, quietly told me that such a nice volume might be damaged at school, and suggested that I take that one home and bring back another book tomorrow. Then she went to the office during lunch and called my parents to tell them what I'd done.

Unbeknownst to me, the high school librarian had removed "Huck Finn" from the library shelves because of content that might "inflame" the delicate atmosphere at the school. Some of the teachers (many of them black) had complained, and the school board (of which my dad was a member) had just had a heated debate over whether the book should be replaced or not. (It was, but not until the second semester.) When I got home that day, my parents explained why my teacher had had me bring it home, and said I could take it back to school later in the year. I told them I'd just read it at home and take another book to school.

I'm sure that if word had gotten out that the liberal young school board member's six-year-old was walking around with a copy of the book that everyone was so steamed about, it might have added fuel to the fire--I'm also sure that amongst the very few people who knew about the incident were some who believed that my parents had deliberately sent me to school with the book to make a point. The teacher handled it well, and nobody made me feel that I had done anything wrong, but I still have funny feelings about that book. Of course, it could just be that it was the first book I'd ever read that was written entirely in dialect--I really struggled with that!

My daughter just finished reading "Tom Sawyer" for her English class, and has said that she wants to read "Huckleberry Finn" this summer. You can bet she'll be reading the unexpurgated version. I think I'll read it with her.

[dwanollah]

Diva, I'm also going to assume you'll discuss stuff with her, so she doesn't go around thinking it's okay to enslave blacks and call people the "n-word," which, I'm sure, is what would happen. You precocious liberal elitists!

Jan 5, 2011 12:04:06 GMT -4 smockery said:

It makes one wonder what will become of books like Frederick Douglas' Narrative .... Will they edit that one to change the casual killing of a slave into the master taking away the guy's ice cream or something?

I'd laugh, but....


Seriously. When are we going to stop letting the asshole school boards dictate this shit?! LEAVE THE FUCKING BOOKS LIKE THE AUTHORS WROTE THEM! Develop lesson plans and discussions, don't change the primary material! Jesus fucking Christ, you dumb-shits!

I despise "the n-word," and used to have class discussions about it, and the "-er" v. "a" ending and all that. We'd read poetry that included it, we'd use it in class then, too, to show that it's not "just a word." My family used to use it too casually, or, once "they" started "insisting" on "political correctness," my mom and uncle would use the word "nig-nog" instead: "nig-nog music/car/speech" until I finally yelled at my mom about it. Because, for fuck's sake, YOU MEAN "N____" AND DON'T EVEN HAVE THE HONESTY TO SAY IT! Hell, in 1981, my mother and her friend dressed up for Halloween as "N___ Maids," complete with blackface, to show how they were expected to be at the beck and call of husband and kids, and really, for these two suburban moms who spent most of their time shopping at the local mall, it was such a WTF thing to do even at the time, but was considered just hilaaaaarious by their friends. This was less than ONE GENERATION ago.

My point is, this is an ongoing and very current social issue in our country. It is an immediate concern. It should not be whitewashed because it CAN'T be whitewashed (even if you trick your friends into doing the grunt work for you).

[Gigiree]

Jan 5, 2011 15:34:49 GMT -4 @dwanollah said:

Diva, I'm also going to assume you'll discuss stuff with her, so she doesn't go around thinking it's okay to enslave blacks and call people the "n-word," which, I'm sure, is what would happen. You precocious liberal elitists!

Jan 5, 2011 12:04:06 GMT -4 smockery said:

It makes one wonder what will become of books like Frederick Douglas' Narrative .... Will they edit that one to change the casual killing of a slave into the master taking away the guy's ice cream or something?

I'd laugh, but....


Seriously. When are we going to stop letting the asshole school boards dictate this shit?! LEAVE THE FUCKING BOOKS LIKE THE AUTHORS WROTE THEM! Develop lesson plans and discussions, don't change the primary material! Jesus fucking Christ, you dumb-shits!

I despise "the n-word," and used to have class discussions about it, and the "-er" v. "a" ending and all that. We'd read poetry that included it, we'd use it in class then, too, to show that it's not "just a word." .

As a current high school English teacher, my class and I have this same exact discussion when reading Huck Finn. It brings a whole new perspective of the "N____" word when you discuss not just he denotation of the word but also the connotation by showing what happened to blacks during the era when that word was acceptable (e.g. lynching photos), showing them what happened to someone close to their age who was just a "N___" (Emmett Till).

Even in a small, mostly white community like the one I teach in, the students can and should be exposed to the issues of race in our country and not just have the past white-washed and sanitized. That is my job as a teacher. I don't just teach English; I teach the future citizens of this country. We are never going to fix the problem of racism in this country if we deny there was a problem and still is a problem.

[Dr. Freude]

Get ready for a mini-thesis...

I've always been fascinated by movements to censor literature; I ended up writing my senior year capstone on the censorship of literature, specifically in secondary schools. I am also a big Twain fan, moreso after I took a graduate class on him (for my final paper in that course, I argued that Jim in TAoHF had both agency and morality).

I teach 8th grade English, including the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, which uses the n-word as well (though not as frequently as Huck Finn). Whenever I begin the unit, I talk to the students about the book's setting and segregation/Jim Crow. I explain that Harper Lee is trying to be authentic with regards to the characters' speech, and that sometimes the things they say are ugly. The students realize on their own that the characters in the novel who use the n-word freely are the morally bankrupt ones. The n-word does make my students uncomfortable, and it should, but it gives them a greater appreciation for the level of racism Lee portrays in Maycomb. In the past I have had students look at an article that explains how terms like "colored" and "Negro" fell out of general usage and why they are now considered offensive. I even connect to Twain--we read an excerpt from his essay The United States of Lyncherdom.

So what's my grand point? Adolescents are capable of understanding historical context and discussing complex/difficult issues; in fact, I've found that many of them welcome the opportunity. Censorship is just a means of parents, special interest groups and others trying to take the easy way out; rather than have meaningful discourse with kids, they can just whitewash everything (pun intended). A slippery slope indeed.

(As a side note, I also run into my fair share of parent complaints/censorship re: their kids' free reading selections.)