Does a Marginalized Character by Any Other Name Still Smell as Discreet?

In my Literature class on Thursday, we discussed the removal of the n-word from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and its replacement with the word "slave." I was sharply in the minority for not having a problem with this singular printing of the book.

Four main reasons were given:

1. It is inaccurate as not all of the african-american characters in the book were slaves.

2. It is wrong to change a book, especially a canonical great work of literature like Huck Finn.

3. It amounts to censorship.

4. The book, with the n-word in place, serves as an opportunity for classrooms to discuss race. The alteration lessens the impact of these discussions.

As far as number one is concerned, there is no rebuttal. If the characters were not slaves, then "slave" is an inaccurate description. It is a completely valid point. However, it only argues that the replacement word is inaccurate, and doesn't address that the very replacement of words is wrong to do.

In regards to not touching great literature, we do it all the time. There are numerous translations of Dostoyevsky's work. Hell, there are numerous translations of Dostoevsky's name. Which one is superior? The things that Nietzsche's sister did to his work after his death, all in favor of promoting her Nazi agenda hardly get any press. If people truly feel that altering a great piece of literature is verboten, then where was the outrage at the publication of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies? A remixing of Jane Austen's novel with zombies interspersed into the plot. Or its companion book, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters?

Did these people write strongly worded letters to Baz Luhrmann when he gave Romeo and Juliet an MTV quick-edit facelift, adding guns, Radiohead, and lowriders? Do they curse Leonard Bernstein's name for sullying Shakespeare's work by resetting it in New York's lower east-side, and giving it showtunes? The Bible, which even in my atheist mind is a great work of literature, has been revised numerous times itself, including giving it a hippie/anti-Vietnam style in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Jesus Christ Superstar. How very much more than a single word being replaced!

I'm not a fan of censorship. In my political-science class I took during the mini-term, I was the only student that supported Wikileaks, comparing it to The Pentagon Papers during Vietnam. But this is simply not censorship. The government is not taking the original Twain text out of libraries, and pulling it from shelves in the way that Stalin disappeared records of dissidents. It isn't even like Wikileaks, where politicians are calling for the assassination of Julian Assange, and criminal charges for those that reproduce the leaks. It is a single run of the book by a single publisher. The book is still available with the original text on Amazon. I can even get it on my Kindle, replete with the n-word. To compare this to censorship is to undermine actual censorship.

The most difficult of all these points is number four: dialogue about race in the classroom. This is something I think is incredibly vital, especially in the times in which we live. A bad economy makes people look for easy scapegoats, and all too often that has meant ethnic partisanship. Antisemitism was rampant during The Great Depression, and in the single year I've lived in Dayton, Ohio, I have had multiple instances of people thinking that they could talk to me about their racist beliefs. I've had people explain to me that Dayton is economically depressed because of "lazy black people", to which I respond, it was lazy black people that made all the factories shut down and leave you with rampant unemployment? Not to say that my hometown of Louisville, Kentucky didn't have its own severe racism issues, but a number of factors, including a thriving local economy, meant that it wasn't used as a scapegoat to pin the city's issues on as casually.

So, this is a conversation that this city, and every other American city is desperately in need of. But is Huck Finn the best device we have to start that conversation? I don't know, it seems a bit irrelevant to the discussion. I can see how it can be used as a tool to put things into historical context, but this book is being taught in grade schools. How many children are able to put anything into historical context? They don't understand that the socioeconomics at play since slavery, remained thanks to Jim Crow, and that many of those factors carry on to the present day as can be evidenced by the overrepresentation of African-Americans in the prison system, which is the nouveau slavery in America.

That sort of thing flies over their heads. Hell, it flies over most grown people's heads. What they do know is that "I hate niggers" is carved into the bathroom stall of the men's restroom at their school. At least I would assume it is, since I've seen it carved into a bathroom stall at Sinclair Community College. And for all a black student knows, it was carved by John Smithers, the kid that bullies them in between classes. So now John Smithers is reading Huck Finn aloud in class and ever so subtly emphasizing the n-word and stealing glances at the one black kid in this suburban classroom because grade school students are the most evil bastards on the planet other than Dick Cheney.

So no, I don't think that taking the word out will ruin race discussions in classrooms. I think if teachers want to confront racism, homophobia, classism, sexism, and ableism in their classrooms, then they should confront it as it exists in the culture today. Don't skirt around it, don't use some century old text to give kids the opportunity to say, "See, everything is better now because we don't act like that anymore!" Just talk about the damn thing.