I'm With You, Dr. Chruchwell

If today a white person describes a black man as a "nigger", this term is considered pejorative and frowned upon. But if a black person says it to another black person, the degrading connotation is lost and "nigger" just becomes one more word in the slang dictionary.

The word "nigger" in Mark Twain's novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is supported by such a rich historical background, that censoring it would be like ignoring reality. As Dr. Sarah Churchwell mentions, "Twain's books are not just literary documents but historical documents, and that word is totemic because it encodes all of the violence of slavery." The book isn't even racist. If anything, the novel criticizes slavery through Huck's moral transformation.

Dr. Gribben states that "modern-day readers" (nice generalization) are repulsed by such "abusive racial insults" and observes that such a repulsion has caused "important works of literature to fall of curriculum lists worldwide." What these "modern-day readers and teachers who refuse to teach TAHF don't understand is that YOU ARE NOT BEING RACIST BY READING THE WORD NIGGER. Twain isn't even a racist for writing it! As Dr. Sarah Churchwell replies, "The fault lies with the teaching, not the book." If you can teach the Bible as a work of literature and not a religious piece, then you can teach Twain's novel as a historical related fiction where the word "nigger" just adds credibility to the story.

Some people lack an open mind. As Churchwell states, "the whole point of literature is to expose us to different ideas and different eras, and they won't always be nice and benign."I think that people like Dr. Gibben just don't know how to respond to racism. They're so scared of being racists themselves that without realizing it, they already are. Why do some people feel confident in describing others as skinny, fat, pale or brunett but shudder so much before saying "that black man"? Racism is a virus that feeds on pain. Dr. Gibben argues the word "nigger" "appears to gain rather than lose its impact" and states this as a reason to omitting the word from Twain's novel. But the amount of fear and attention this word gets is precisely what makes it grow so much. As long as we make "nigger" such a big deal, racism will remain.

So congratulations Dr. Gibben. Instead of contributing towards equality, you've just made the word "nigger" more racist than what it already was. And while you're at it, you might as well censor my blog too.