KEEPING THE N WORD

Leave the whitewashing to Tom Sawyer
By Kelvin Wade
January 06, 2011

In my short story class at Armijo, my teacher, Mr. Kenny, read the Thomas Wolfe short story, 'The Child by Tiger' to the class. In it, a seemingly docile, deeply religious black man in a small Southern town in the 1920s goes on a shooting spree. The whites in the story referred to the man as a 'crazy n----' from 'N-----town.'

I thought of that story when I heard that Newsouth Books is releasing a version of the Mark Twain classic 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' with all references to the N word changed to 'slave.' A pejorative term for Native American has also been changed.

When I heard this I was outraged. There are many great works that deal with difficult subject matter and use colorful language in the telling of their stories. Why should any publisher substitute their judgment for the original author's? Why kneel before the god of political correctness?

Auburn University Mark Twain expert Alan Gribben is leading the effort to change Huck Finn. He claims his motives are pure. He does have a point. Many children, because of their overprotective parents and school boards that fear encountering those ethnic slurs, will never read this book. By changing those words more students will be able to read this important work.

It's a nice argument and I'm all for more kids reading great literature. But I don't buy it. I'd rather a child read other books than read an edited version of a classic. Or if publishers felt they had to do something, why not simply add a preface explaining the context and leaving the story intact? We have a fear of complexity and context in this country and capitulating to that fear isn't helping us.

Ten years ago, books such as Isabel Allende's 'The House of the Spirits' were challenged here in Fairfield-Suisun. The district didn't remove the book or order an edited copy of it. We gave students more choices. Yes, in the end we believed parents and children were smart enough to decide for themselves what they should read.

I'd rather kids come across this offensive word in great historical works of fiction than over a thumping hip hop track, completely stripped of its historical context.

Where does this road end? What other works will have to be updated for 21st century sensibilities? Should 'To Kill a Mockingbird' receive a makeover? Will Elie Wiesel's 'Night' and other Holocaust literature have to be sanitized for overly sensitive readers?

By removing the N word and other epithets, we're punting on a potential teachable moment. We're missing the very point of the story.

I started this column by saying nearly 30 years ago, my short story teacher (my white short story teacher) read a story aloud that contained multiple references to the N word. The class was about a third African-American. No one complained. No one was traumatized. No parents were outraged. There was no media coverage.

Are teachers at Armijo still doing that today? And if they're not, is that progress? I don't think so. Instead of changing the words in books, let's change our mindsets. Peace.

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ADDITIONAL NOTES: I hate this kind of stuff. I understand the goal. The goal is noble, to get more kids to read this classic work. But I don't think the way you do that is to change the work. Like I said, if someone wants to add a preface to a book, that's fine with me. I don't have a problem with someone knowing the subject matter they're about to read so they can make an informed choice. But I don't think years after the fact, publishers should substitute their judgment for the author's and the reader's. Some books just have mature subject matter. Sometimes there's offensive words in them. It's time to deal with it. We can deal with complexity. Everything doesn't have to be dumbed down or sanitized.