Washington Teacher Calls for Ban on Huck Finn

"The time has arrived to update the literature we use in high school classrooms," Ridgefield, Washington high school teacher John Foley wrote in a guest column this month for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "Barack Obama is president-elect of the United States, and novels that use the 'N-word' repeatedly need to go."

It's very sad that the so-called controversy still rages on after so many years, but apparently, it still does. Foley claims that he is tired of having to rationalize the book to offended students and parents, yet still claims to be "passionate" about it. Oh yeah, and he also wants To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men dropped from the curriculum as well, because of their repeated use of the word "nigger", and their supposed demeaning depiction of African Americans as "ignorant".

How unfortunate that these sentiments would be coming from an educator, and that that educator would be using the historic election of Barack Obama--which Twain himself would more than likely have welcomed joyously--as a justification for the abandonment of Twain's greatest work. That a man who claims to be "passionate" about the novel is unable to comprehend its true message and the means to bestow that message upon his students. All he sees is that word, regardless of context and meaning. Now that's ignorant.

Want to find a demeaning use of the word "nigger"? Try listening to some of the music that those very high school students he's trying to "protect" are listening to on their iPods.

Foley's editorial was met with a largely negative response by readers of the Post-Intelligencer, as well as fellow educators. That, at least, I can take solace in. For the entire report, go here.

Mark Twain on Trial for Racism

It's the old, tired war-horse of American literary/cultural criticism: Was Mark Twain a racist? From my point of view, anyone who has ever actually gone to the trouble of reading his work and studying his life knows that the answer is a resounding "NO". Yet the issue persists, due mainly to the The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, it's treatment of the character of Jim, and its frequent use of the word "nigger".

Yet the matter will be dealt with in amusing fashion next week at Greeley, Colorado's High Plains Chautaqua festival, in which students will put Mr. Twain (played by popular Twain impersonator McAvoy Lane) on mock trail, on charges of racism.

In writing about "The Trail of Mark Twain" in the North Lake Tahoe Bonanza, Layne postulates a closing argument:

"Today, 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ is a problematical text that carries dynamics for trouble into today’s classroom with its emotionally loaded nomenclature. When you first encounter the offensive epithet that appears over 200 times in the novel, it sears the eyeball; makes you want to set the work aside and be done with it. In 1885 this word, which comes from the Dutch word for black, was a kinder word than the word 'slave.' But the word has become the most powerful secular blasphemy in our language today and has several times the preemptive force than it did in the 1880’s.

But if you can get through that word, not around it, but through it, I believe you will discover ‘Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ to be a strong indictment against prejudice and racism, and a central document to 19th-century cultural America.”

Layne's words ring true, as they should for anyone of intelligence. The fact that the argument even still persists is testament to the superficiality and misplaced hyper-sensitivity of our times.