There has been a controversy in the US this past week about a book editor called Alan Gribben who has brought out a version of Mark Twains popular "Huck Finn" with the word "nigger" excised and replaced with the less racially charged "slave." instead. This has led to Gribben being pilloried as some kind of politically correct vandal kowtowing to "hurt feelings" of "minorities", the usual spiel which we see associated with stuff like this. But people who have only heard that bit of the story are missing the point. Mr. Gribben is a well known scholar on these stories, possibly the only man who knew more about them was old Mark Twain himself. The reasoning [on Gribbens part] behind this act was to actually stop schools in the South from banning the book outright for it's perceived racist connotations, that the editorial would explain the change and allow everyone to understand the racial terminology in the correct context. It was not an act of censorship, but an attempt to circumvent it. Alan Gribben should be applauded, but I doubt many see beyond what they want to see in this whole affair.
In an ideal world the book should be printed as Twain wrote it. People should have at least some grasp of artistic and narrative context. Just because someone uses iffy terminology or controversial stuff doesn't mean that they are endorsing or approving it. There are three reasons I see that results in people wanting to ignore the whole thing, all of which are in some way a response to people not taking what I have just said on board. Firstly the racism and slavery that are themes of the book are still very uncomfortable topics in that part of the US. There is shitloads of baggage around the whole thing. Just overlooking the Huck Finn books is one easy way for teaching boards to skirt the issue. Secondly some black commentators and others hear about all this racist talk without actually reading the books and jump to the wrong conclusions, calling for this "racist nonsense" to be barred in the classroom, which gives the boards another reason to do the first thing. And finally because racist boneheads start calling for the books to be taught ostensibly as it is PC Marxism not too, but largely because they get off on books with nigger written in them. These people don't realise that Twain's works actually condemn racism, as subtext and context don't mix well in the literalists mind. It's rather like those BNP people who deliberately buy gollies and black and white minstrel memorabilia. They think they are being rebellious.* Or on the other side, why on later film versions of "Oliver Twist" Fagin's overt Jewishness** had to be toned down as the perceived anti-Semitic nature of the character began to overshadow the "message" of the story. So we have a mixture of - on the firsthand - being well intentioned and buck passing at the same time, others missing the point totally, and for the latter - missing the point and being racist as well. Alan Gribben has discovered (I hope) a method of getting Twains brilliant books back into the classroom avoiding the above in one stroke.
It really is a shame these books are banned. They aren't racist. Mark Twain wrote them precisely to challenge the prejudice of the age. As his readers perhaps would have thought back then, that Huck Finn was right to think that Tom Sawyer was wrong to help some (and someone elses) mere slave boy escape. Huck and the readers learn through getting to know "nigger" Jim and to learn about his plight and see how he is a victim. To see him as a human with feelings and emotions and not just some piece of property. To see that Tom Sawyer was right to challenge the racist "wisdom" of the age, to his conscience. Twain is challenging the reader to see the wrongness of treating human beings as slaves and to appeal to the plight of your fellow man and not to the racist dogma of the age. These are important stories, and no-one is going to come out a raving bigot if they read them properly. So far from being a PC busybody perhaps Alan Gribben will end up doing us all a favour.
* This scientific phenomenon is also known as "looking like a bit of a prat."
** That was the point really. Fagins Jewishness wasn't really all that relevant to the actual story. It is sort of hinted at in dead exposition in the books that he was a Jew who had fled from pogroms in his native land to London. But anti Semites blew it up as his "Jewishness" being responsible for his villainous character. The simple fact is Fagin could have been from Birmingham and it would not have changed the story in any real way. You just need a grotty looking weirdo who's dodgy and gets kids to steal for him. It doesn't matter where he came from.
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