Racism and Book Banning

When The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was first published in 1884, it was declared an instant literary classic by respected critics such as Edmund Clarence Stedman and Brander Matthews.

Controversial in death as he was in life, Mark Twain has been seriously accused by some of being a "racist writer," whose writing is offensive to black readers.

Slavery is a part of American history and will never go away no matter how much you hide from it. History as it is taught in the history classroom is often denatured and dry. Irony, history, and racism all painfully intertwine in our past and present, and they all come together in Huck Finn.

A book like Huck Finn, which brings the problem of racism to the surface, can explode like a hand grenade in a literature classroom.

For Twain's critics, the novel is racist on the face of it, and for the most obvious reason: many characters use the “N” word throughout. But since the action of the book takes place in the south twenty years before the Civil War, it would be amazing if they didn't use that word.

The novel has often been criticised for its language and characterizations and it is reported to be the fourth most banned book in US schools.

In 1998, Judge Stephen Reinhardt rejected yet another lawsuit, this time attempting to have Huckleberry Finn removed from mandatory reading lists in Phoenix, Arizona public schools.

The NAACP charged that HUCK FINN contained "racial slurs" and "belittling racial designations.“ Twain used the N-word 219 times.

Huck Finn logged in at #5 in the Top 100 Most Frequently challenged books from 1990 to 1999 and #14 in 2000 to 2009.

African Americans and others, led by the NAACP, begin to challenge the book in the 1950s, appalled by the novel's portrayal of the slave Jim and its repeated use of the “N” word.

But anyone who imagines that Mark Twain meant this literally is missing the point.

Twain is using this casual dialogue ironically, as a way to underscore the chilling truth about the old South.

A new effort to sanitize “Huckleberry Finn” comes from Alan Gribben who has produced a new edition of Twain’s novel that replaces the “N” word with “slave.”

Mr. Gribben has said he worried that the N- word had resulted in the novel falling off reading lists, and that he thought his edition would be welcomed by schoolteachers and university instructors.

"Well, congratulations on the promotion, Jim," Wilmore said. "Wow, this is a huge upgrade, from ni**er to slave.” --Larry Wilmore

Although the morality of Twain's book is clear, the attacks will probably continue.

Work Cited Bazinet, Cynthia. "Censorship: How many schools have banned Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn? - Quora." Quora. 05 Jan Web. 17 Dec Schnider, David. Breaking News Headlines: Business, Entertainment & World News - CBS News. Cbs News, 18 Mar Web. 17 Dec Jones, Baudelaire. "Racism and the Enduring Controversy of Huckleberry Finn." Go Articles, 12 Sep Web. 17 Dec KAKUTANI, MICHIKO. "New ‘Huckleberry Finn’ Edition Does Disservice to a Classic - NYTimes.com." The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. NYTimes, 6 Jan Web. 17 Dec