"Huckelberry FInn" Caught in the PC-Wars

I'm sure, like me, you were taken aback the other day when the news reported that a "cleaned up" version of the American literary classic "Huckleberry Finn", the sequel to Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", was being published that would remove the "N-word."  Public debate ensued regarding whether or not the classic should be spared the PC-slashing or if the N-word was hurtful enough to students to warrant its editing.

There are good arguments on both sides of the issue.  I found, however, some very enlightening opinions over at Booker Rising, a Black conservative website.  It offered input from several columnists, two are center-left and two are center-right.  Here are excerpts, with emphasis added:

Huckleberry Finn: Bookerista Perspectives

My American readers know Mark Twain's classic novel The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn (1884) which satirizes Southern antebellum society and examines its racism. NewSouth Books has published a 2011 edition which replaces the N-word — which appears 219 times in the original edition — with "slave" to keep in line with 21st century thinking (the word "Injun" has also been replaced with "Indian" in the 2011 edition).  Of course, there's an uproar. Critics claim that the move is politically correct sanitizing of one of America's greatest novels. Supporters say it's for the kids. Bookeristas continue to weigh in on the debate over the book:

Stanley Crouch: "Controversy Over N-Word In Huckleberry Finn Is Example Of Ongoing Confusion In American Culture"

Asserts the moderate-liberal columnist in New York City: "[Author Mark] Twain, who knew that there is a stubborn prudishness that American artists frequently boot in the backside, would not be surprised at what is happening right now. The writer did not defend slavery, but depicted the period's bigotry and made the moral center of the novel a white boy's choice to help a slave escape from bondage. But there's a larger point here. Anyone actually worried about the demeaning and dehumanizing effects of ethnic insults made about black people should leave 'Huckleberry Finn' alone and turn their attention to the minstrel updates of hip hop. At least since the emergence of gangster rap in the early 1980s, that pop idiom has celebrated thugs and borderline whores known as 'video vixens.'"

More commentary from Mr. Crouch: "Black people are, first and foremost, Americans. They gain from the best of our national culture and suffer from the same misreadings and delusions that dog everyone else. One of the things that 'Huckleberry Finn' offers to the reader is the spectacle of virulent hatred being aimed at a well-dressed, eloquent and free Negro - whom Huck's drunkard father cannot stand. The Negro is too smart, too poised; Huck's father wonders why this uppity person is not snatched and put on the auction block! He considers the Negro's freedom an example of irresponsible government. We should all know that the most virulent hostility toward Barack Obama is not about politics. It is rooted in something else, and Mark Twain puts a coldly accurate finger on it in the first chapter of his novel. For that alone, it is a classic that should not be mottled by well-intentioned stupidity."

John McWhorter: "Don't Make Us Slaves To Political Correctness"

The linguistics professor and moderate-conservative commentator in New York City writes: "NewSouth Books surely considers it a kind of higher wisdom to present America with a version of 'Huckleberry Finn' in which the N-word is replaced by 'slave.' The gesture is, in fact, antique. Here is a body of modern, educated people bowing to taboos in as visceral a way as the Victorians, who taught us to say white meat and dark meat to avoid specifying anything about breasts and thighs. Cleansing Mark Twain’s masterpiece of the N-word follows directly in this tradition, under which today’s most powerful taboos are about race rather than religion or sex, such that we quake in fear at the supposed power of the N-word in precisely the way that rain forest natives do at any number of words deemed 'magical.'"

He continues his commentary: "To scrub the word out of the prose is to propose two things. One is that schoolchildren are incapable of understanding context, layering and nuance. This is a nonsense proposition, one that a teacher could only concur with if he or she were subject to the incapacities in question – in which case we must wonder whether they have chosen the proper career. The second proposition, if the idea here is to avoid 'insulting' black people, is that it is black people who cannot follow context, layering and nuance."

Constructive Feedback: "Mark Twain Has Nothing On Those Who Use The Word 'N____r' Today, Within Our Comfort Zone"

The conservative blogger in Atlanta metro has rappers in mind: "In the Black community there is a delicate balance that is retained by the Black Political Establishment.  In as much as this cluster of young people who are most prone to make use of the word 'N__a' are also seen as a fruitful voting block [sic] in the American Political Domain - any hard handed movement to impose regulation upon them risks a fracture in this political union. The Black Establishment is forced to accept them as they are, hoping that with 'soft nudging' they will see the errors in their way and discontinue the use of this word and other harmful actions. Nonetheless - they both agree that with the unity that is crafted as they cast their eyes outward against any ideological enemy who dares to stand in the way of the 'Black political agenda' is vital to each of them agreeing not to scrutinize the other. From this mutual agreement comes those who advance the notion that calling President Obama a 'socialist' is the new 'N___r'. Their 'White Liberal Snarling Foxes' partners pile on in agreement."  

Clarence Page: "Huck Finn Stirs Up Trouble Again"

The moderate-liberal columnist in Chicago writes: "I have no doubt that the new version's editor, Auburn University professor Alan Gribben, means well. Unlike the many critics who have tried to ban the book, Gribben actually wants to expand its audience. Schoolchildren, black and white, have told him of emotional pain triggered by Twain's repeated use of a word that has bludgeoned many black children as a taunt by white bullies. As a result, to Gribbens' dismay and mine, 'Huck' has begun to be marginalized ironically into Twain's definition of a 'classic,' a work 'which people praise and don't read.'"

He continues his commentary: "Even so, I am disappointed. As with our readings of the Constitution [where the slavery references were omitted in a recent reading in Congress], I think we should teach history without diluting its uncomfortable realities. As a black kid who read 'Huck' in a mostly white classroom with a white teacher, I know the unsettling startling pain of seeing the N-word used so casually in print. But I also am eternally grateful to our teacher for helping us to talk about it. She helped us to appreciate the book's genius of language, vision and, most memorable, its quietly subversive satirical cleverness. It skewers the immorality of white supremacy that it so vividly portrays." ...

It's always good to allow those affected by controversy and debate a voice.  The PC crowd is often too quick to tell people what to think, ignorant or rejecting of the possibility that the PC police might be wrong!