[ SECRET POST #1482 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #1482 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Sorry, fixed the date on the subs post. It should have read "first secret post will be January 29th," not the 22nd.

Secrets Left to Post: 14 pages, 332 secrets from Secret Submission Post #212.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 1 2 3 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[visiblemarket.livejournal.com]

Part of the "accurate description of the times" is the fact that people were racist back then. Mark Twain himself was racist, in the sense that he believe black people to be inferior to white people. Yeah, he was a man of his time, but it was an inherently racist time.

But that's not really the problem here, the problem is: some black students find it uncomfortable to have a word that was used for generations to degrade people like them, a word that is still hateful and used to wound, introduced into a classroom setting. Reading that book out loud, having countless discussions about it where all your white classmates and your white teachers look to you as if you have some sort of amazing insight into the word and how it was used, is awkward.

It's not about acting like the past didn't happen, it's about recognizing that things that happened in the past are still damaging people in the present and having a tiny little bit of empathy for such people instead of yelling censorship at the very first discussion of it. It's about recognizing that the book has flaws, that the world it was written in was a painful and dangerous one. That remembering that can be upsetting. That knowing that in some ways, the world we live in now isn't all that much better, is depressing.

I'm not the person who gets to decide what is offensive to other people, or to judge someone a censor for not wanting to be surrounded by a word with such a painful history. I was lucky enough to have read it in two classes where the instructors were very aware of the issues associated with it, but not everyone is going to be that lucky.

If it's to be taught, it should be taught carefully. If it's to be read, it should be read with awareness and sensitivity. Which is going to be very hard to guarantee, and I think, personally, that changing each instance of the "n-word" to "slave" isn't the best way to go about it (for reasons that I think Larry Wilmore of The Daily Show put best (http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-january-11-2011/mark-twain-controversy)), but I understand the impulse.

[cherrycoloured.livejournal.com]

I agree with all of this. Personally, I am against the word changes, but I also don't believe this book should be taught in schools. Even if that one word is changed, the racism in the book will still be there, and most teachers will not be able to teach it is a sensitive way. Plus, there are books written by black people from the perspective of black people in this time period which would probably be a more educational and appropriate way to teach about racism.

[visiblemarket.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's a good point too: it was an influential book, and I do think it should be read, but in terms of racism and the period schools should definitely include a different perspective when they teach it. Like when I was taught Heart of Darkness, we also read Things Fall Apart, which made the biases and racism of Conrad and the period so much more obvious than if we'd just had a discussion of how they were there.

[hikari87.livejournal.com]

Uh, considering the fact that the book was explicitly intended to be a CONDEMNATION of slavery and of the racism inherent in the system, I think you might've missed the point a little. The main theme of the book is Huck's learning to see Jim as a human being like himself---the biggest climax is the part where he decides against returning Jim to slavery because he has come to realize that Jim is a person and should not be treated like property.

[visiblemarket.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but he does continue to believe that he'll go to hell for doing it, because (in his mind) it's still objectively wrong to let a slave run away. He isn't suddenly against slavery, at all; he's against Jim being a slave, because he knows him as a person. And even after all that, after how well Jim treats him, after they bond, after he decides he's a person, Huck lets Tom talk him into leaving Jim locked up in a cell just so they can spring him, when they could just go and say "Hey, he's been freed, he can go", because it would be more fun. They keep at that for several chapters, because it's a game to them. The freedom and life of a fully grown man, but it's more fun to let him suffer. And Twain wrote this, with no implication that Tom and Huck were in the wrong.

And this, from Chapter 32 of the book, quite a bit after the "I'll go to hell then!" epiphany, Huck to Tom Sawyer's aunt:

"It warn't the grounding -- that didn't keep us back but a little. We blowed out a cylinder-head."

"Good gracious! anybody hurt?"

"No'm. Killed a nigger."

"Well, it's lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt.

Not even counting a black person as a person in a story Huck's made up. So. Yeah.

[(Anonymous)]

1) Twain was a satirist mocking the perceptions of the day, and it is erroneous to take statements made by his characters as proof of his own "racism."
2) Per the Constitution, no, a black person was not a "person", or at least not a whole person, and weren't seen that way by a significant portion of the US population. The 13th and 14th Amendments were barely in place 20 years at the time of publication. Not at all an outrageous statement for a character at that time to make, and if students aren't being taught this, and the history behind it, it's a travesty of the educational system.

Huck Finn is a reflection and satire of the time in which is was written. It's obvious from this thread that literature isn't being taught thoroughly and properly, nor are readers being taught to apply critical thinking skills to what they're reading.

I don't even know where to begin with how appalled I am at the state of education, especially cultural and literary education. Literature speaks to universal human truths, and it seems so many are missing out on that.

[(Anonymous)]

And Twain wrote this, with no implication that Tom and Huck were in the wrong.

DA, but...uh, what? Mark Twain hated Tom Sawyer. Everything that happens after Tom shows up in Huck Finn is supposed to be portrayed as completely stupid and pointless, not to mention childish. This is also not counting the fact that pretty much everyone at the end of the book is wildly OOC (what with Huck forgetting pretty much every lesson he's learned), because Twain couldn't figure out how to end it anyway.

So, basically, no. Just no.

(Not arguing that the book isn't racist, because it is, but the very fact that it had a white male Southern protagonist who went so far as to consider the radical notion that Jim might be an actual person and not just a piece of property is a pretty big deal considering the time.)

[jaquenerd.livejournal.com]

The fact that Huck believed he was going to go to hell if he helped Jim (which was a legitimate concern at the time) but decided that he had to return and help Jim ANYWAY was what made that moment so powerful. It is Huck, who is so low on the social ladder that the only way they make themselves feel better is by thinking that, "Thank God we aren't black at least," that has been taught his whole life to look down on slaves (and by extension black people) as well as that they are not truly people and therefore treating them as property is ok, still decides that he can't sit by and watch Jim be forced into slavery again. He believes that his actions are wrong and that he will go to Hell for them but he is going to do them anyway.

It's the fact that Huck believes he's doing the wrong thing and that he's the "bad" person in this scenario that makes his epiphany and actions that much more complicated and I'm pretty sure Twain wrote it with the intention of showing his white readers that their reasonings on their slaves being property were wrong.

Also, Huck didn't know at the time that Jim was free until the very end. While I felt that scene was written poorly and Huck should have stood up to Tom, one could argue that Huck is so used to following Tom's orders as Tom was one of his "betters" socially standing and at least he voiced objections. He's also, like, what, twelve? Fourteen?

And I think that it says something that people who read the book, even then, were angered by Tom's actions and that ending part of the book can be credited with Tom's loss of popularity.

[hikari87.livejournal.com]

+ 100

[childings.livejournal.com]

I'm sure Jewish students find The Merchant of Venice an uncomfortable read (and I don't remember my class discussing antisemitism when we read it, there were some liner notes in the edition of the play I had about it but that was it). Nobody's talking about rewriting that play to make it more palatable to Jewish students.

In any case GOD FORBID anyone should have to read something that makes them uncomfortable or sparks discussion about 19th century race relations in America.

[visiblemarket.livejournal.com]

Not that anecdotal evidence is all that important here, but when I read The Merchant of Venice, the antisemitism, and the fact that a very racist thing about Indian women is said in it was discussed.

Also, I don't think I ever say the book should be banned, and I explicitly said that I think changing the word is a bad idea. And I'm not even saying "GOD FORBID anyone should have to read something that makes them uncomfortable or sparks discussion about 19th century race relations in America." It should make people uncomfortable to remember that for a large chunk of American history individuals were considered property.

What I am saying is that acknowledging it makes people uncomfortable, having a little bit of empathy for the fact that they are uncomfortable, and not discounting their opinions because you think they're oversensitive, would not go amiss.

[jaquenerd.livejournal.com]

Not to mention women, Native-Americans, homosexuals, atheists, etc. being presented poorly in fictional portrayals that students are forced to read.

[duae.livejournal.com]

Not that it's easy to read, but the secret is about publishers censoring book. The OP says censoring CLASSROOM versions is fine with them.