Oh My N-word!

Mark Twain's novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, has recently come under fire (for the nth time since its publication in 1884) as parents attempt to have it removed from the classroom. Why? Because it repetitively uses that horrible racial slur: the n-word. The novel is challenged and/or banned because of allegations of racism, and it almost always has a place on the American Library Association's list of most banned and challenged books.

My honest opinion is that people are seeing the n-word and simply reacting, without fully understanding why it is there. Authors rarely use arbitrarily selected diction; there is almost always a reason why a certain word was used instead of another. So, why does the word appear in the novel over 200 times? Twain was ridiculing the rampant racism of his day and age, which SparkNotes explains much better than I can: "Twain, by exposing the hypocrisy of slavery, demonstrates how racism distorts the oppressors as much as it does those who are oppressed."

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn does deal with racism as a major theme, but it is not a racist novel. Here's why:

As I have already stated, Twain was ridiculing the racism of the time, not trying to demean black people. A racist novel would have completely defeated Twain's purpose. The title character helps a slave (who is portrayed as a better person than many of the white characters in the novel) escape; how is that racist?

Over time, the meaning of a word changes. In the 1880's, the n-word was a common, even acceptable insult. Nobody batted an eyelash, whereas now there's a whole big brouhaha if the word is ever used. Think of it as a way to measure success, or to at least show how far American society has come: it used to be normal and acceptable, and now it's not. I am actually rather thankful that people can be taken seriously when they get offended by the n-word, because it shows me that things have gotten better.