"We do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking."
-- Mark Twain
As an English teacher since 1991, I get aggravated each year at the inevitable attacks on Mark Twain, as school districts wrestle with demands from one of the permanently dour to ban the teaching of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Birdsville High School (Texas) is the latest in a long, long list of school districts forced to deal with the complaints of parents (or, as is the case in Birdsville, a parent) and activists who are outraged this "racist" tome is taught to high school students.
Seventeen year old junior Ibrahim Mohamed took offense with a lesson plan designed to alleviate such umbrage. The lesson obviously didn't work. Entitled "Word Magic (How To Deal With the N-word When Reading Huck Finn)," the lesson called for the teacher to write several offensive words and phrases, including "nigger," on the board; the intent was to open a discussion on the use of the terms and if context matters. The lesson never got to step two because Ibrahim demanded that the word be removed from the board and any discussion. When the teacher did not remove it, Ibrahim complained to his mother, Tunya Mohamed, who enlisted the usual suspects of the Racism Industry -- the NAACP -- to protest the lesson and have the book removed from the school's reading lists. In addition, the activists want the teacher to do community service for their organization and to apologize in writing, as if she was some sort of pedophile or drunk driver. Ibrahim, according to his mother, is "really upset and very, very depressed."
I have two words for young Ibrahim: Grow up! If, at age 17, you are so despondent upon seeing one word on the board -- a word you probably say with glee while listening to your favorite thug rapper -- how are you going to survive in the "real world," where no one gives a damn about you or your feelings?
A teacher in the 87% black Memphis City Schools, I typically scoff when I hear of another call to ban Huck Finn, especially for the reason cited for banning it: its racist use of the word nigger. Yes, the word does appear in the novel 215 times, which is about the average number of times I hear it in the hallways each day from black adolescents. No, the irony has never escaped my grasp.
It is intellectually dishonest to claim Huck Finn racist, when any analytical reading of the book shows quite the opposite to be true. Twain's classic intended to demean and vilify the slave-holding society of the pre-Civil War south, of which Missouri was a like-minded territory. The frequent use of the word accomplishes this, while giving the reader an insight into a long forgotten era. Frankly, to avoid use of the word in the book would not have been realistic. Like it or not, the word was used by whites in daily conversations then-- much like rappers do now-- to refer to blacks.
Of course, anyone with an IQ above a brick understands that Huck Finn is an "anti-racism" novel. Ralph Ellison, the noted black author, understood Twain's intent: "Huckleberry Finn knew, as did Mark Twain, that Jim was not only a slave but a human being, a symbol of humanity...and in freeing Jim, Huck makes a bid to free himself of the conventionalized evil taken from civilization by the town -- in other words, of the abomination of slavery itself."
A learned man, Mr. Ellison was ruled by his intellect, as opposed to guided by his emotions. Not everyone is predisposed to such.
For the emotionally-guided who refuse to read between the lines of the novel, Russell Baker provides a vivid image these child-like folks can get: "The people Huck and Jim encounter are drunkards, murderers, bullies, swindlers, lynchers, thieves, liars, frauds, child abusers, numb-skulls, hypocrites, windbags, and traders in flesh. All are white. The one man of honor in this phantasmagoria is black Jim, the runaway slave." It doesn't take a PhD to "get" Twain's indictment of the slave-owning society of the south. Jim is the only noble character in the book, and he is the one the other characters (society) hold in contempt. In 2007, how do people not "get" this?
The measure of great art is found in its ability to evoke a response or reaction. Nothing has done just such like Twain's The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn. Earnest Hemingway called the book the "source" of all American literature. The book has managed to inspire and offend in not only the 19th century of its creation, but also in the 20th and now 21st centuries.
It is my guess Mark Twain is smiling when viewing all the trouble his little story has created. He might look at his critics and say these words again: "Be yourself is about the worst advice to give people."
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