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I love how easy it is for all these people in this thread to dismiss feelings of hurt and alienation felt by students across the nation because of this book.
It just boggles the mind.
It's not like it's real pain -- it's just "sensitivities." What a bunch of pussies, I guess.
I mean, hey, it's nothing new really. Plenty of people have been telling black folk to shut up and stop complaining for decades now. I think Sarah Palin wrote something to that effect in her recent book.
This is a contested assumption. Slave and N
are very different words with different connotations.
I'm treating Agent like an asshole because well.....I think that one's pretty clear.
actually at the time they were much more similar. Now the N-word is super politicized and controversial. At the time it was descriptive and matter-of-fact. Someone is rewriting history, and ironically it's the people worried in this thread about the rewriting of history!
yeah man I'm sure its a right fucking epidemic.
It's only been argued over with vitriol and controversy for like three decades now
I bet it's no big deal you're totally right
Speaking of burden of proof...
Then make sure the kids know it was different back then. THere is a teacher there you know. The solution isn't to go back through all of history and take out the words we don't like anymore. Its to teach kids context.
But the N-word has a totally different meaning from what it had back in the time Twain wrote, and even moreso from the time the book was set in.
So, we are getting a different message, we have a different context. You can't stop that from happening, and you don't seem to be advocating that anyway. I just don't understand why it doesn't matter if it's just the natural evolution of language, but if it's for a reason, if it's on purpose, then suddenly it's debasement? I don't get that.
The N-word didn't mean then what it means today -- not by a long stretch. So we're not "preserving" any deep political message by preserving the word. If anything, we're obscuring it.
Which, actually, I don't care much about. I think Derrida had a few things to say about author's intent that I buy. I just think it's sort of a weird and not particularly worthy argument to use to insist that the word must remain in place to preserve the meaning of the book. The meaning of the book has changed! It will change in the future. The meaning of books never has been, isn't, and never will be static.
Meaning reflects the reader, the time the reader lives in, the country they live in -- everything. Meaning changes. It's not a bad thing.
So what you're saying is every few decades we should just go back and rewrite all the classics so they can be easily understood?
Doesn't the fact that black people were enslaved already sort of imply that?
You're saying that Huck needs to use the N-word to establish that using the n-word is socially acceptable. That's precisely the message that some people want to avoid.
Yes because kids are reading Mark Twain they'll start thinking the n-word is ok. >.>
In the South, where this debate is currently occurring?
They already think that.
They'll hear about the n-word regardless of whether or not it's in the novel. They'll also know that Mark Twain himself used it. The point isn't to hide the word from kids. The point is to make it clear that this word isn't acceptable anymore.
Don't you understand? Seamus Heaney's Beowulf is Censorship (TM)!!1!
yes clearly removing n
from Huck Fin is going to do anything to solve white racism in the deep south.
If anything it will show them where this bile comes from.
I've alraedy addressed reinterpretations. Don't be an asshole.
He isn't trying to change the book. It's on you, lad
Neither am I. I'm just not out to burn the changed edition or ban it from schools.
There's a difference between solving racism and sending a clear message that racism is unacceptable.
By the same logic, you can't stop kids from bullying each other during the summer, or off school grounds. You can't stop kids from bullying when the teacher isn't looking. But if bullying happens right in front of the teacher, the teacher is obligated to try to stop it.
Is the teacher going to prevent the bullies from bullying? No. But the teacher still needs to send a message that bullying is not acceptable.
Then please meet your burden of proof.
No, I'm not sure where you got that.
But, for instance, Shakespeare has this big connotation now of LITERATURE! when at the time we know this was of course not the case. And teachers explain that to kids and talk about bear-baiting and stuff and give them neat history lessons -- but at the end of the day that doesn't change that kids are reading Shakespeare in the context of a society that has been deeply influenced, literarily and culturally, by his work. That changes the context in which we receive and understand his work -- and that's just one difference among many.
My point is -- I don't care if meaning changes or not. I said that explicitly in the post you quoted. I don't think preserving some static perfect author's intent is possible or even particularly desirable. Half the fun and beauty of literature is the interpretation of literature. I am not a strict constructionist, you could say.
So, when it comes to changing a word in a book for a synonym to avoid controversy and help some students feel more OK with reading it -- well that sounds fine to me.
I think there are a number of valid ways to deal with Huck Finn in the modern classroom -- talking to students, asking them if they feel comfortable with it, giving them alternatives, avoiding it altogether, replacing it with a different Twain book, etc etc -- and this honestly probably isn't even the best! I actually said as much at the beginning of this debate.
However, I don't think there's anything immoral about it, or anything that should generate outrage. At most, I think this whole thing deserves an eye-roll, and at best it deserves at least an appreciation that the publisher is trying to accommodate the concerns of some students whose concerns are often overlooked.
I just don't get where the righteous indignation comes from. It's a word in a book. It hurts some people, and everyone else doesn't care much. Removing it doesn't damage the book in a powerful way -- certainly less than the meaning is altered by the passing of time itself.
So what's the big deal?
The Fagles Iliad is fucking HERESY
IF YOU DON'T READ IT IN ANCIENT GREEK YOU'RE AN ASSHOLE
AND IF YOU'RE A TROJAN AND YOU GET A BIT MIFFED THEN YOU'RE A PUSSY WHO SHOULD BE SHOT
Oh course. But this would do neither. All it does is sweep it under the rug. Any english teacher worth his pay is going to use Huck Fin as a way to show students how bad racism was back then and where its gone from there. There's the disservice in editing it.
It would be like if they made to Kill a Mocking Bird into a story about a White lawyer defending white people in a land dispute because it would offend and hurt black kids to learn about how people were lynched.
You don't make racism better by pretending it doesn't happen.
Then what is the teacher for. He's there to make sure the kids understand, to teach them.
Informational hygiene is important when it comes to history.
By proving the negative?
So if you removed the n-word from Huck Finn, clearly, there would be no racism in it.
It was a modern-day slur then, too. In fact, that is the point. That's why it's included. Twain could've used "Slave Jim," or "Black Jim," or "Sambo Jim" or even "Negro Jim" if he wanted. He could've just called him "Jim" without it having any impact at all on the circumstances of a runaway slave on a raft with a white kid. Instead, he attaches a terrible slur to him as though it were a given name. It's supposed to dehumanize Jim.
my unofficial autobio will be accompanied with tips on how to smile
cause I've found that when they don't see you frown, they never know that you're a threat
and they don't sweat you when you came around
Part of the purpose behind reading the book is to illuminate history. The entire conflict between "he's a decent guy" and "He's a runaway N----" is half the damn book. the more uncomfortable the reader feels the better, because that entire era of american history is so vile, and we do too good of a job washing over how terrible it was.
As someone asked earlier:
When are we going to dub over Roots?
Of course there would be. So we should probably go edit that out too lest they be offended.
And Agent, everything I asked you to prove is a claim you and Fartacus have made.
And "slave" doesn't? He probably picked the word because that's what's typical of a southerner of Huck's education level, which is also true of "slave."
Then if they're the same word how is using "slave" any better. Your argument essentially requires slave be less harsh than n
Yes but I don't think you're white-washing slavery by not making black kids read and hear the N-word like 200 times in school. I don't think that qualifies as white-washing.
White-washing is when the Texas state school board explicitly decides to exclude the achievements of Islamic culture and Muslim people from history texts, or when Southern schools teach the Civil War as the War of Northern Aggression.
This is not white-washing -- or if it is, it is by a definition which does not merit the same level of concern, because it is not hiding ugly truths from students for the benefit of the oppressor group.
White-washing isn't bad for some abstract or arcane reason -- it's bad because it helps privileged groups exert power over oppressed groups, and it helps them justify their privilege by ignoring how that privilege was obtained at others' expense. It's something that was done (and is still done) even in places where people read Huck Finn. A lot of people love the shit out of Twain in the South -- a lot of them who were and are racist as shit, and have revisionist ideas about Southern history.
You're right that white-washing is bad, but I don't think that this is really white-washing in a meaningful way. What explicitly is being hidden from students with this? That people said the n-word back in the 19th century? That's not exactly a secret. Does it somehow hide or mitigate the nature or existence of slavery in the 19th century? What is being white-washed?
Slave is different. Being a slave is state, in the end of the book Jim is no longer a slave as he is freed. Obviously he doesn't become not a n
via being set free in a will.
You gave three claims, two of which were negative, with the remaining claim being made only by Farticus.
But this simply isn't true. Slave and n
were never the same thing.
Any change in meaning over time is something the teacher is supposed to educate the students on. Thats like half the point to the teacher.
The solution to ignorance isn't to accommodate it.
Not to mention their argument is the words are equivelent yet at the same time one is less offensive.
Actually, it only requires that there be a difference in the modern context.
I don't know why some white people think that this is what this debate is about. It's not.
Black people -- this may surprise you -- are quite aware of racism! Whether or not their kids read Huck Finn in school will have no effect on how aware they are of racism. If you're black and 16 and you live in America, you live with racism, and it's sort of condescending to think that this is a bunch of people trying to run away from reality who have to live it every day.
Also, unless we're talking about editing out any mention of slavery, or making all the characters black or making them all white or something, then the book still is full of reference to slavery and racism. The N-word is not an essential element in that.
Again, Twain's goal mainly seems to have been his effort to humanize Jim and demonstrate and inspire empathy for him and, by extension, black people in America generally. It was an effort to build bridges. It wasn't some stupid polemic about LOOK HOW RACIST PEOPLE ARE IN MY TIME THEY SAY THE N-WORD A LOT. Like, what? That doesn't even make sense.
People are not concerned that the N-word in Huck Finn will make people racist, or that kids will get the wrong impression about racism from the book -- it's much simpler than that. The word is hurtful and unpleasant to a large group of students, and the word has huge political implication that make it controversial and distracting in the classroom.
It's really that simple!
I'm actually kind of surprised that Huck Finn is taught in school, but then I was raised in Canada, where we pretend slavery never existed. I'm... not sure I would have liked the book to have been covered in my school, given that the n-word was my classes's name of choice for me whenever the teacher left the room and I'm not sure how the book would have done anything but shine a big fat light over my head.
Not that changing the N-word to "slave" would have changed any of that, but at least it wouldn't have introduced the word into the discourse in any sort of official way.
I'm super conflicted about this.
It wasn't a slur the same way it is now by any stretch of the imagination.
From Wiki:
Note the date of the Conrad novella. 1897. Used in a non-pejorative context.
you're joking, right? Please tell me you're joking...
You don't really think "It's impossible to prove a negative" means it is impossible to prove/disprove a statement that has "not" in it.
#FreeScheck
#FreeSKFM