Here's the CNN Video Link
Seriously? I mean, really? They want to remove the word "nigger" from Huck Finn and Mark Twain.
That's right, I used the word, instead of saying "n-word" like they're doing on CNN. To me, it is just a word. I would never use that word when describing another person. I use that word when referencing the way white people used to refer to blacks.
I read both of those Mark Twain classics back in school. We were taught that the books were written to sound like the people of that time spoke. The people of that time called black people niggers. It's a historical fact. When I was in school, it was understood that, just because it used to be acceptable then, it is not acceptable now. If any of my classmates had been caught calling someone else a nigger, they would have been corrected and disciplined.
In my opinion, this is a simple matter of laziness. People, teachers even, are too lazy to teach students about context, about history. They would rather just change the word "nigger" to "slave." So does this mean we are going to pretend that black people were never called horrible things? Does this mean we are going to pretend that the racism and bigotry weren't as bad as they were? As they still are?
History is history. No, we can't change it. No, it wasn't always good, BUT, we can learn from it. We have learned from it. We ended slavery in our nation. We pushed through with the civil rights. Look at our current president!! Imagine what people from the time of Tom and Huck would think about Obama. Look how far we have come!
I am completely disgusted that people think they can rewrite Mark Twain. They are, in my mind, trying to change history. And it's not going to work. It is censorship, and I believe it is wrong.
Heaven forbid a teacher have to actually teach or a parent have to explain something to their child. Just like not having the stones to tell your child that they can't eat Happy Meals every day of the week...much easier just to sue McDonalds and make them take the toys out of them so that the kid doesn't want them. Much easier to run around with a bucket of pink tinged gloss and paint the past to look much prettier than it was. Next thing you know the history books will be filled with photo-shopped Holocaust pictures to make the dead and emaciated people lying on the ground appear to merely be sunbathing and then when the worst happens and we have another similar situation on our hands it will be those same "glossers" that are crying "Oh why didn't we learn, did history teach us nothing?" To which the only reply would be "No, because you refused to allow it to."
ReplyDeleteSorry to rant *straps straight jacket back on securely* I'll just go back to hugging myself in the comfy padded corner over there.