Censorship is n** the answer

"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain has long been an American classic. The book is known for its description of culture, people and places along the Mississippi River in the mid-19th century. It has been read, analyzed and interpreted by countless numbers of scholars, historians, teachers and students.

But last month, the book experienced one major transformation.  According to Publishers Weekly, NewSouth Books plans to release a new version of "Huckleberry Finn" that deletes the word "nigger" and replaces it with "slave." The word is replaced 219 times throughout the book. The new version will also remove the slur "injun" that refers to Native Americans.

The idea to remove the controversial words came from Alan Gribben, an English professor at Auburn University. According to an article in the New York Times, "Gribben has said that he is worried that the ‘N-word' has resulted in the novel falling off reading lists, and that he thought his edition would be welcomed by schoolteachers and university instructors who wanted to spare ‘the reader from a racial slur that never seems to lose its vitriol.'"

Gribben, who has been teaching Mark Twain for decades, said that he is not hoping to censor the book but rather give it an updated version for modern times. His hope is that young students and general readers, not scholars, will be able to read the book free of racial epithets.

Some people agree with Gribben's argument. They think that replacing the "N-word" with "slave" will give more students the chance to read the book when they otherwise would not have been allowed to by protective parents and school boards. Some also think that the change is no different than censoring a movie so that it can be shown on public television; they agree that updating the book will allow more people to explore its teachings.

But we feel that changing the words in this American classic changes the mood and lessons behind the entire book. Isn't the point of reading the book in the first place to teach students about life along the Mississippi River in the 19th century? Changing the words used in the book would give readers a false sense of what life was really like back when slavery was enforced. Young students need to know the truth. They need to know that slavery and the unfair treatment of blacks was part of American culture. If they don't see the mistakes we made in the past, including our mistake of using hateful words, they won't know how to change the future.

Sanitizing our past is not the answer. When we do so, it's like we are trying to say that something never happened. Removing the "N-word" implies that white Americans never used the word. But they did. They put black Americans down using that racial slur – and children deserve (and need) to know this.

New York Times columnist Michiko Kakutani explained it best when he said, "Haven't we learned by now that removing books from the curriculum just deprives children of exposure to classic works of literature? Worse, it relieves teachers of the fundamental responsibility of putting such books in context — of helping students understand that ‘Huckleberry Finn' actually stands as a powerful indictment of slavery (with Nigger Jim its most noble character), of using its contested language as an opportunity to explore the painful complexities of race relations in this country. To censor or redact books on school reading lists is a form of denial: shutting the door on harsh historical realities — whitewashing them or pretending they do not exist."

We can't always change history to accommodate to our times. We can't encroach on Twain's intellectual property simply because we are uncomfortable with the way he said things. What Twain wrote was true – he paints a picture of how people talked in the 19th century.

It's also important to note that Twain was not advocating for the use of the word. He was criticizing racism, not supporting it. By reading Twain's book in the language it was meant to be read, students will learn our true history, and they will learn that we were not always right.

Perhaps Twain said it best: "Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it." Why are we depriving our children of history because we feel they can't handle its ugly side?

Censorship is not the answer; education is.