Censoring books is never a good idea.
The Monona Grove School District is looking into whether it should continue teaching To Kill a Mockingbird after a parent complained that the racially charged language in the novel is inappropriate. At present the book is on the school’s required reading list. A five-person committee is working to determine if the book should stay in the classroom. The final decision will be made in two weeks.
Why this embarrasses many in our area is that it appears we have no more ability to digest and discuss thought-provoking books than people in Mississippi. To Kill a Mockingbird was removed last fall from a junior-high reading list in a Mississippi school district. According to the Biloxi Sun Herald, school administrators pulled the classic novel from their 8th-grade curriculum because of complaints that some of the book’s language “makes people uncomfortable.”
Well hold on Nelly! Lets think about the matter of words used in the book and place them into a larger conversation.
I deplore the word ‘nigger’. I do not want that word used in common every-day conversation, and can say I have no friends that do use such language.
But there comes a time when the word ‘nigger’ in books conveys the tone and message required, such as in Huckleberry Finn that many of us read as youngsters in conjunction with Tom Sawyer. At least I did. In fact, Huckleberry Finn was a classroom text for me and my school peers.
I mention Huckleberry Finn that was penned in 1884 because it is now being published in some editions without the word ‘nigger’. In its place is the more sterile word ‘slave’. I find this censorship highly troubling. To add salt to this wound is also the removal of the word “injun”. Again, not a word we want used today, but one that puts the reader into the times of which the author has constructed his book.
I think it asinine to touch the words penned by Mark Twain. I have enough problems when some in Hollywood condone colorizing old films. But when someone remakes the words of a classic read I really do cringe.
Racism was, and remains a real and troubling part of our society. To attempt to whitewash it from a text–or remove the book from a reading list–takes away the one thing that we need more than anything else. That being a protracted and highly engaged conversation about racism. Alan Gribben is a professor of English at Auburn University at Montgomery in Alabama and a Mark Twain scholar, and is responsible for the censoring of Huckleberry Finn in what he describes as an attempt to get the book back in the hands of high school literature courses.
While I heartily applaud the desire to have youth read Huckleberry Finn, I reject the idea of Gribben’s means to achieve it. To not address racism in the manner it was presented in the book by Twain removes a great teaching moment for the folks who will read it.
Even after the many decades of work and public policy aimed to construct our society to be more equal we are still limited from a real dialogue on racism. If we can not get over the mere usage of the word ‘nigger’ in a text as highly praised as in Too Kill A Mockingbird or in Huckleberry Finn how can we move to a higher level of awareness in our communities or legislatures when confronting racism?
I would suggest that instead of schools banning books they should work to include as many banned ones as possible into the curriculum so to foster ideas, debate, and awareness. The confrontation with reality, and the pricklier topics that through exploration opens our horizons for a stronger and healthier society, should start in a classroom.
And so it goes.
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