Huck Finn and the N-Word

Per the New York Times, a new edition of "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" will replace the word "nigger," which occurs 219 times in the book, with "slave." The news has triggered a debate among black and white readers alike about the appropriateness of doing so.

As profoundly offensive as that damnable word is, I do not think we should tamper with Mark Twain’s classic work. Read in context, one quickly learns Twain was not out to malign a race of people. On the contrary, the noblest character in the book (Jim) is black. Sadly, it is also historically accurate in terms of how a great many people (North and South) referred to African Americans in Twain’s time. And that fact should never be forgotten. That said, I loathe the n-word and sympathize with black readers who might celebrate its total eradication from all written works of art.

Author Francine Prose also opposes the word changes, but for wholly different reasons:

What puzzles me most about the debate — I’m not trying to sound willfully naïve — is why the word “nigger” should be more freighted, more troubling, the cause of more (to paraphrase the edition's introduction) “resentment” than the word “slave.” Racial epithets are inarguably disgusting, but not nearly so disgusting as an institution that treats human beings as property to be beaten, bought and sold. “Nigger” and “slave” are not synonyms by any stretch of the imagination.

Jim’s problem is not that he is called a “nigger” but that he is chattel who can be freed or returned to his master. Instead of excising the word from the novel, students should be reminded that however uneasy the word makes us, what should make us much more uneasy is the fact that we — the United States — were a slave-holding society.

Prose, who is white, can perhaps be forgiven for being baffled about the extra baggage the n-word carries. She has never faced the business end of this epithet, let alone felt its painful discharge. Yes, the word is connected to “slave” in a historical sense. But slavery ended in 1865. The use of the n-word did not. “Nigger” was and is another way of calling someone subhuman. Only when viewed in this light can one begin to understand the heavy, centuries-old “freight” it connotes for black folk.