Political Correctness, Then and Now (my new Townhall column)

Townhall.com ^ | 7-8-08 | Ashley Herzog

[HerzogAEH]

Unfortunately, most children today will never read Huckleberry Finn, which is still considered by many to be “trash.” A century ago, Huckleberry Finn was censored for challenging slavery and segregation. But today, the controversy boils down to a single word: the runaway slave whom Huckleberry Finn befriends is referred to as “nigger Jim.”

[HerzogAEH]

My response to Time magazine’s July 14 cover story.

[goldstategop]

We can't have intelligent literature - let alone American classics since God knows - someone will be offended! It wasn't like that when I went to college. Today the wiser person knows enough to keep their head down than let the thought police punish them for being "too honest." As a result our cultural and moral life suffers.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[sthguard]

You make some interesting points here. I actually taught a class recently on HF and the various controversies surrounding it, primarily those pertaining to race and religion. By and large my students were white and thoroughly inculcated with liberal guilt, but we did still manage to have some productive discussions about race, institutional authority, language, etc. Several students actually started out arguing the typical public school line that Twain was a horrible racist, but changed their arguments when they got into the actual facts for the research paper.

One book several of them found useful, and which you might also like, is The Jim Dilemma by Jocelyn Chadwick-Joshua. She's a black scholar and educator who has conducted many pedagogical seminars on the book and why she thinks it should be taught, uncomfortably accurate vocabulary and all.

[goldstategop]

The meaning of the "n" word has no doubt changed over time. Still you have to wonder why its mention in Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn arouses such indignation when all things consided, the NAACLP buried the "N" word last year. Either racism is dead or it isn't. I just wish the Left would make up their minds, since their repeated playing of the Race Card isn't a credit to them.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[skeeter]

I read Huck Finn a dozen times as a kid - it is a wonderful story & I still have my copy.

Pity the tiny mind that can't think past the use of a single word.

[GOP_Raider]

On another website I debated with a “learned” liberal in which I asserted that this type of political correctness is thought control, and the lib of the great unwashed considered PC rhetoric “good manners”.

Now, if one wants to go way way back, back to Hobbes (I believe) who considered that what man though was “good” and “evil” were, put simply, things that felt pleasurable were “good” and anything painful was “bad”. We see here that the “N word” is “painful” therefore it’s bad.

[Mercat]

My son has a very high IQ but as a child was not interested in reading. I used to read to him, starting a book and then he would wait until I had tucked him in and left the room to turn the light back on and secretly read the rest. The first book I read to him was Huckleberry Finn, in full dialect with all the words. Later I read Alice in Wonderland and then most of the Oz books. At 28 he still doesn’t read a lot for recreation but he can quote from Shakespeare and sing from Gilbert and Sullivan. So I’m very fond of HF.

[goldstategop]

If controversy offends these people, they're not qualified to talk about life and they should be disqualified from voting. You're going to find things in life you don't like. And if you can't confront that honestly, you have no right to muzzle other people to compensate for your own insecurities. Freedom carries with it risks. Only societies in which people are forbidden from having their own thoughts run the risk of not being offended. Then again they never change and grow at all. Something to ponder on.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[Will88]

“Several students actually started out arguing the typical public school line that Twain was a horrible racist,”

Well, those students have been subjected to some horrible indoctrination and mis-education. There is no greater American writer than Twain.

[skeeter]

Couldn’t agree more, but unfortunately those who believe as you do are a dwindling minority, I’m afraid. At the polls and otherwise.

[deport]

It will only get worse or so it seems.

Dallas County meeting turns racial ("black hole" now a "racist" term)

Commissioner Kenneth Mayfield, who is white, said it seemed that central collections "has become a black hole" because paperwork reportedly has become lost in the office.

Commissioner John Wiley Price, who is black, interrupted him with a loud "Excuse me!" He then corrected his colleague, saying the office has become a "white hole."

That prompted Judge Thomas Jones, who is black, to demand an apology from Mayfield for his racially insensitive analogy.

[sinanju]

I was a big boy of twenty-six by the time I got around to reading it. I daresay I found it educational. Huck spends the entire trip wrestling with his conscience. At first thinking he’s doomed himself to hell for helping to “steal” his aunt’s “property.” Then, as Our Heros go through their various adventures together, he comes to see Jim more and more as a fully qualified human being (like when Jim tells him the heartbreaking story of how he found out his little daughter had been rendered deaf by scarlet fever), with the natural right to breathe free. Finally, he realizes it is his duty to help his friend escape.

The chapters dealing with his drunken, no-good “Pap” also include probably the most vivid description of the alcoholic delerium tremens in the english language.

Ooh! Ooh! And don’t forget about those uncomfortably homoerotic passages...

[WorkingClassFilth]

As I understand it, the furor today over the use of the word nigger all boils down to the past connotations of domination, separatism, and hatred mostly more than a century old. The fact that many American blacks currently use the word with great frequency severely deflates the claimed 'sensitive' racist aspects of the word. In brief, the real meanings - in modern use today - have become lost over time and are newly imbued with new 'in-group' meanings complete with a reversed racist animus from blacks towards whites - in effect, a private identity code word that excludes use by any group other than blacks. Private speech no longer available to any but a privileged elite.

This is unfortunate. Like the modern day hijacking of the word gay, English has been shin of the free use of many forceful words. For me, and most Americans that live in cities, the cruel racial meanings of nigger died decades ago and the word has been laid to rest alongside institutional racism. All well and good - if only ignorant urban blacks would either shut up or get some class, too.

So, in terms of equality, the only thing left to mourn is the inability to use the now racially cleansed word as a denigrator of specific classes of people other than blacks. If I had my druthers, free use of the new and liberated word niggers would be perfectly just as an adjective for the MSM, Academe and countless other leftist tyrants.

[boop]

Huck Finn was written in 1884. Portraying a black man in a positive light was extrememly liberal and radical for the time. Only idiots can’t grasp this fact and throw tantrums about a frickin’ WORD.