Censoring the Classics

This was originally published at http://uco360.com/blogs/censoring-the-classics/ on Jan. 13.

Some say the classics never go out of style, but they do. However, one reason something is considered a classic is because its lessons are not only timeless but also get stronger with age, even if its language or technique becomes offensive or passé.

That is why Professor Alan Gribben of Auburn University and Alabama-based publishing company NewSouthBooks’ decision to edit the “N-word” and the word “injun” from Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn” is an affront to the education of American students.

Gribben et al. may have good intentions for changing the “N-word” to “slave” (219 times) and “injun” to “Indian,” he said doing so will make them more appealing to students who are reading less than ever. However, it results in nothing more than a mousy attempt to censor and soften the sharp edges of racism that have shaped our country.

This is not just about censorship; this is about us confronting a disturbing past and having an honest conversation about race in America. This is about us valuing art and learning the lessons it provides.

Huck Finn, like all classics, offers a connection to a lost time and a small glimpse into the reality and lifestyles of our ancestors. They give us a historical context and subsequently provide new avenues for self-examination that may not have been originally intended by its creator. Changing Twain’s work allows us to ignore the work we need to do as a country to overcome racism.

Some claim this is not censorship in its truest form because Gribben has not changed every copy of Huck Finn and is simply offering students a safer alternative. Censorship can never be justified, in any form and having an “alternative” is pointless unless it is taught alongside the original.

With this ham-fisted logic we could gloss over the American Revolution as a quaint trade of power between Britain and the American colonies and change Shakespeare’s writing so that its not over-rated and wrought with incest and trite love stories. Why stop there? Let’s just burn all the books that make us uncomfortable.

Some argue that we do not need to read the “N-word” 219 times to know that it is hurtful. This may be true, but it effectively conveys the harshness of the word. I’m sure African-Americans did not need to hear the word every time they spoke to a white person to know they were subjugated and deemed inferior, but it drove home that point.

Twain chose every word for a reason. Words like the “N-word” provide students with the brutal reality of what was normal in interracial interaction at the time. Even though the two characters in the novel were friends, the element of race persisted. It was their truth, their reality. Removing the word removes the reality of racism and the over-arching lesson that cooperation and good can be achieved in the face of ignorance.

Stewards of education, like Gribben, should know to leave the truth alone and not edit the classics.

Revolutionary aid

Republicans on the hill are currently debating the best way to cut budgets across the bureaucratic spectrum. They are proposing a 16 percent cut to the State Department’s budget and a 41 percent cut to humanitarian programs.

Our national debt sits somewhere around $14 trillion, so there is an obvious need to get spending under control. However, reducing the State Department’s budget right now would be detrimental to our ability to help countries around the world, hurt our reputation and endanger our national security.

Revolutions are raging like tire fires across the Muslim world; we are at a critical time when the United States needs to look and do our absolute best. Everything our country has worked for since 9/11 is coming to a head. Cutting foreign aid would cripple us and our current and future allies.

This would be okay for some Republicans that fly the tea bag banner. Their libertarian posturing got them elected, but they are in the process of learning that while their ideology sounds good in speeches and looks good on paper, it only made sense 200 years ago, when our country was a fraction of its current size, and our interests did not span the globe. Today, libertarianism is an outdated and unrealistic stance.

Paul D. Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin, said in a New York Times interview, “I’ve got 87 new people who are just getting to learn the process, who are just getting to learn the issues … Everybody who comes in learning the budget finds out that things are more difficult than they at first seemed.” The view is always different from inside the machine.

If Republicans are as concerned about the deficit as they claim to be, they should have let the Bush tax cuts expire, not jeopardize national security. Those cuts will end up costing us more than $2.3 trillion. It’s simple math. When Bill Clinton raised taxes in 1993, it gave us a huge surplus that George W. Bush inherited and squandered.

Maybe some day we can stop meddling so intensely in global affairs, but to start now, by cutting foreign aid, would be chaotic. One could argue that the $70 billion we have given to Egypt was wasted on upgrades to Hosni Mubarak’s vacation home. Now that Mubarak is out, crimping the flow of aid would only allow the American flags to burn with more fervor than before.



Our role of setting up puppet regimes that help us with one hand and throw tear gas canisters at their citizens with the other is over. We should let the protests play out on their own, but we need to be standing by with as much money and advice as possible, not posturing with empty hands and pockets. Then, we can finally have some legitimate allies in the Muslim world, and possibly resolve some of our budgetary problems by ending two wars that have currently cost us a combined $1.1 trillion and 5,912 lives.