Racism in Huckleberry Finn Consider the following sources. Then, evaluate the role of racism in 1885 America and how it relates to the public reception of Huckleberry Finn. Questions to consider: Was Mark Twain being deliberately racist—if so, for what purpose? How has the reception of the novel changed in 130 years? Why do people take issue with the novel—should they? Source A “Huckleberry Finn” and the N-word, 2011 (60-Minutes Clip) “I think one of the things that offends white people about it is that they can’t say it…Because you’re not us. Jeff Foxworthy says, you know, you can’t make jokes about a redneck unless you are one. You can’t say nigger unless you are one. And unless you are willing to accept everything that goes with it which is a lot of good stuff…Having an awareness that you have—your people have overcome centuries of oppression.” --David Bradley, University of Oregon Source B Illustration from first edition of Huckleberry Finn by E.W. Kemble, 1884

Source C “Jim Crow law” Definition, Encylcopaedia Britannica (2015) Jim Crow segregation, in U.S. history, any of the laws that enforced racial segregation in the South between the end of Reconstruction in 1877 and the beginning of the civil rights movement in the 1950s. Jim Crow was the name of a minstrel routine (actually Jump Jim Crow) performed beginning in 1828 by its author, Thomas Dartmouth (“Daddy”) Rice, and by many imitators, including actor Joseph Jefferson. The term came to be a derogatory epithet for African Americans and a designation for their segregated life. From the late 1870s, Southern state legislatures, no longer controlled by carpetbaggers and freedmen, passed laws requiring the separation of whites from “persons of colour” in public transportation and schools. Generally, anyone of ascertainable or strongly suspected black ancestry in any degree was for that purpose a “person of colour”; the pre-Civil War distinction favouring those whose ancestry was known to be mixed—particularly the half-French “free persons of colour” in Louisiana—was abandoned. The segregation principle was extended to parks, cemeteries, theatres, and restaurants in an effort to prevent any contact between blacks and whites as equals. It was codified on local and state levels and most famously with the “separate but equal” decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). Source D Political Cartoon on Huck Finn by Mike Luckovich, Jan 7 2011

Source E “Teacher's aide sacked over claim that Huckleberry Finn is 'racist'” by Allison Flood (18 July 2012) The Guardian

A teacher in Iowa has reportedly been fired for telling students that Mark Twain's classic American novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was "racist". Naiya Galloway, a 31-year-old teaching associate at a private school in Dubuque, Iowa, is alleged to have told a classroom of students last October that the novel was racist and "should not be taught in schools", according to the Des Moines Register. The next day, according to the report, she described the book as racist again while on a school bus, and is said by school officials to have "voiced objections to the book on numerous other occasions". Galloway was planning to quit her job, according to the local paper, but the alleged incidents led the school to sack her. A public hearing, at which she denied all the allegations about the book, saw a judge reject her request for unemployment benefits as well as take on claims about the novel's contents. "When I hear that Huck Finn is racist, my immediate response – having studied literature and having studied that particular piece of literature and theory about it – is, 'Of course it's racist,'" said administrative law judge James Timberland, noting that he had a master's degree in English literature. "Part of the idea was to point out, through that book, that it was racist. It's about racism." The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has long divided readers, with some objecting to Twain's 200-plus uses of the offensive term "nigger", and to his racial stereotyping, and others seeing it as an ironic critique of a situation the anti-racist Twain loathed. First published in 1884, the novel is frequently on the American Library Association's list of the books most likely to inspire complaints, and last year a new edition went so far as to replace the word "nigger" with the word "slave". Source F “Critics: Dr. Laura's Rant Reiterates N-Word Is Never OK” by SHEILA MARIKAR (Aug

13, 2010) ABCNews Usually, she gives advice. But after broadcasting a five-minute-long rant in which she used the N-word 11 times, Dr. Laura Schlessinger is now on the receiving end.

"It's unacceptable," said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. "There's no way that it's acceptable. It's not funny, it's offensive to African Americans. She should know better. There should be consequences."

At least one entertainer, no stranger to the word himself, agreed. Black comedian Paul Mooney once "had a love affair" with the N-word. But in 2007, after

"Seinfeld" actor Michael Richards nearly ended his comic career by using the N-word in a tirade at Los Angeles' Laugh Factory, Mooney, who famously wrote for Richard Pryor, banned the word from his vocabulary and started urging others to do the same….

On a more serious note, Mooney lamented that Schlessinger's rant shows how deeply rooted the N-word is in American culture. Still, he continues his push to eradicate the N-word from the public consciousness. For him, Schlessigner's scandal only serves as a reminder that the slur still holds a sick power.

"If it could be taken care of tomorrow, if it could disappear, I would want it to disappear," he said. "I want it taken out of society."

Source G “Masterpiece or Racist Trash? Bridgewater Students Enter the Debate over Huckleberry Finn” by Barbara Apstein (Jun 2006) Bridgewater University Review One thing all the members of the class could agree on: Huckleberry Finn could be a difficult

text to teach. As future teachers themselves, they weren’t sure they could pull it off. Learning to think critically about offensive ideas, they agreed, is a noble goal, but teachers need to make careful judgments about which offensive ideas should be presented to classes of teen-agers. They could imagine a tense and emotionally volatile classroom, one that might be difficult to control.

The consensus was that it might be wise to reserve Huckleberry Finn for mature high school seniors or college students. In fact, some teachers appear to have reached the same conclusion. Shawn Oakley, a member of our class who had been working with a sixth grade teacher, reported that he had come across 30 copies of Huckleberry Finn in a closet at the back of the classroom. The books were covered with dust. Source H “Politically Correct Huck Finn” by Englehart (Jan 7 2011) Hartford Courant

Source I Mark Twain's Notebook #35 (reprinted in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Univ. of

California Press, 2003) "In those old slave-holding days the whole community was agreed as to one thing--the awful sacredness of slave property.

To help steal a horse or a cow was a low crime, but to help a hunted slave, or feed him or shelter him, or hide him, or comfort him, in his troubles, his terrors, his despair, or hesitate to promptly to betray him to the slave-catcher when opportunity offered was a much baser crime, & carried with it a stain, a moral smirch which nothing could wipe away.

That this sentiment should exist among slave-owners is comprehensible-- there were good commercial reasons for it-- but that it should exist & did exist among the paupers, the loafers the tag-rag & bobtail of the community, & in a passionate & uncompromising form, is not in our remote day realizable.

It seemed natural enough to me then; natural enough that Huck & his father the worthless loafer should feel it & approve it, though it seems now absurd.

It shows that that strange thing, the conscience--the unerring monitor--can be trained to approve any wild thing you want it to approve if you begin its education early & stick to it."