Teacher wants to expel Huck Finn - due to N-word

[The Straight Story]

Teacher wants to expel Huck Finn

An African American is about to be inaugurated as president. That leaves John Foley to wonder whether students should still read books that depict black men as ignorant, inarticulate and uneducated.
By Kim Murphy
January 19, 2009

Reporting from Ridgefield, Wash. -- John Foley figures he has pretty much maxed out on explaining to African American mothers why it's OK to call a black man the N-word -- as long as it's in a novel that is considered a classic.

For years, English teachers have been explaining away the obvious racism in Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." And for years, the book that perhaps best explains Americans' genetic predilection for hitting the road, only to later find themselves, has stayed near the top of many high school reading lists.

However, with an African American about to be inaugurated as president, Foley wonders whether 'Huck Finn' ought to be sent back down the river. Why not replace it with a more modern, less discomfiting novel documenting the epic journey of discovery?

"The time has arrived to update the literature we use in high school classrooms," Foley wrote in a guest column this month for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "Barack Obama is president-elect of the United States, and novels that use the 'N-word' repeatedly need to go."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-classics19-2009jan19,0,4954462.story?track=rss

[EFerrari]

1. What an idiot.

[derby378]

2. Does he plan to rename the NAACP next?

Wotta maroon.

[Fire1]

21. Actually, there are many AA who are of the opinion that the

NAACP should be 'renamed,' as it is out-dated and obsolete.

[derby378]

38. Still, renaming the NAACP isn't the same as outright censorship

It's kind of like your mom confiscating your Who album because Roger Daltrey says "that word" on one of the tunes.

[Fire1]

50. True dat! I was just responding to your 'sarcasm.'

[proud2BlibKansan]

3. This happens about once every two or three years

You need to find some NEW crazy stories. :hi:

[The Straight Story]

6. I'll get right on that, need to go check the news in Florida

:rofl:

[proud2BlibKansan]

11. You want me to scan the Kansas papers for you?

:rofl:

[Tangerine LaBamba]

4. Why? Why? WHY?

It seems like every five or six years, some asshole pops up without a clue as to what that book means to our history as a country, to our body of American literature, and discovers the fucking wheel all over again.

John Foley needs to upgrade his education.

What a fucking tool.

How long are we going to have to go through this thing again and again?

On edit:

I don't know how I missed this little treasure in the article:

"He also thinks "To Kill a Mockingbird," Harper Lee's classic about racial inequity in the Deep South, and John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men" should be removed from the curriculum for similar reasons."

This guy is obviously unfit to teach. He whines that it's hard to get his kids to read "Huckleberry Finn," but it's my experience that a good teacher can show kids what a really great book it is. This guy is fucking lost........................

[MrModerate]

5. Perhaps "the time has arrived . . . "

For this Foley twit to update his resume. Clearly he's constitutionally unsuited to being an educator.

[saltpoint]

7. I favor leaving Huck in the classroom, and in fact, in as many

classrooms as possible.

It is a great American novel, perhaps The Great American Novel. Its characters resonate across generations. That matters.

Jim, by the way, is a saint. Huck respects him and lies to save him. That is a scene there on the river that needs to be in the educational regimen of every student who is handed a high school diploma in this country.

"If a law requires you to be an agent of injustice," Thoreau insisted, "then, I say, break the law."

[Horse with no Name]

8. Mark Twain was not a racist

However, he purposefully wrote this book to show a period of time when men were.
Lest we forget a historical perspective...let's not whitewash the fence because some are made uncomfortable by it--but leave it in its glory until ALL are made uncomfortable by it.

[Kajsa]

36. Bishop Gene Robinson also

referred to discomfort in his invocation.

There is a connection there- discomfort is often
the catalyst that brings about much needed change.

:)

edit to add link,

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x8102642

[Bolo Boffin]

9. The obvious racism of Huck Finn is the point.

A kid like Huck Finn can overcome his society's bigotry and see Jim as a man like himself.

[Deja Q]

13. Exactly.

Modern media is so vapid; anything requiring actual thought is often misperceived.

[Deja Q]

10. Why not use it in history class, to also cite an example of how racism took place back then?

Don't bury the past. In ways, it's a 3-for-1. The book tackles both self discovery, an example of Mark Twain, AND is an example of the past regarding race. And why it was wrong at the time.

People say revisionism is bad thing. So I would question why people would want to do it.

It is a sick word. It's also used in modern day media as well; particularly within the music industry.

[anonymous171]

15. Exactly. nt

[Igel]

39. It's hard not to be revisionist with it.

Language and its use has changed, but the text remains unaltered.

It would take a fair amount of effort to put yourself in the shoes of one of Twain's contemporaneous readers, before a hundred years of language-management and neologisms made in order to avoid offense took place.

Most people here can't understand that there are different dialects--by age, location, class, education level--of American English, and that usage is not uniform, and that divergent use doesn't indicate ill will or bad faith. Take the periodic "tar baby" flame wars as a prima facie example of the problem.

Once taught a Russian lit class in translation, and blacks appeared a couple of times. Once as a servant to some American passing through the story, the other time as the inhabitants of some nameless village in W. Africa. "Darky" and "negro" were the words used, and the students were nearly outraged. One insisted that they be read "African-American", that the connotations they gave to words in 2007 were the only possible connotations the words ever had. I pointed out that the texts were from the mid and late 1800s so "African-American" would have been an anachronism, and in one case they were explicitly *not* African-Americans but Africans. The writers had the option of using "African", but chose chernysh' and negrityanin. While I'd translate the former these days as "black" , when the translation was made the British translator thought "darky" was better--it caught the language of the time, the black servant was probably a slave or recently freed slave. In the second case, "Negro" is pretty much what you're stuck with. It wasn't disrespectful at the time, at least to the people the translator would have hung out with.

[Canuckistanian]

49. Interesting

A long time ago, I took Russian classes. But I never heard the terms "chernysh" or negrityanin". I had heard it as "nerg".

I don't remember the Russian attitudes to black people, but I remember Ogonyok and Krokodil magazines always criticizing American attitudes to black people as denigrating them as an "oppressed race". But maybe you're talking about pre-revolutionary literature.

But sometimes cultures can be insulting without meaning it because of sheer ignorance of experience.

[awoke_in_2003]

40. Burying the past....

makes it easier to go back to it. And ultimately, that is what some of these asses want.

[slackmaster]

12. Mr. Foley should read the book before passing judgement on it

He sounds like a world-class fool.

[rcrush]

14. I hate uber PC bullshit.

It seems like everyone is finding something to be offended by and they whine about it until someone censors it. I dont understand how sensitive people are that they get offended by a book or a movie or a song.

[proud2BlibKansan]

16. You could also post about banning the Little House books

That's another popular one. Idiots who don't understand history get poutraged about Laura Ingals Wilder referring to the Indians as 'savages'. I read once that Little House books are number one on the ban lists for all time.

[TransitJohn]

48. No

#1 all time is still the bible.

[Odin2005]

17. *FACEPALM* Teh stoooopid, it BURNS!!!

What a pathetic insult to America's greatest writer.

[saltpoint]

18. I would think a high school lit teacher would be thrilled to teach this book

this year, with slave hunters in hot pursuit of runaway slaves up and down the river, Huck lying to them to protect his pal, and over in Washington, DC an Afro American man about to assume the presidency.

I think it would be an explosively excellent curriculum choice.

[TheKentuckian]

19. Foley and the parents need to go back to school

How can that many people miss the clearly obvious point of the tale? Or at least one of them. Why do we still have these debates about 50 and 100 year old books? Fuck, people are stupid and illogical.

[Ichingcarpenter]

20. He wants 'To Kill a Mockingbird' and 'Of Mice and Men' Removed also

He also thinks "To Kill a Mockingbird," Harper Lee's classic about racial inequity in the Deep South, and John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men" should be removed from the curriculum for similar reasons.


I think he has an agenda and its not intellectual

[Nye Bevan]

44. Wanting "To Kill a Mockingbird" removed because it contains the "N" word.....

what can you say about such small-minded, pig-ignorant, lame-brained stupidity?

If something should be "removed" it is this guy, from his teaching position.

[Ichingcarpenter]

46. I'm surprised that a nobody would get a major story in the LA times

The guy doesn't even have any internet or google cred.

Trace the reporter who did this story and see what
they like to get in print.

[Hanse]

22. I'm going to argue Devil's Advocate here.

It seems to me that Foley agrees that Huck Finn is not really a racist novel, and is an argument against racism.

Foley seems to be saying that he's tired of teaching the same damn book year after year, having the same dumb argument year after year, and that's a perfectly valid reason to update the curriculum.

The bit about Obama is a weird comment. Sounds like a single line out of a forty five minute discussion with the reporter, and Foley's embarassed to see it printed.

In my own opinion, Huck Finn's WAY overrated, and high school students would be better served with more modern curricula anyway.

[ismnotwasm]

23. Here we go again

That's really kind of sad to me. I don't think it's a bad idea think to revisit historical language in fiction, especially when the writer is someone as asute as Twain. It's not good forget what was what.

What's interesting is the villian in the story is Huck's father. Descibed this way.

"He was most fifty, and he looked it. His hair was long and tangled and
greasy, and hung down, and you could see his eyes shining through like he
was behind vines. It was all black, no gray; so was his long, mixed-up
whiskers. There warn't no color in his face, where his face showed; it
was white; not like another man's white, but a white to make a body sick,
a white to make a body's flesh crawl--a tree-toad white, a fish-belly
white. As for his clothes--just rags, that was all. He had one ankle
resting on t'other knee; the boot on that foot was busted, and two of his
toes stuck through, and he worked them now and then. His hat was laying
on the floor--an old black slouch with the top caved in, like a lid."

[saltpoint]

24. The argument about the "racism" of Twain always takes a new turn with

the revelation of his support for Warner T. McGuinn:

http://dig.lib.niu.edu/twain/race.html

As a matter of interpretation of a great work, it seems to me that it is the slavers who repel the reader's sensibilities. Overwhelmingly, readers root for Jim and honor Huck's decision to lie to protect him.

[OswegoAtheist]

25. I used to live in Elmira, NY...

...where Mr. Twain was/is buried. Every few years, you could hear a low rumbling coming from the direction of Woodlawn Nat'l Cemetery; now I know why: poor Mr. Twain was turning in his grave.

Oswego "Still glad I don't live in Elmira anymore" Atheist

[Mr.liberal]

26. Maybe we should ban...

all stephen king and john grisham books too. why huck finn? last time I checked they were all works of FICTION !?!

fic·tion (fkshn)
n.

a. An imaginative creation or a pretense that does not represent actuality but has been invented.
b. The act of inventing such a creation or pretense.
2. A lie.
3.
a. A literary work whose content is produced by the imagination and is not necessarily based on fact.
b. The category of literature comprising works of this kind, including novels and short stories.
4. Law Something untrue that is intentionally represented as true by the narrator.

[Dreamer Tatum]

27. Can we also count on, oh, 99% of rap to be banned, too?

I mean, as long as we're making stupid and abusive decisions based on one word...

[saltpoint]

28. Norman Mailer called the book "a circus of fictional virtuosities."

It is remarkably teachable for that and many other reasons, not least among them that Huck is 14 years old when the novel begins, and the United States' westward expansion (and disgraceful Western Native American policies) have not taken place to any significant degree compared to what will soon happen in the country's history.

Tom and Huck are standing on the Mississippi River, beyond which was the great Western prairie and the Rocky Mountains, mostly pioneer territory to (mostly) white citizens east of that river.

Meaning, as one poet put it, that Huck dreamed with other young people of his time and place one dream -- to be free of the mundane and difficult lives they led of mud streets and horseshit and hardship -- and go west into the pristine mountains.

As the novel ends, Huck "lights out" for the territoy west of that river, to avoid being "civilized." Initially, when the kids are rescued, no one in the town is happy to see Huck. Twain is making a powerful comment on the nature and degree of community. IMO he is suggesting that it is a limited enterprise and that ultimately, it fails. It certainly had failed Huck from his abusive father to the uncaring townsfolk.

Huck had a pioneer to light out to. Very, very soon in literature are voices lamenting that that pioneer had disappeared.

The novel is crucial to any high schooler because it is a novel about someone their age rejecting civilization in its present form.

[Dreamer Tatum]

29. Huck Finn is sheer literary virtuosity with a cultural and historical context

It stands alongside anything Tolstoy wrote for that very reason, and is indispensable to students.

Banning Huck Finn would be stupid and abusive.

[saltpoint]

30. I'm on board with that. Definitely.

[southernyankeebelle]

31. B.S.

I think if you ask President Obama if they should outlaw those kinds of books he would say NO. That was the way history was back than and you can't change history. I have never used the N-word. It is up to all of us to correct someone when they say that word. I have even correct young black teens when they say that. I tell them if you don't want white's to say that word than I don't expect you to say it no matter even if you are bro brothers having fun. You just can't take away the classics like that. We should learn from it and see how far we have come. That is the lesson you teach.

[saltpoint]

33. Agree -- President Obama would be appalled that a major landmark

novel is under siege.

I think you are right that he would come to its defense.

[Dukkha]

32. this old argument again?

it's just a word! an offensive word can and will never trump the right to literature, being a classic like Huckleberry Finn or trash like Ann Coulter's latest pile of shit. It all has a right to exist.

[deaniac21]

34. Mark Twain was such a racist.....

dumbass

[LisaL]

35. The guy admits he himself is a writer of "young adult novels."

Anyone heard of his novels?

:eyes:

[Winterblues]

37. I know what I think of when I hear the term "Adult Novel"

:shrug:

[LisaL]

41. I presume he is saying he writes novels for young adults.

[saltpoint]

42. This Foley guy. I just want to slap the crap out of him.

He is not larger than Twain's story.

Twain's story is larger than Foley.

His job is to open the story up to his students and let them feel what it might have been like dodging slave hunters on a wooden raft on the Mississippi in the 1800s.

I say his students are up to the task.

[Paladin]

43. When I Was In College, I Was Told That "Huckleberry Finn" Was The Greatest American Novel.

Things may have changed in the insuing years, but it still has to be regarded as one of the very best fiction works ever. And unquestionably, Jim is one of the most noble characters ever realized. This teacher needs to back off.....

[Swamp Rat]

45. Keep Mark Twain and remove John Foley.... think of the children.

:dunce:

[philosophie_en_rose]

47. There are millions of books in the world.

I don't see why he shouldn't be able to choose his own curriculum. Perhaps other teachers are able to have deep conversations and lessons about the book, but there are also bunglers that waive off the racism as a "product of its time" and say no more. Others might simply find a different book for the class, leaving kids to read Huck Finn (among many other classics) on their own or in another class. I don't agree that it should be banned, but I do think there are limited number of spots in the curriculum and it might not fit into every teacher's plan.

ETA: I missed the part where he whines about To Kill A Mockingbird. Obviously, he has issues.

[treestar]

51. The N word in that novel isn't all that offensive because at the time, it was

not meant to be offensive. The black characters use it and even the white ones don't mean it offensively.

Its offensive nature came later in history.

Besides, if people ignore history as it was, what good does that do?