Posts
3590
Joined
3/2/2009
Location
NO
Sunhouse
1/6/2011 1:28pm
1/6/2011 1:28pm
Edited Date/Time
1/24/2012 4:56am
In the new editions released in February they will replace the word "nigger" with "slave" to accommodate fragile souls, and thus change a cultural and historical masterpiece. The N-word appears 219 times in the Novel.
WTF?! Are you OK with this?
WTF?! Are you OK with this?
PC run amok again
The Shop
I can´t believe how stupid this is!
Stop that shit, RIGHT NOW!
Agreeing with you is causing me great discomfort: In other-words...
Perfect POST!
Oh So Yesterday....
Not to worry. They might remove it from classic literature, but they'll never remove it from pop culture. Those who make a living being offended will make sure it survives.
I love how the PC crowd wants to remove stuff like this, but half the books in our High School's AP and Honors English classes contain every vulgarity and perversity you can think of but it is considered a vital part of the classic work. Holy Mother of Muhammed, the hypocrisy is deafening.
Jan. 8th can't get here fast enough.
H
Pit Row
According to court documents, the dispute began when Robin Taylor, who is white, used the word while discussing the event. In that discussion, Taylor apparently referenced the fact that participants had used the full word "at least a hundred times or more" at the event. In response, Burlington allegedly stated, "Does this mean we can say ni**er now?"
In response to his question, Nicole Wolfe, a producer and one of the three African-American employees who were present at the meeting exclaimed, "I can't believe you just said that!"
Click here to view a slideshow of the top 10 n-word controversies of the decade
Burlington has claimed that he was "discriminated against because of his race," because he was fired for using the full word, while African-Americans were heard using the word in the workplace without reprimand.
U.S. District Judge R. Barclay Surrick denied Burlington's claim that he was the victim of a hostile work environment, but allowed the case to go to trial. Judge Surrick has suggested that Burlington may have been a "victim of political correctness run amok," and that he could not conclude that there was a "reasonable justification for permitting the station to draw race-based distinctions between employees."
This is an issue that goes far beyond political correctness.
The n-word has a legacy in the dehumanization of African people in America, which has led to the segregation of opportunity and advancement that we experience today. To be clear, there was no n-word before the transatlantic slave trade -- it was a slur created to cement the powerlessness and subjugation of a people. The root of that slur does not change because those who have been victimized by it decide to adopt its usage when referring to one another.
Franz Fanon wrote in The Wretched of the Earth, how those with a "colonized mind" will "initially express against their own people the aggressiveness that they have internalized" without question. In other words, when African-Americans use the word -- in the workplace or not, they are also contributing to a hostile environment.
Words matter; and their contexts matter. The field of journalism, and the newsroom in particular, is not known for its racial diversity. In fact, only 11.2 percent of newsroom supervisors nationwide people of color, with the inclusion of African-Americans on the decline. According to the American Society of News Editors, the number of African-American journalists has decreased by 539 since 2001, while the number of Asian American, Latino, and Native American journalists increased by 167, 23, and 44, respectively.
Unfortunately, the debate about whether and how to regulate the usage of the n-word is not unique to Burlington's case. The recent resurgence of the debate about whether the word should be banned in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an example of how persistently we are haunted by this word and its legacy. Though referencing individuals via racial epithet is dramatically different than reading a highly contextualized usage of the word in literature, we are all accountable for the language we use.
The trial to determine whether Burlington was wrongfully terminated and whether African-Americans can dehumanize each other with immunity is set to begin on January 18th. However, the real question is whether we will use this incident as a wake-up call to demand the full recognition -- from others and from ourselves -- of our humanity and implementation of a higher standard of dignity in the workplace and beyond.
Link
The text should not be changed for two reasons
1. It's censorship and editing original works for no sensible or legitimate reason
2. By changing "Nigger Jim" to "Slave Jim" you dilute the text and the low esteem African-Americans were held at that time period of the story. By leaving the text, it gives reality and reference to the negative attitudes towards Blacks at that time.
I will never allow my children to read the edited version, because it would be a poorly faked quasi-replication of a wonderful writing.
News: The Continued Censorship of Huckleberry Finn on Thursday January 06, @11:35AM
Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday January 06, @11:35AM
from the but-there's-a-bad-word-in-it dept.
books
censorship
usa
eldavojohn writes "Over a hundred years after the death of its author, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn will be released in a censored format removing two derogatory racial slurs: "injun" and "nigger." The latter appears some 219 times in the original novel but both will be replaced by the word "slave." An Alabama publisher named NewSouth Books will be editing and censoring the book so that schools and parents might provide their children the ability to study the classic without fear of properly addressing the torturous history of racism and slavery in The United States of America. The Forbes Blog speculates that e-readers could provide us this service automatically. Salon admirably provides point versus counterpoint while the internet at large is in an uproar over this seemingly large acceptance of censorship as necessary even on books a hundred years old. The legendary Samuel Langhorne Clemens himself once wrote "the difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter" and now his own writing shall test the truth in that today."
Post a reply to: The N-word removed from Huckleberry Finn