Today from Dubuque, Iowa there is news about a teacher in trouble over her comments that Huck Finn is a "racist" novel. She is both right and wrong.
If you put yourself back in Samuel Clemens' time and look at his attitudes and his actions (which we can because he wrote about these things much more than other white folks did back then), you'd have to say he was very forward for his time in terms of social justice, in race relations, and his stories quite often threw a spotlight on the problems he saw in race relations in those days.
"Mark Twain" quite plainly lamented the way blacks were treated in his times and Huck Finn was a very anti-racist story for that day and time in our history. But I suspect you would also find there were racist attitudes present in Sam Clemens' psyche. He was a product of his time and environment - just like I am a product of my time and environment.
I suspect I can find elements of racism in my attitudes -- any time I see another human being as different, or separate, from me (whether this is overt or subconscious), this is racism. Am I a racist? I work very hard not to be -- I try to remain very aware of my attitudes and feelings about others. I think you could say the same thing about Sam Clemens - his writings show much evidence of that truth.
It is up to each of us to examine those attitudes and feelings -- and get over the fear of the "other" that we all tend to have. I don't know about you, but I came to realize long ago that people are just people -- there is not a human being on the face of this earth who does not have the same feelings I do, the same wants and needs, the same fears. While there are differences between us, the reality is that we are more the same than we are different.
We need to talk about these things -- and Sam Clemens' books and stories provide a very useful framework for that discussion. What's different between then and now? What's the same -- what hasn't changed? No one can possibly argue that we haven't made millions of miles of progress, but there are still millions of miles to go.
I'm not commenting about the plight of the Iowa teacher -- I don't know anything about that and I sure do not trust the media to portray her situation with any real truth (is that bias creeping in there?).
I do know that taking Mark Twain out of the canon of a school (or even seriously calling it a racist work) are the wrong things to do. Even if it is a racist work in your mind, we still want those ideas and attitudes exposed. No one has ever been harmed by the exchange of ideas -- it is only when the opposite occurs that we suffer. We cannot improve the situation by hiding from it. Let's get it out there in the light. Let's talk about it.
If you put yourself back in Samuel Clemens' time and look at his attitudes and his actions (which we can because he wrote about these things much more than other white folks did back then), you'd have to say he was very forward for his time in terms of social justice, in race relations, and his stories quite often threw a spotlight on the problems he saw in race relations in those days.
"Mark Twain" quite plainly lamented the way blacks were treated in his times and Huck Finn was a very anti-racist story for that day and time in our history. But I suspect you would also find there were racist attitudes present in Sam Clemens' psyche. He was a product of his time and environment - just like I am a product of my time and environment.
I suspect I can find elements of racism in my attitudes -- any time I see another human being as different, or separate, from me (whether this is overt or subconscious), this is racism. Am I a racist? I work very hard not to be -- I try to remain very aware of my attitudes and feelings about others. I think you could say the same thing about Sam Clemens - his writings show much evidence of that truth.
It is up to each of us to examine those attitudes and feelings -- and get over the fear of the "other" that we all tend to have. I don't know about you, but I came to realize long ago that people are just people -- there is not a human being on the face of this earth who does not have the same feelings I do, the same wants and needs, the same fears. While there are differences between us, the reality is that we are more the same than we are different.
We need to talk about these things -- and Sam Clemens' books and stories provide a very useful framework for that discussion. What's different between then and now? What's the same -- what hasn't changed? No one can possibly argue that we haven't made millions of miles of progress, but there are still millions of miles to go.
I'm not commenting about the plight of the Iowa teacher -- I don't know anything about that and I sure do not trust the media to portray her situation with any real truth (is that bias creeping in there?).
I do know that taking Mark Twain out of the canon of a school (or even seriously calling it a racist work) are the wrong things to do. Even if it is a racist work in your mind, we still want those ideas and attitudes exposed. No one has ever been harmed by the exchange of ideas -- it is only when the opposite occurs that we suffer. We cannot improve the situation by hiding from it. Let's get it out there in the light. Let's talk about it.
