I have held discussions with urban students about MT’s perceived racism and the effects of experience and time on the face of prejudice. 

I wonder if those dethroned monuments shouldn’t be put In storage until 100 years hence, when racism will have mutated a few times more. I also ponder whether propriety will one day allow everyone to proclaim “I am a racist by upbringing, not choice. I choose to not pass
It on.”

Alan Kitty, Executive Director
Mark Twain Education Society

“Laughter can shatter the most colossal humbug; blow it to rags and atoms with a single blast.”

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jun 16, 2020, at 12:33 PM, Philip Bauer <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> Once again Barbara/Dr. Ladd, you display the range of thinking which should be more prevalent in our universities.       Thank you.
> Phil Bauer, Sandusky OH
> 
> 
>> On 6/16/2020 11:39 AM, Ladd, Barbara wrote:
>> I've seen this making the rounds. We teach in so many different environments that the answers to the questions you raise will surely be different. As for myself, I will continue to teach her work on occasion--I've never liked her work that much actually, but students are always asking for her--and to ask students what they think about eliminating racist work from the university classroom and for their ideas about how to present it when it is included.
>> 
>> Whenever I teach Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, we talk about the racist language in the text, we look at some of the statements about the issue from both historical and contemporary sources, and students exchange their ideas. I don't often press my own opinion unless asked to do so and then I make it clear to students that my opinion doesn't necessarily need to be theirs (and they tend to believe me, as they should, which tells me that they see me as fair and that makes me very happy). I also tend to teach African American writers and other writers of color in my courses, so they are often reading Susan Choi's The Foreign Student or Linda Hogan's Power or James Weldon Johnson or Toni Morrison or--recently T. Geronimo Johnson, whose Welcome to Braggsville is a good contemporary novel on race and social media and universities. I'm teaching Edna Ferber's Show Boat next fall (the novel and the films and the stage productions) and I don't know WHY I didn't think about teaching that novel alongside Twain's Life on the Mississippi (or at least "Old Times" and a few others chapters from Life-- DON'T scoop me! I want to write about this!)
>> 
>> The opportunity that racism in literature and other cultural forms both historical and contemporary presents for helping students understand it and learn how to debate it--and deal with it in the world around them--is invaluable. These days I do include a statement on my syllabus about the racist language and ideas in some of the texts I teach so that students who choose to can drop the class, which I didn't do 10 years ago.
>> 
>> Aside from the question of O'Connor and Twain in particular, I wonder whether it's possible to distinguish very confidently between racists and non-racists when you are looking at the work of white writers in any historical period following the invention of whiteness. I take your point about on-off switches and "low, medium, and high." It would be interesting to contemplate what an inoffensive or less offensive syllabus might look like and to see how it would be defended.
>> 
>> Of course I teach "southern" literature and race and racism are definitely on the syllabus, and I think that's a good thing for my students.
>> 
>> Anyway, these are questions I think about a lot...so thanks for raising the issue.
>> 
>> Barbara
>> 
>> 
>> Barbara Ladd
>> Professor of English
>> Emory University
>> Atlanta, GA 30322
>> 
>> 
>> ________________________________
>> From: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Hal Bush <[log in to unmask]>
>> Sent: Tuesday, June 16, 2020 9:59 AM
>> To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
>> Subject: [External] Flannery O'Connor as racist -- and the soon-to-be revisited MT?
>> 
>> Some of you might like to see this; Flannery O'Connor as prototypical Christian racist, from the respected scholar Paul Elie. It is already making the rounds, and promises to be a heavily-quoted and referred-to article.  Among other quotes, Elie writes: "in a passage now published for the first time: “You know, I’m an integrationist by principle & a segregationist by taste anyway. I don’t like negroes. They all give me a pain and the more of them I see, the less and less I like them. Particularly the new kind.”   Strong stuff!
>> 
>> I've taught her stories over many years; often in conjunction with texts by Mark Twain, in fact. Both are indeed problematic but I am a believer in teaching the conflicts.  Now I wonder if her stories have become just too radioactive? And since student research moves more and more steadily toward use of web-available Google-found articles like this one, get ready for this piece to show up repeatedly in Works Cited lists from coast to coast...
>> 
>> Probably there will soon be similar charges about other iconic writers, such as our own beloved Mark Twain.  Elie's title, asking "How Racist Was FOC?"-- suggests there are degrees we must be mindful of discerning; "racist" is not an on-off light switch, but rather more like a dimmer switch, possibly on low, medium, or high. Thus, I am also reminded of how the term "racist" itself has changed significantly since FOC died (1964).  Back then, calling Bull Connor or Gov. George Wallace a "racist" was different, and more like that on-of switch.  So we should ponder--and prepare, yet again, for the inevitable follow-ups. (On that note: email me personally if you might like to do a panel or something on these issues, in the near future; assuming such things as panels exist in the near future...).
>> 
>> More generally, this reminds me a bit of our culture's current, contested encounters with historical markers/ memorials of various kinds....along with their demolition. I welcome any thoughts and wisdom in these questions...
>> 
>> 
>> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/22/how-racist-was-flannery-oconnor?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=onsite-share&utm_brand=the-new-yorker&utm_social-type=earned&fbclid=IwAR0KOUrqLTqjTEtGErRnh6Z7Saqso_nSI-MdOh8ZphTLD40LW47rLJux8Sc
>> [https://media.newyorker.com/photos/5ee2a822504fe548cf0b179a/16:9/w_1280,c_limit/200622_r36634.jpg]<https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/22/how-racist-was-flannery-oconnor?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=onsite-share&utm_brand=the-new-yorker&utm_social-type=earned&fbclid=IwAR0KOUrqLTqjTEtGErRnh6Z7Saqso_nSI-MdOh8ZphTLD40LW47rLJux8Sc>
>> How Racist Was Flannery O’Connor?<https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/22/how-racist-was-flannery-oconnor?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=onsite-share&utm_brand=the-new-yorker&utm_social-type=earned&fbclid=IwAR0KOUrqLTqjTEtGErRnh6Z7Saqso_nSI-MdOh8ZphTLD40LW47rLJux8Sc>
>> She has become an icon of American letters. Now readers are reckoning with another side of her legacy.
>> www.newyorker.com<http://www.newyorker.com>
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Dr. Hal Bush
>> 
>> Professor of English &
>> 
>> Director of the Undergraduate Program
>> 
>> Saint Louis University
>> 
>> [log in to unmask]
>> 
>> 314-977-3616
>> 
>> http://halbush.com
>> 
>> author website:  halbush.com
>> 
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