Subscribers,
        While I know it is common nettiquette to spend some time in a
discussion group before entering the fray, I could not sit out this
discussion on the charge of racism in _AHF_ even though I am new to this
newsgroup.
        IMHO, the question about racism is not exactly the point.  It is
no only unproveable that Twain was not a racist, but it is also
uninteresting.  What, to me, is more interesting is that Twain wrote a
book that contacted race at every turn; his characters adressed the
problem, his plot contacted the problem--yet he never made race a
determiner or a motivator for his characters' actions.  That to me is
the most incredible part of _AHF_.
        In order to write this novel, Twain had to create careful ways to
differentiate between black characters and white characters.  It is
interesting that the moniker most often used for white characters is the
lack of a label.  Black characters are _always_ called "nigger."  This
come with a small handful of exceptions.
        For instance, Twain puts so much emphasis on the words
"man" in Col. Sherburn's speech about the workings of a mob and the need
to bring a "man" along.  It is with that word that Twain makes the most
striking of the exceptions of the "nigger rule."  After Huck and Jim's
seperation by the riverboat in the fog, Huck is lead to Jim's hiding
place by his servant Jack.  When he pushes through the bush, Huck tells
the reader that he "found a *man* lying there asleep--and by jings it was
my old Jim!" (123).
        My contention is that examples such as this (and other examples in
this
text and others) indicates that Twain was not ust trying to write a
"non-racist" novel, but that he was actively trying to show that race
was (and is) an arbitrary construction of society.  This point becomes
more clear after _Pudd'nhead Wilson_ and _Which Was It?_ (a *very*
interesting unfinished manuscript) are taken into account.
        Finally, [Thank you for reading on if you have ;)] I must agree with
two others that _Satire or Evasion_ (ed. Tenny and Davis) and _Was Huck
Black?_ (Fishkin) are two of the best books that I have come across, but
there i
s also a *great*
section in Toni Morrison's _Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the
Literary Imagination_.  Further, an older (yet still interesting)
perspective that is somewhat off the topic, is "Change the Joke and Slip
the Yoke" (Ralph Ellison, _Partisan Review_ 25, 1958: 212-222) which
shows how important Twain has been to the African American writing
community of this century.
        Again, thanks for bearing with me.

Virtually,

Jonathan P. Braman