I hate the word 'nigger.' I similarly hate its compound derivative
'nigger-lover.' I hate all the racist ugliness that goes with both terms.
Born in central Louisiana in 1954, I heard the former used to refer to way
too many good people and the latter often used about me and anybody else
who dared to speak out against the racism prevalent all over America when I
was growing up. Racial hatred never made any sense to me. I can explain it
in historical terms, but it never got hold of me in any visceral way. There
were probably lots of reasons for that, but one was that an
African-American man twenty-plus years my senior who worked in my family's
hardware store took me under his wing when I was a boy. Interestingly, his
name was James, though nobody ever called him 'Jim.' He was as fine a man
as I've ever known, but that didn't stop racists from using the 'N' word
for him. The first time I read 'Huckleberry Finn,' I was in third grade.
Much of it made me laugh, but the following scene, where Huck decides
against returning Jim to the Widow resonated so powerfully even then that I
still struggle to describe it. I think it is the most important passage in
American literature. And I doubt very much that it would carry the same
impact without Huck's almost casual use of the 'N' word as he wrestles with
his conscience in the face of Jim's obvious humanity. Taking it out is like
trying to depict war without showing blood and bone. It can't be done.
From Chapter 31 (and it makes ME shiver):
Once I said to myself it would be a thousand times better for Jim to be a
slave at home where his family was, as long as he’d got to be a slave, and
so I’d better write a letter to Tom Sawyer and tell him to tell Miss Watson
where he was. But I soon give up that notion for two things: she’d be mad
and disgusted at his rascality and ungratefulness for leaving her, and so
she’d sell him straight down the river again; and if she didn’t, everybody
naturally despises an ungrateful nigger, and they’d make Jim feel it all
the time, and so he’d feel ornery and disgraced. And then think of me! It
would get all around that Huck Finn helped a nigger to get his freedom; and
if I was ever to see anybody from that town again I’d be ready to get down
and lick his boots for shame. That’s just the way: a person does a lowdown
thing, and then he don’t want to take no consequences of it. Thinks as long
as he can hide, it ain’t no disgrace. That was my fix exactly. The more I
studied about this the more my conscience went to grinding me, and the more
wicked and low-down and ornery I got to feeling. And at last, when it hit
me all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of Providence slapping me
in the face and letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the
time from up there in heaven,whilst I was stealing a poor old woman’s
nigger that hadn’t ever done me no harm, and now was showing me there’s One
that’s always on the lookout, and ain’t a-going to allow no such miserable
doings to go only just so fur and no further, I most dropped in my tracks I
was so scared. Well, I tried the best I could to kinder soften it up
somehow for myself by saying I was brung up wicked, and so I warn’t so much
to blame; but something inside of me kept saying, “There was the
Sunday-school, you could a gone to it; and if you’d a done it they’d a
learnt you there that people that acts as I’d been acting about that nigger
goes to everlasting fire.”
It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray, and see if I
couldn’t try to quit being the kind of a boy I was and be better. So I
kneeled down. But the words wouldn’t come. Why wouldn’t they? It warn’t no
use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from me, neither. I knowed very well
why they wouldn’t come. It was because my heart warn’t right; it was
because I warn’t square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting
on to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest
one of all. I was trying to make my mouth say I would do the right thing
and the clean thing, and go and write to that nigger’s owner and tell where
he was; but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You
can’t pray a lie—I found that out.
So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn’t know what to do.
At last I had an idea; and I says, I’ll go and write the letter—and then
see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a
feather right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of
paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote:
Miss Watson, your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below
Pikesville, and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the
reward if you send. HUCK FINN.
I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt
so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn’t do it straight
off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking—thinking how good it
was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to
hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the
river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the
night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along,
talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn’t seem to strike no
places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I’d see him
standing my watch on top of his’n, ‘stead of calling me, so I could go on
sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and
when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and
such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me and do
everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at
last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox
aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever
had in the world, and the only one he’s got now; and then I happened to
look around and see that paper.
It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was
atrembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I
knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to
myself:
“All right, then, I’ll go to hell”—and tore it up.
It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said. And I let them
stay said; and never thought no more about reforming.
--
William B. Robison, PhD
Department Head / Professor of History
Department of History and Political Science
Southeastern Louisiana University
SLU 10895
Hammond LA 70402
985-549-2109 phone
985-549-2012 fax
[log in to unmask]
http://www.selu.edu/acad_research/depts/hist_ps/index.html
http://www.tudorsonfilm.com/
http://www.impairedfaculties.com/
History teaches students to read intelligently, think analytically, write
clearly, accurately assess past trends, rationally predict future
developments, and understand the real world. Now *that* is workforce-ready!
History does offer us very real lessons, but they are seldom simple and
straightforward. To understand and benefit from them, you have to know your
history very well. That is why history matters as much as math, science,
technology, or any other subject.
"A young horse is fast, but an old horse knows what's going on." – Muddy
Waters
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