Hi everyone, I think we want to be careful of simply dismissing the charge that Huck Finn is a racist text and/or that Twain was himself racist. The impulse to cast both author and book in saintly garb has put us in a vulnerable position with students and readers who are, quite rightly, something more than "shocked" when they are assaulted by the text. So, for the record: Huck never admits that slavery is wrong; he discovers the humanity of this particular Black man, and that's it. (And even then the color of humanity for Huck is white). Twain, for all his profound insights into the structures of racial identity, his support of black causes, and his affection for individual African Americans, was finally paternalistic in many of his responses to the black community. He was comfortable with Booker T.; I'm not sure how he would have felt about Dubois--not to mention Marcus Garvey. Neither the man nor his fictional child are beyond reproach, and Twain would more than agree with me here. When we try to whitewash Twain, we miss the power of the claims that he makes in the novel, and we may lose the opportunity to talk about race effectively and realistically. Twain gives us a novel filled with people who are not "hard hearted," and yet who are capable of the most horrific racial crimes. And here I'm not speaking of Pap, who is an embodiment of the Klan mentality; I'm talking about Aunt Sally, who is relieved to find out that "only a nigger" was killed in the explosion on the Mississippi, or Miss Watson, who asks "the niggers" to come in and pray; and even Huck, who, for all his sweet sympathy, will "steal" his friend out of slavery, but who will also allow him to be humiliated for the pleasure of Tom Sawyer. What Twain is finally interested in, and so brillant in representing, is the psychological complexity of the racist and our deep familiarity with him or her. As I often remind my students, the racist for Twain is someone whom we almost want to forgive, someone with whom we share a meal, a bed, a bloodline. If racists only looked like Pap, Twain reminds us, the problem of racism is pretty easy to solve. Unforntunately, the racist has a much more familiar aspect. Taught correctly, this novel ought to make all of us a little anxious and offended. We can get dewey eyed at Chapter 31, but not at the exclusion of all the chapters that precede or follow it. Certainly Professor Wortham is a bad reader of the novel. He invites students into his office, diplays his Huckleberry Finn coffee mug or commemorative stamps, or whatever, and then claims that he is "shocked, shocked to find that there's racism in this text." Like Jane Smilely, he seems to prefer racial narratives that don't trouble the water, if there are any. However, these literary naifs have one point worth rememebering: the novel is not a celebration of racial harmony; it's a sometimes lyrical satire of racism and a portrait of the racist in the mirror. Thanks, Ann