Ben, I'll take mine with garlic, thanks. The racial language and terminology issue is historically fascinating. Almost all the racial terms that are embraced in one era were vilified or considered offensive in another. One of the reasons for the power of "nigger" as a word is that it has maintained its offense for at least 200 years. In a play by a white author from Philadelphia in the early nineteenth century (I can look up the title if anyone is interested), the word is clearly used and accepted by the characters as "fightin' words." No explanation is seen as necessary, and the word is the only provocation for a fight. But then the minstrel shows came along, and they were called "nigger shows" when the blackface actors were white. References in the shows and in advertising to African American blackface actors always refers to them as "colored," and many African American blackface performers billed themselves as "genuine colored" performers. Then later there were the "Coon shouters" (white women singing songs by African American composers, usually in dialect), and the general use of "coon" to refer to African Americans, which seems to have been seen as fairly benign during part of the late nineteenth century, but quickly became horrific as the age of lynching progressed. (Note: I've students today who try to explain to me that they're not really saying what I think they are, that the "new" word they're using is actually "nigga," which is somehow not insulting, is totally new, I'm assured, and completely different. They are shocked when I pull out a white blackface minstrel songsheet from the 1870s that uses "nigga" prominently in the title.) And partly because of the minstrel shows, there were efforts to claim the word as somehow empowering, or at least dangerous. I found one song sheet--hand-written in about 1870--and so far as I can tell, it was performed but never published. It's called "Never Give a Nigger a Gun." The song essentially says: We fought in your war, you armed us. You want the gun back? Come and get it. There was also some effort in the nineteenth century to use "Afro American" but there were strong objections from many who found the term inaccurate, as I recall, and also felt that it was tainted by the "back to Africa" sorts of movements, insinuating that "colored" Americans were somehow not fully American and should "go back where they belong," even though they had been in America for more generations than many of the people spouting the arguments (again, I'd need to look back in my notes for the precise nature of the objections). And around the turn of the century, according to renowned blues singer and composer Alberta Hunter (also the creator of the dance the "Black Bottom" in the '20s, the word "black" itself was fighting words in 1903. In describing a mortician who worked in her Beale Street neighborhood as a child, she says, "He was a tall black man. If you called him black in those days, you'd have your head cut off. We used to resent that. We didn't want people to call us black." Throughout the twentieth century, there have also been many shifts back and forth: "black," "colored," "Negro," etc. all were empowering or respectful at various times and demeaning at others. A note, though--so far as I have been able to learn, the nineteenth century term "darky" (which Mary Mapes Dodge put in _Tom Sawyer Abroad_, raising Twain's ire) was only thought to be polite by white people. It was, so far as I can tell, always seen as demeaning by African Americans. The problem is that so long as racism remains, so long as the racial classifications are not ones of cultural appreciation, any term becomes tainted eventually. When people mean "the n-word" inside, no matter what term they use aloud, eventually the term carries the same pain. William Dean Howells's introduction to Paul Laurence Dunbar's "Lyrics of Lowly Life" is a strong and excruciatingly painful example of this. Dunbar's stylistic response to Howells's underlying racism is brilliant, but the introduction is dreadful to read now. To me, this is part of what Twain reminds us of so painfully 219 times in _Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_. And when students are hurt by reading it in a classroom, it isn't the racism of another era that bothers them. It is the pain of what the word means individually, now. And the fear of what it might mean to the people all around you. Sharon ----- Original Message ---- From: "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask] Sent: Fri, January 14, 2011 6:17:45 PM Subject: Culinary equivalent? I'm thinking of replacing the garlic in my Italian dishes with sugar, so at least some people who object to garlic will have an opportunity to taste real Italian cooking. Got the idea from a recent new edition of Huck Finn. Ben Wise ----- Original Message ----- From: [log in to unmask] To: [log in to unmask] Sent: Friday, January 14, 2011 12:36:59 PM Subject: Re: Thank you And thank you so much for that link, Jerry (also forwarded to me by a friend who saw your post before I did!). It brought up a point about racist terminology that's been sleeping under the more accessible issue of the "n-" word, namely, the equally - indeed more reprehensible and stealthy "N-" word (which I remember using, with some unexpressed discomfort, all during my activist days in the 50s and 60s). Chabon's nine-year-old daughter is right on the money. Don't know what she was thinking, but my take, as a 74-year old, is that "Negro" is even more offensive since it gives social acceptability and pseudoscientific vocabulary to a profoundly racist concept, and was adopted, hook, line and sinker, by the victimized themselves since it seemed to be the only respectable term available. That is, until they discovered that Black is Beautiful and has power. I remember that moment, and it was glorious! RIP Stokely, et al. Let's never forget that "race" is a social construction and its meaning is in the mind of the beholder. Terminology is a powerful way to establish a concept, whether there is any validity to it or not. Ben Wise ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jerry Bandy" <[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask] Sent: Thursday, January 13, 2011 10:42:06 PM Subject: Thank you In the 14 years since I completed an undergrad course on Twain, I've been a steadfast lurker on this list. Only now am I finally compelled to post, even if it is only to post a link to yet another response to the Huck Finn brouhaha. Michael Chabon's response in the Atlantic, http://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2011/01/the-unspeakable-in-its-jammies/69369/ affected me more directly than most other opinions I've read on the subject so far. Like Chabon, I am also a father of two young children with a hearty appetite for books. As in Chabon's anecdote, I know that some day in the ever-nearing future I'll be faced with a similar conflict of how to navigate the n-word and of how to steer my children into the correct contextual current. I know when that moment arrives I will appreciate, even more than I do now, the voices on this list. So in advance, I want to thank you all for your tireless, entertaining, and informative devotion to Twain scholarship. JB