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