Dear JDD,

Regarding your position on Twain's treatment of American Indians and Blacks
in his varied writings, I would like to submit the opinion that current 20th
Century thought on rasicism really is inappropriate in assessing the
writings
of another century.  We can always take exception to an individual's work
based on the ideologies we embrace today.  Human beings are imperfect, and
like it or not most of us find fault in others, whether they lump those
faults
together by virtue of a race, or on an individual basis.  Certainly, you
were
fault finding with Twain in your comments.  So much of the richness of fine
literature has intolerances that surface as expression representative of
certain social thought patterns.  Twain's audiences understood him, and what
today may seem to be racism or prejudice on his part by calling Joe, Injun
Joe,
was familiar and accepted by his readers, who never had any notion that
people
a century later would take exception to their reality take.  There are those
who would also criticize Shakespeare for his treatment of Othello, or
Joyce for his reference to a Negro baritone with thick lips in one of his
stories.  I think we get carried away with our personal charges of indicting
people all over the world and from all times with what we discern as racism
and bigotry.  I remember attending a workshop last year where Hemingway's
story "Indian Camp" came under attack as racist and cruel.  What, in fact, I
think the story reflected was the virtues of a white doctor who went into a
situation of disease and filth to help an Indian woman in childbirth.  The
terms used to describe the Indians and their environment in this story were
ripped by a few people in the class.  To me, this type of condemnation is
not only absurd, but self righteous and blind sighted.  Nothing of a
redeeming
nature was mentioned about the White doctor and his son, only the supposed
rascist language because Hemingway referred to the woman as a "Squaw", and
pointed out the stench and filth of the Indian camp.  We've reached a point
where no spontaneous honest statement can be voiced without someone yelling
'racism' somewhere, and this strips away the realness and honesty in the
writer's pen.  Everything is up for scrutiny, and God forbid if a word or
phrase is used that is either not 'politically corerect' or 'socially ap-
propriate'.  There is a backlash occurring in this country that undermines
White writers and White society.  These people must show no intolerances or
bigoty, yet they are condemned and criticized regulary with limited
tolerance and
respect on the part of other races, and even members of their own educated
population.  I submit that reverse discrimination is not the way to cure
the ills of White racism, nor that White society must be punished for the
sins
of the past.  Where is their any sanity or justice in this?
As Gandhi once said, "An eye for an eye ends up making the whole world
blind."

SRC
Telemation Institute Participant