Well said. I feel that reading Huckleberry Finn has made me more patient with attempts to improve the language. In Huck Finn, Twain left us an excellent record of how terrifying American speech was during the last century. I expect that future generations will find similar cause for horror in our contemporary vernacular. Every word that dehumanizes also makes it easier to discount the lives of the objects of such language. Once you minimize a group's humanity it is easier to exploit, enslave, torture and kill them. This becomes clearer to me each time I read Twain's brilliant novel. As a result, I am much less tolerent of people who make snide parenthetical comments about attempts to make language more respectful than I am of those who overzealously endeavor to modify our speech. It's quite a stretch to dismiss the use of the word "nigger" as simply "non-pejorative slang" from the last century. I have never once heard anyone quoted as saying, "Let's lynch the African-American." When an offended group chooses to use a term that victimizes them by making it their own, the purpose is to remove its sting. This in no way exonerates those who used the term to further oppression. Barry Crimmins