Confronting racism honestly, responsibly

Every semester, African-American students somewhere are forced to endure the painful experience of hearing the N-word repeated dozens of times by classmates and, sometimes, teachers.

The moment comes during assigned reading and class discussions of "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," a novel set in the pre-Civil War-era about a young boy and a runaway slave. Schools around the country have grappled with the question of banning the book. Some have banned it.

Most recently, the book is being read by high-school juniors in the Issaquah School District. And, once again, the N-word rings in school hallways.

Such ugliness notwithstanding, the book should not be banned. To do so would take us down a path littered with book bannings, from "The Grapes of Wrath" in an Iowa school district to "Brave New World" in a district in Missouri. Issaquah has already removed "The Catcher in the Rye" from its optional reading list, citing vulgarity and sexual content.

Samuel Clemens, who wrote under the nom de plume Mark Twain, helped expose slavery as a racist and dehumanizing system and an undeniable part of America's past. Liberal use of a racial epithet describing blacks says much about the human condition in Twain's time. Avoidance isn't the answer. Confronting racially offensive terms with sophisticated educational approaches offers a better choice.

In addition, responsible teaching ought to include preparing students to read "Huckleberry Finn." Discussions about the racist times Twain's characters lived in ought to coincide with introductions to the author's African-American contemporaries — writers such as Frederick Douglass, Charles Chesnutt and Paul Laurence Dunbar.

The sprinkling of the N-word in rap lyrics and conversations among some young people is no excuse for ignoring its painful effect on African Americans. But examples in literature can serve as teaching moments. Another great novelist, Ralph Ellison, credits Twain's literary eloquence with exposing the human impact of slavery.

Teachers who want to take on "Huck Finn" ought to borrow a line from Ellison when conveying the book's importance: "Jim's condition as American and Huck's commitment to freedom are at the moral center of the novel."