Cross-posted on Horse Head Soup:
Nigger.
There, I said it. Was that so bad?
A company called NewSouth books is publishing a new version of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn in which the word "nigger" has been purged and replaced by the word "slave." The editions are intended for use in public schools. Story here.
This is ridiculous. The use of the word "nigger" as a pejorative or a descriptor of black people is offensive in the extreme. But we have taken avoidance of it too far. Even in news reports about this story, reporters resort to the euphemism "the n-word" with the same cowering trepidation with which characters in the Harry Potter series refer to Voldemort as "he who shall not be named." (Bravo to the Australian Broadcasting Company, the source of the article I hyperlinked, for not following the herd.) What are we so afraid of? Just saying the word doesn't make you a bad person. It's all about context.
The word "nigger" appears over 200 times in Huckleberry Finn. It was a common part of the colloquial speech that Twain captures so well. Changing a classic piece of American literature -- arguably the greatest American novel ever written -- to placate our modern sensibilities is the worst kind of political correctness.