From the NEW YORK TIMES:
A new edition of “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” has generated much controversy because it will replace the word “nigger,” which occurs 219 times in the book, with “slave.” (The edition also substitutes “Indian” for “injun.”) Alan Gribben, an English professor at Auburn University at Montgomery, proposed the idea to the publisher because he believes the pervasive use of that word makes it harder for students to read or absorb the book. In an introduction to the new edition, he wrote, “even at the level of college and graduate school, students are capable of resenting textual encounters with this racial appellative.”
The publisher, NewSouth Books, has been roundly criticized for making the word change. But is there never any justification for altering a classic — even if the revised edition would serve a specialized audience (like high school students) or readers who feel assaulted and are unable to get past that epithet?…
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I think it does. First of all, the very fact that they are changing every reference of “nigger” to “slave” makes the reader believe that every single black person in the book of Huckleberry Finn was owned by a white person and that’s NOT the case as there were a few black people that were free men/women.
The fact is, nigger was the term used at the time that Twain wrote this novel and in the timeframe of the book and if people can’t keep that in mind when reading a piece of literature set during that time in the United States should not be reading the book. I think changing the words is also disrespectful to classic literature because it shows that nothing is safe or considered sacred simply because people are suddenly offended and wish to be politically correct.
I find it rather telling of our society in some ways that people of color can call one another “nigger/nigga” and we aren’t particularly offended by it and that someone else can call them that and it’s considered derogatory. Admittedly nine times out of ten, it was probably meant that way, but because it’s in literature form we think that we can change it simply because we don’t want to face the challenge of answering our children’s questions about what it means because it’s a “hard” topic. Children eventually learn of the Civil War and of slavery in school. Does that term come up in school? No, but changing a word doesn’t change a history this nation has and it doesn’t change how a writer from the 19th century wrote his book and it shouldn’t be changed over 100 years later because *gasp* it’s such a naughty term.