A nice e-mail about “Huckleberry Finn”:
By the time I was a junior Highland Park High School in Dallas in 1971, I had read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn at least a dozen times. I read it for the pure joy of its prose.
But it took Eleanor Thornell, one of the last of that large cohort of never-married school teachers, to awaken a bunch of slack-jawed high schoolers to the book’s profound meaning. Miss Thornell was a genteel, old school Southern woman who had grown up in a Dallas, Texas in which black women weren’t permitted to try on the clothes at Neiman-Marcus.
In the month we spent on the book, we spent the entirety of one class on a single passage.
Huck comes upon the Phelps place and is mistaken for Tom Sawyer by Sally Phelps. Huck doesn’t yet know that Aunt Sally thinks he’s Tom and Huck is reduced to, ”trustin’ to Providence” to put the right words in his mouth.
Asked to explain his late arrival, he told Sally that the riverboat had blown a cylinder head.
“Good gracious, anybody hurt?,” asked Aunt Sally.
“No’m. Killed a n————-.”
“Well, it’s lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt.”
In the never-ending quest to understand the complicated question of race in America, more is said in those 18 words than in the torrents of words that pour from liberal academics, professional race hustlers and politicallly-correct tut-tutters.
Miss Thornell was sufficiently discerning to understand what was being said and to illuminate it for the benefit of a room full of privileged 17-year olds.
But that was when classrooms were full of teachers as opposed to “educators” and the teachers were free to actually teach. And no, Miss Thornell didn’t use any euphemisms or hide behind devices such as “N-word.” She said the word out loud. To do less castrates the lesson…
You use the word referring to Fidel Castro as if that were a bad thing.../
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSo if Ms. Thornell didn't hide from the word, why didn't you write that Huck said, "No'm, killed a n.........."
One hears this word spoken aloud by Black people on Manhattan sidewalks. Millions have watched -- and loved -- "The Wire" and countless other movies and TV shows where a minute doesn't pass without the word tossed about. Yet, some think it has to be stripped from Huck and NRO can't bring itself to use the word when properly criticizing that.
It's worse! I put the offending word in my comment and the NRO comments mechanism automatically told me I could not post it! I give ip!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHmmm. This story reminds me of how Hollywood puts bigoted lines in the mouths of southerners, conservatives, Christians, etc. I thought Huck Finn was humorous but now I wonder how much race-hustling was practiced by Mr. Twain. Well, if you want Yankees buying your book, depicting southerners as bigoted ignoramus' is the way to go.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThomas Sowell writes in one of his books (I regret I do not have an exact citation) of an incident from the antebellum south where a traveller noticed that the foreman of a riverboat was given the worst, most dangerous jobs to the white guys and not the blacks. The foreman explained that these black workers, who had special skills, were far too valuable to risk on the jobs that he gave to the whites. He could afford to lose the white guys (in this context.)
Did I say "context?" That was a big, important word the past summer but it appears to have been misplaced of late. Sowell is interested in the historical phenomenon of slaves being paid (he wrote about it in a recent column). This phenomenon goes back a long time, to Rome and certainly earlier. It follows from simple economic law: skilled labor is more valuable than non-skilled and the labor can be so valuable that it can transcend cultural and political restrictions and law. Of course, slavery itself goes back a very long time indeed. "Until the loom weaves itself," slavery it was believed would be with us
Note: There were of course skilled black labors throughout the south (late 19th century) -- until democrat unions did a very thorough job of removing them from the market. A government can do that.
The British and the Americans began the first concerted movement against slavery in human history (somehow I think this fact was not mentioned in the above classroom.) To be fair, one shouldn't get too excited about the British moral contribution: at the time of the American Civil War it was still the death penalty for an Irishman to suggest that Ireland would be free. Moreover it was common enough practice by the british during the American Revolutionary War to free slaves -- and then infect them with small pox and send them into the American lines.
Note:I do not believe that guilt regarding the treatment of the irish has yet penetrated American class rooms, but in the "Guilted Age" in which we live, just give it time.
The people whose religion begins with the letter "I" were of course the most enthusiastic slavers in history and to the extent that the people of Islamic heritage were induced to abandon slavery, we owe to the British Navy.
History is always a mixed bag, isn't it? Few of our ancestors were blessed with our superior wisdom and moral sensibilities. Teaching history requires great sensitivity and knowledge. Moreover, history is impossible to understand with a knowledge of economic fundamentals. That's why context is so important. I'm confident Ms. Thornell would have been happy to pursue these tangents, but time is short. I'm confident that her students would have well as soon as they left the class, but again time is short. But what does it matter? If no one will read uncomfortable history at NR, if no one cares about Sowell's researches and writings (other that Peter Robinson it appears) best to stick within one's comfort zone.
We now return to our regularly scheduled programming of moral preening, white guilt, and book plugs.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBarack Obama has been crowing about recruiting 10,000 new math teachers. Would that we could field 10,000 Miss Thornells.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhat a curious coincidence.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI've been using the same quote to illustrate what Twain was doing since I first read it... in 1957.
The point that many whites would not have been upset that blacks had been killed, because they were not, in their view, "people" in the same sense that whites were, still stands however.
I've seen for myself newspaper steamboat casualty lists from the period and while whites are listed by name blacks are not. Black slaves are seen as property, like livestock.
So you have
Mr. Hiram H. Marjoribanks, 59, Memphis, TN
Miss Suzybell Pettus, 21, Natchez, MS
Five negroes
Seventeen cows
Twenty pigs
Etc. etc.
Basic economic rationality certainly mitigated the worst abuses, when owners were rational (though the lash calculatedly was regularly used on plantations); but it hardly means racism didn't thrive.
So good for Miss Thornell!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseExactly, Iowa dove. The passage quoted above is fiction, and may or may not reflect the attitude of the Aunt Sally's of antebellum Missouri.
Meanwhile, back in the real world of 2011, white men quietly reading books at DC subway stops get attacked by black teenage girls, and the rate of black children born out of wedlock is 70%, versus 30% in the bad old days of Jim Crow.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhy do you edit the text? Isn't that the same thing you ridicule the "educators" about? I know people that still believe this, that others are less than human. In a way isn't that a factor in the repeal Obamacare movement? Health insurance for everyone, even "those people"?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWe, as a nation, should hold the memory and legacy of the American slave with great honor. At the birth of our nation slave labor sustained us. Their toil and sacrifice help build our republic. How many times have you heard a person give thanks to the American slave for the freedom of our children?
I have always found this the most striking passage in the book, precisely because Huck is embellishing a completely fictitious story. There was no accident, no deaths, and no injuries. The most obvious thing to have responded to the question of whether anyone was hurt was simply "no." After all, when making up a story, why add unnecessary details that could trip you up later?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBut instead of having Huck do the obvious thing, Twain has him add the false detail to the false story, and gives us Aunt Sally's response. Such an amazingly subtle way to drive home the morally corrupting power of the slave system.
I don't quite understand why a post about the value of reading Twain uncensored goes ahead and censors him. Which side are you on?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYes, slavery did wonders for families--"unless your child was sold down the river"!
People interested in trying to determine for themselves the humanity of slavery should try reading real life slave narratives like Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Solomon Northup's Twelve Years a Slave. It's far from a pretty picture, though whites certainly are not portrayed uniformly.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"To be fair, one shouldn't get too excited about the British moral contribution: at the time of the American Civil War it was still the death penalty for an Irishman to suggest that Ireland would be free."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseLet's be fair then: Seems to me the discussion was about slavery, not "The Irish Question." The slaves in the British Empire were emancipated in the 1830s. That's quite a few years before the American Civil War.
Sanitizing and scrubbing books of their content is censorship. Pure and simple. It's just one step short of banning them or burning them altogether. It's always the mark of a society in intellectual and moral decline. If only because it's the equivalent of a cultural lobotomy.
Why isn't this a First Amendment issue on its wat to the Supreme Court? Let the torts begin!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseRiver said, "Let's be fair then: Seems to me the discussion was about slavery, not "The Irish Question." The slaves in the British Empire were emancipated in the 1830s. That's quite a few years before the American Civil War."
The discussion was implicitly about morality. The British deserve credit for their role in the anti-slavery movement. But -- to be fair -- we should recognize that their actions against slavery were limited and conditional. They were perfectly happy to trade with the antebellum South and almost went to war with the US to ensure that the South would succceed in its bid for independence and thereby perpetuate slavery.
And then there is their atrocious treatment of the Irish and lots of others.
Although slavery existed in the US longer than in the British empire, the cost to the US of extinguishing it was vastly greater than for the British.
The British have contributed a great deal to technology, our common culture, our political institutions, and the cause of liberty in the world. But nobody is perfect.
Parting Question: Why does the sun never set on the British empire?
Correct Answer: Because the Lord knows better than to trust an Englishman in the dark.
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