Friday, June 6, 2008

Twain Spinning

I'm a big Mark Twain fan. Incredibly, in my lifetime, I've seen his masterpiece, "Huckleberry Finn," banned twice: Once by white fools, now by black fools. As a man who suffered no fools gladly, Twain's got to be spinning.
Growing up, I watched white racists remove "HF" from my school library. They did not like the novel's message of racial equality.
Now, I turn on my radio and here's some black "leaders" banning "HF" because it contains the "n-word." Never mind the book's historical significance as the first major literary work denouncing white-on-black racism. Never mind that the equality of blacks and whites is the entire premise of the book!
Here's my question for these supposedly concerned citizens:
If I proclaimed "Anyone saying n----- should be jailed," would that make me a racist? After all, I used that word.
It's a real testimony to Twain's genius that he could come up with a book rejected by both the KKK and the NAACP. He's got to be spinning!

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