This February, publishers are coming out with an absurd new student copy of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, or “Huck Finn”, as it’s more commonly called. What makes this student copy different? They’ve replaced the n-word with ‘slave’ and the word ‘Injun’ (a derogatory word for American Indians) with ‘Indian.’

This kind of censorship is extremely unfortunate. Yes, I agree with these publishers that the n-word is not a good word and is backed by a terrible history of racism. But that’s just it; we seem to like to ignore our history of racial injustice (and the fact that it’s still a driving factor of our society today). Deleting the word doesn’t delete the history behind it. If we take these words out, it doesn’t make us better people. It doesn’t make the teachers who teach the censored version more racially accepting. It doesn’t make the students in the class more able to learn.

Taking out these words just shows the students who read the censored books that they aren’t mature enough to handle reading a word that they probably hear all the time. The very idea behind this is stupid. Like many South students, I read “Huck Finn” my sophomore year. No one in my class had trouble with the fact that the n-word was used throughout the book. No one (at least to my knowledge) was offended, no one laughed or made a joke of it, no one had not heard the word before. If anything, it helped some students understand it.

For the most part, we learn derogatory words from our friends. Our friends, however, cannot always give us accurate meanings or the context behind these words. When we do learn them from our parents, we hear that they are just ‘bad words to use.’ We often miss out on the lesson of why words like the n-word are not okay to use. A classroom is a place for students to learn, so it doesn’t make sense to censor a chance to do just that. Teaching “Huck Finn” without the n-word and without the word Injun is taking away from an important lesson. A teacher who includes these words, their meanings, and the context in which they are used in her lesson should be commended. This is a lesson that many students would completely miss out on if it were not for books like “Huck Finn”.

There is also the cultural and historical aspect behind these words in “Huck Finn” that is taken away without them. South English teacher Phyllis Hayes, who doesn’t agree with this kind of censorship, said that “any fiction writer represents his culture… if you start censoring words you start censoring that culture.” Although many believe it is such, “Huck Finn” is by no means a racist book. It is told from the point of view of a young white boy, Huck, who was raised in an extremely racist environment, and is therefore a racist himself. In writing the book, Twain attempted to make the story as realistic as possible. The book takes place in the second half of the nineteenth century, when the n-word was used all the time. Huck did not use the word out of hate, but because that was what he was taught to call a slave. “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” is a historical book, and history cannot be changed just because it might cause an uncomfortable conversation.

If people want to censor unpleasantness from literature, the only books left for us to read would be Runaway Bunny and Green Eggs and Ham.