The Living Consequences

By now, most readers will no doubt have heard that the “n-word” has been removed from a new edition of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by NewSouth Books, replaced throughout the book with the word “slave.”

I’ve been asked repeatedly, over the last several days, what I think of this idea. The answer, which may surprise some, is that I entirely support the idea of censoring Huckleberry Finn to remove the “n-word”—as long as the word is actually censored (blacked out, blanked out, replaced with square brackets, etc.) rather than replaced with a very different word like “slave.”

Why the distinction, and why am I willing to see Twain’s work altered at all?

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The Florida Modern-Day Slavery Museum, a traveling exhibit consisting of a replica of the trucks involved in one of the most shocking cases of modern-day slavery in the U.S., is currently touring the nation.

The museum has toured Florida extensively, as well as appearing on the National Mall and at the State Department in Washington, D.C. It is now on a lightning tour of other East Coast locations: today, the museum is at City Hall in Boston; tomorrow, it will be in western Massachusetts, and by the end of the week it will be in Baltimore before ending the tour seven days from now with a stop in Charlotte, N.C.

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