Somewhere in all of this is a really clever analogy about whitewashing history and whitewashing Aunt Polly’s fence. Were I only smart enough to know what it was.
This issue seems to come up every few years with Huck Finn. I truly don’t understand it. I get that it’s an offensive word. A word that shouldn’t be thrown around lightly. But it’s Mark Twain.
Even if you think the book’s anti-racism message doesn’t excuse Jim’s minstrel showyness, it’s still a book worth reading for precisely that reason. Talk about why the word was used then and why it shouldn’t be used now. Hiding the problems of the past makes them harder to learn from.
UPDATE: Fixed a spelling error in the comic. Who knew hypocrisy had an “i”?
UPDATE II: Apparently the WordPress iPad app screws up text formatting. Consider yourself warned if you’re one of my five readers and have an iPad and a WordPress blog.
