In defense of Mark Twain and the N word.

First, I make no apolo­gies for what I say. I have thought it through, weighed the con­se­quences, and acted accord­ingly. I believe that I will prob­a­bly be assailed by the igno­rant, super­fi­cial, and juve­nile; but it is up to them to become informed. It is not up to me to pan­der to the igno­rant. There is a move­ment afoot to san­i­tize soci­ety by shield­ing gen­er­a­tions from words. Words, thoughts, let­ters, sen­tences, and books which express ideas. The works of author, Mark Twain, are mutat­ing into a watered-down plat­i­tude of lit­er­ary sophistry thanks to thought police. Does such a fate await those of us who express our­selves freely in print; for later, or present, stormtroop­ers of speech to tear asunder?

I am no fan of the word nig­ger. I have used the word in the past. I have never called a black-person, African-American, person-of-color, negro,.…or any of the other “per­sons” clas­si­fied and renamed in feigned attempts at polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness, a “nig­ger”. As a mat­ter of fact, I’ve never called any­body a nig­ger. I’ve used the word in con­ver­sa­tion, in ref­er­ence to, anec­do­tally.… but never in directly address­ing another human being. When I did use it, I was speak­ing out of igno­rance. The soci­ety in which I grew up afforded me many oppor­tu­ni­ties to be inti­mately famil­iar with many sorts of big­ots, racists, and other igno­rant persuasions.

Do I apol­o­gize for my igno­rance and use of the word nig­ger? No. Of course not. I will apol­o­gize for a delib­er­ate act, but not one that arises from not know­ing. How did I come by my igno­rance? Grow­ing up in the 60’s and 70’s I was afforded access to much of the civil rights unrest. I heard the word nig­ger used often when refer­ring to unruly and auda­cious blacks. “How dare those nig­gers!” was the objec­tion I recall. The unfor­tu­nate thing is, many of those peo­ple are still with us; pos­sess­ing the same point of view and har­bor­ing hate and dis­dain for blacks.

There is a huge inequity in that blacks are given a pass at using the word nig­ger. If the word is so offen­sive then it is color-blind and not just offen­sive to blacks. What if the word became a slur against, what is com­monly referred to as “white-trash”? If white-trash were referred to as nig­gers then would the word lose it’s sta­tus as a racial slur? I hear blacks refer to each other as “nig­ger”, “nigga” and “my nigga”. I guess it’s pos­si­ble that some blacks would be offended at being called nig­ger even if done so by another black, but I don’t think the same level of out­rage and indig­na­tion is reached when within the same race.

The puz­zling thing is that black peo­ple don’t mind being treated like nig­gers by the gov­ern­ment. Fol­low­ing the Civil War and the pas­sage of the Four­teenth Amend­ment to the Con­sti­tu­tion of the United States black peo­ple were drawn into fed­eral sub­jec­tion and then bestowed with “civil rights”. Civil rights are cre­ated by gov­ern­ment, reg­u­lated by gov­ern­ment, and can be taken away by gov­ern­ment. I have never heard any­one in gov­ern­ment acknowl­edge that, not only blacks but all peo­ple have nat­ural, unalien­able rights that orig­i­nate with their Cre­ator and are out­side the purview of gov­ern­ment. Yet, the so-called “civil rights lead­ers” keep lead­ing the black peo­ple by the nose ring in the pur­suit of their “civil rights’, and thereby deceiv­ing them into neglect­ing their nat­ural, unalien­able rights. If there is such a thing as a nig­ger, and I’m refer­ring to the immoral, disin­gen­u­ous, fraud­u­lent, dis­hon­est, unscrupu­lous, and vile actions of a per­son who would rather choose, and lead oth­ers to, servi­tude and sub­jec­tion, then I’d say that many of the civil rights lead­ers fit that bill. This is not to vil­ify those who are pur­su­ing civil rights with­out know­ing the true nature of civil rights and believe them to be striv­ing for all rights.

If some­one is going to be offended by the word nig­ger then they should be equally offended at being treated like one. Nig­ger is a term of dis­dain and hate that prob­a­bly fomented after the Civil War and spread with the black people’s asser­tion and strug­gle towards free­dom, as opposed to set­tling for the watered down civil rights. I am not, how­ever, going to ignore the exis­tence of the word because of some self-imposed over-sensitivity. The word is not ugly, it is not hate­ful and it is not deroga­tory. It is a word. It is the intent, emo­tion, con­text, and inflec­tion applied when using the word that makes it what it is to some peo­ple. If nig­ger is so ter­ri­ble, then is not the words mur­der, rape, and hate equally as abhor­rent? If we are to look at what a word means, nig­ger being an igno­rant utter­ance towards black peo­ple, then afore­said words, mean­ing much more hor­ri­ble things than just a slur, should be banned as well. If I har­bor hate and big­otry in my heart towards a race and extend a sanc­ti­mo­nious hand in feigned friend­ship, is not what­ever word I assign to that ges­ture, be it friend, neigh­bor, cit­i­zen.… on par with nig­ger? Yet, we focus on an arrange­ment of let­ters in defin­ing hatred as opposed to the actions of men. How unfortunate.

My black friends, of whom I have many, will under­stand this dia­tribe. Oppor­tunis­tic whites will use this to deflect their short­com­ings towards my char­ac­ter in hopes of min­i­miz­ing their fail­ings. Disin­gen­u­ous blacks will seize my words to fur­ther per­pet­u­ate more hate and divi­sive­ness. If you are a hate­ful, narrow-minded bigot then that is your mis­ery. If you are a sanc­ti­mo­nious oppor­tunist look­ing for a whine fac­tor then that is your prob­lem. For the ratio­nal and rea­son­able who rec­og­nize the world, and peo­ple, for what they are and refuse to be iden­ti­fied by the hate­ful, igno­rant words of oth­ers, then I say wel­come! Remem­ber the word “nig­ger” for what it is. A symp­tom, a dis­ease, a defect, and iden­ti­fier of hate and igno­rance. We can’t hide from the ugli­ness in the world, but we can real­ize it for what it is and choose not to par­take in its dehu­man­iz­ing effects.

By the same token, it is still just a word. The words of Mark Twain pos­sess just as much cul­tural sig­nif­i­cance as they do lit­er­ary sig­nif­i­cance. His choice of words are like tools in the arse­nal of a mas­ter crafts­man. Many great works from antiq­uity began with crude tools and oppres­sion. The pyra­mids derive from ham­mers, chis­els, and slave labor. Why do we not toss a cover over them? Mark Twain pre­sented us with char­ac­ters from a time in his­tory where big­otry was ram­pant and atroc­i­ties com­mon. I do not focus on the name, “Nig­ger Jim”, as much as I do the young boy, “Huck Finn”, see­ing Jim through eyes not yet clouded with prej­u­dices of the day, and instead, see­ing Jim for his human­ity. Nig­ger Jim is the name Mark Twain used to intro­duce us to the char­ac­ter as viewed through the world’s eyes at the time, and yet, Huck Finn chose to tear that label apart through his com­pas­sion and rea­son. It is the dif­fer­ence between help­ing the needy, and offer­ing assis­tance to the tem­porar­ily dis­ad­van­taged due to pecu­niary inconvenience.