Raspberry Finn
Published: January 18th, 2011
By: Jim Mullen

Raspberry Finn

You’ve all heard the news that Mark Twain’s classic anti-slavery, anti-racist book has been changed to take out a very offensive word so more teachers would feel comfortable using the book in their classes. My question is: Why are teachers still trying to foist Mark Twain on children? You can bet it wasn’t taught in schools when he wrote it, I doubt that it sold very well in his racially divided hometown of Hannibal, Mo. “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” shouldn’t be read by school age children any more than “Rosemary’s Baby” should be read out loud at a lap sit. Not because of the offensive word, but because making kids read books they are not mature enough to understand makes them hate reading for the rest of their lives. That’s what has kept me from reading “Huckleberry Finn” 45 years since some idiot teacher “made” me read it in high school. Slowly, over the years, I realized that Twain had written a wonderfully subversive book showing that the evilness and degradation of slavery wasn’t just hurting slaves, it also corrupted the slavers and their white enablers as well.

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