One of the most disturbing scenes from the ABC miniseries "Roots" was the part where LeVar Burton's defiant Kunta Kinte was flogged until he whimpered in tired breath "my name is Toby." It was as disgusting as it was disturbing, but it brought home the message of how ugly chattel slavery was in Colonial America and thereafter.

No version of the show has ever been changed to satisfy political correctness, so it brings question as to why new editions of "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" would be published without the controversial (and too-often debated) 'n-word." The author, Mark Twain, used it and made his meaning plain when he published it in 1885.

If you'd never been assigned to read Huck Finn in fourth grade, it's pretty much a sequel to "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," and involves the adventures of two boys living in the Antebellum South and their attempt to free an enslaved friend. Twain, known as much for his wit as he was for his white hair and handlebar mustache, rarely held back when it came time for social commentary and did not censor himself much in his writings.

But that's the point. Because Twain never wrote with light ink, his message always got across and he is still widely read an entire century after his death. So despite how painful it is for us to read the word "ni**er," perhaps that was his intent.

Tons of comedians and rappers defend the use of the n-word because they feel embracing it nullifies the damage it can do. But I think the opposite. It should do as much damage as pouring alcohol on an open wound. They say it doesn't mean the same thing for this generation, that its meaning has been turned upside down.

They are wrong. I don't know of a single person who became more educated, wealthy or enlightened because they go around saying "ni**er" all the time. I have yet to see a societal problem solved, a war ended or a disease cured by the n-word.

And that's why it should not be edited out of Twain's novel. Its use by the characters is clearly to denigrate Jim and all other blacks. The prose of the book makes it clear that its use doesn't nullify anything. Simply put "ni**er" is how racists want to look at blacks. Huck Finn illustrates that fact with the point that a truly free person would never want to wear the name given to him by someone who hates him.

That is something you can never turn upside down.





Racial slurs are not a good part of our language. They are meant to hurt and they should stay that way. Yes, we have to acknowledge that groups of people begin to use their epithets among themselves, and it does serve a defensive psychological purpose.

At the same time, those same epithets should be regarded as ugly bastardizations of our language, rather than something we make a permanent part of the vernacular for 14-year-olds with pants hanging below their butts, who say the n-word on public transportation with little regard for who hears him.

At that point, it becomes a sign that people really don't have to think before they speak. It becomes a sign that we're teaching our children they don't have to be responsible with their words. And when that happens, words really do lose their meaning.

And we become a culture of people who have nothing to say at all.