Probably done already but…
What do you all say? Should the book banned or not?
The basic arguments are as follows but feel free to add anything that comes into those twisted minds of yours.
Pro Ban
Racist book
Promotes disobediance in children
No Ban
Isn’t racist, but rather makes fun of it.
Teaches many moral lessons
Teaches Analysis
Has many kinds of literary devices
Books should not be banned. If someone doesn’t like what books say let them ban their own children from the library.
Better still, everyone should have an at-home library for their kids (finances depending) full of all the books they think their child should read. Then the child will grow up loving books and appreciating the world views they can show. That child will never let a book be hidden from him if he wants to read it–even the books his parents wanted banned. So banning will no longer be useful.
In the specific case of Huck Finn (or Mark Twain, in general) I say to people that the world is not a utopia. Misbehavior exists. Poverty exists. Racism exists. Better your child see it, have you nearby to explain, and understand why it is unnecessary and bad.
That is, if you think that the book is inherently racist. If you don’t think it is then this is an excellent opportunity to explain to your child that people can change the way the feel about certain things over time and that social climates change. You can also explain to them that everyone is different and we should celebrate those differences. Then you can launch into a good explanation of dialect, colloquialisms and regional flavor.
Books should be a jumping off point for conversations with your kids, not dangerous, horrible things you have to shield them from. Book banners, book burners and censors are what you should shield your child from.
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A Jesusfied sig: Next time I covet thine opinion, I’ll ask for it!
I might be a bit slow on the uptake, but what exactly is meant by “banning” a book ?
From school curriculums ?
From school libraries ?
From public libraries ?
From bookstores ? (No way!!)
Who decides to ban it ? - and, in the library cases, how do you distinguish a decision to ban a book (for ideological reasons) from the decision not to buy it for whatever reason - litterary quality, for instance ?
OK, IMHO the litterary quality and the importance of the book should be the determining factors. Books in school curriczulums should be relatively uncontroversial - they are “forced on” people, so to speak. School libraries need to have a wider representation - and public libraries should only have to defend their choice of books on grounds of litterary quality and importance, the offensiveness of the subject is irrelevant. A public library should be allowed to have - say - “Mein Kampf” (controversial, important, but not exactly of great litterary quality) or “The story of “O”” (controversial subject, but of some litterary merit - eh - so I’m told, anyway 
).
Right, back to the OP: Banning Huckleberry Finn ? You must be out of your minds!
Norman.
That’s “curriculum” - damn these german keyboards.
Norman
Anyone who can reason and read can tell Huck Finn is not a racist book.
I look at it this way. “All Quiet on the Western Front” has a lot of war, a lot of death, and a lot of killing in it. Does that make it pro-war?
Come on.
Hey, Jack, people who can “reason and read” don’t discuss banning books–they’re too busy reading them! 
For the record, IMHO, people who try to have books banned are people who are deeply frightened of something, not necessarily something in the book in question, and I pity them, because they are going through life like someone sitting outside one of those eat-all-you-want smorgasbord places, begging for scraps from the kitchen help, while everybody else in the world is inside pigging out. It’s their loss, but they shouldn’t try to make everybody else sit out there on the sidewalk with them.
If you want to ban a book because it’s racist, how about the Bible?
:::DISCLAIMER: Yes, I am a Christian.::: :rolleyes:
There’s tons of racism in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament. The Israelites discriminated on a regular basis against all sorts of races. Moabites, Jebusites, Canaanites, all of them were regularly slaughtered just because they WERE Moabites, Jebusites, and Canaanites. The Israelites were specifically forbidden to take wives from among various other peoples, just because they WERE “different”. Sounds pretty “racist” to me.
So?
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen
Anyone who believes that Huck Finn is racist has never read the book. Anyone who has can quickly see that virtually the only people who behave with any morality and dignity in the book are black.
In my opinion, it comes down pretty hard on white people.
Saint Eutychus H.M.S.H.
" ‘He is a prince’ , the minstrels sing.
Among men, yes. Among fools he is a king."
Disney Shorts
The Eutychus Papers
Not long ago my son and I were watching the TV show Wishbone. This episode was about Tom Sawyer and the writers changed the name of Injun Joe to Crazy Joe. I was disappointed that they felt the need to re-write Twain, but I did not say anything to my son. Just recently my son read the Illustrated Classics version of Tom Sawyer and he mentioned to me the difference between the book and TV show. I was happy he asked and talked to him about the desire of the TV producers not to offend anyone of native american heritage. It was a good opportunity to discuss this with him.
Spiny Norman, I agree with most of your points except maybe about public libraries. They should not need to defend their books based on literary quality as this is a very subjective idea. If the people in a community want to read trash then the library should provide the trash. But that is just my opinion.
John
Then he got up on top
With a tip of his hat.
“I call this game FUN-IN- A-BOX”
Said the cat.
-The Cat in the Hat
Hum, I guessed no one noticed I DIDN’T take a side when in the OP, but I will now.
Personally I believe that The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn should not be banned since upon true analysis it is a very unracist book and contains many many morals and other things which can and need to be taught.
I however am presenting the counterargument anyway. You need to actually read the book to see that it is not racist. How many people who are disgusted with the word nigger in the very first chapter of the book is going to FINISH the book? Not to mention how many are going to understand it? How many CHILDREN will understand the satire?
Again, I do not advocate Huck Finn’s banning.
Fyi, I’m writing a paper for school on this very subject and obviously I had an ulterior motive for creating this topic 
So I ask now for Permission to use any of your ideas =)
Specifically, any child who is mature enough to get through the fairly long Huckleberry Finn, with its dialect and its 19th century references to antebellum social customs, (and even some technology), is certainly mature enough to understand satire.
Tom~
~Tom
True enough in most places, but I’m speakin about very small children. Some of my friends read books such as Ender’s game(whips out trusty ole paper back, 324 pages)…In then 2nd grade.
What about those children who don’t know anything about the pre-civil war times? What then? (Antebellum? Yesh, big word =) Had to translate it.)
Let’s also not forget that Huckleberry Fin is a hell of a lot of fun to read. Even with the dated language, a child has to be a pretty dim bulb not to get a big charge out of it.
Eh… I didn’t really like Huckleberry Finn. It simply didn’t interest me as much as a good science fiction novel does, but that’s my preference.
Whether younger kids are capable of “reading” it or not is irrelevant. Huck Finn is more appropriate for use in college (or upper-level high school) classes. The students should be old enough to engage in fairly high-level analysis of written works.
The question of whether it should be “banned” or not is overly simplistic. If I were in a supervisory position in an elementary or middle school, I would certainly question any of the teachers who chose to use this book in his/her classes. But it is an incredibly important book and absolutely should be taught at higher levels–we find some reasons for teching it in the OP. A public library would be incomplete without it.
The question of whether it is “racist” or not is, well, stupid. Just about any 19th century book that deals with race contains sentiments that we, today, would consider “racist.” Students must learn that ideas and values change over time. To purge works that contain ideas that are offensive to modern sensibilities is to obliterate history.
Good luck with your paper, Bored, and you may use my ideas.
Please consider posting the finished product. I would love to see it.
Hey, I read Huck Finn in second grade. I got it.
The desire to protect children from something that challenges them and makes them think doesn’t make any sense to me. It just doesn’t.
Bored, I did my second Master’s thesis on banning books and used Huck Finn as my primary example. I can send you some sources if you want (and if you give me a day or two.)
Huck has been the most banned book in American history, and is still among the top ten most challenged by those who wish to remove it from classrooms and schools. Some of the reasons that have been used:
It promotes miscegenation (sp?).
It promotes integration (e.g. it is not racist enough).
It has bad grammer.
Huck’s dad is a poor role model.
Jim is called “Nigger Jim,” and the book is thus racist.
Women are virtually invisible in the book, thus it is sexist.
It slanders Southerners.
It promotes homosexuallity and pedophilia (Jim and Huck raft naked, Huck’s cross-dressing).
It is depressing.
It isn’t modern enough.
A U of Penn study actually showed that reading the book decreased student’s racism, and the other charges are pretty easily beaten, but there it is.
Good luck and e-mail me if you need any aid.
Bucky
Thanks people. I finished my research paper but it was incredibly horrible(High school research paper; I wasn’t allowed to venture into my forte in writing so BLEH), so i’m not even considering posting it.
What about those who don’t? They would then grow up with a influental seed of racism. it’s true that some of us simply learn faster and comprehend abstract concepts earlier, but there are multitudes that do not. That is why I believe it should be taught in the higher levels of High school.
But I agree with you on the idea of challenging children.
Heh cool, I didn’t even think of that one. Well, that’s what you get when you try and change the status quo I suppose.
I believe the present paranoia and histeria regarding racism has obscured many angles.
The word “nigger” which today is considered offensive was not offensive at all at that time. It derived from the Spanish “negro” (black) and it is what they were called with no pejorative meaning attached.
It was later that the word took on a pejorative meaning so I believe people are reading into the word a meaning that just isn’t there.
A note explaining that the word that today is offensive was not so at the time the book was written should suffice.
A few points:
“Anybody hurt?”
“No, ma’am. Nigger got killed”
(Can’t find the text–quoting from memory–please forgive any errors) Would not have the same gut-punch impact had it been “No, ma’am. Black person got killed” or even “No, ma’am, Negro got killed”.
Tom, this is the first time I think I have ever disagreed with anything you have posted, but I think you overestimate the ability of today’s children to appreciate satire and especially less-than-overt satire. My SO’s 19 year old little brother lives with us, and I talk to his friends as they wander through, and I watch them watch television. They have little or no ability to appreciate satire. They watch South Park, and a good number of them are oblivious to anything but the poop jokes. And these are kids in college. On the other hand, it makes no sense not to teach satire just because kids don’t understand satire–obviously, the only way to learn something is through exposure, I think a finely developed satirical sense is important. Huck Finn is our most important work of satire. But satire is the most complex for of humor, and teachers need to teach it, not assume it.
The main complaint about Huck Finn is not that it makes whites look good. Everybody understands that it does not. The complaint is that it does not make blacks look any better. Jim is infantilized throughout the book–he is the sidekick of a child. For example, many people when reading *Huck Finn * for the first time experience a deep jolt of surprise when Jim first mentions his children. Up until that point the reader usually constructs an image or Jim that is far, far too young to be the father of an eight year old. Jim’s participation in all the romantic rescue schemes at the end, when his life is on the line, is truly disturbing.
My main reservation about teaching Huck Finn is not concerned with the students, but rather the teachers. It is an enormously complex work, and I think your run-of-the-mill English teacher does not have a good enough grasp of those complexities to teach the book well–and it is a book that needs to be taught well. To often, teachers want to simplify the text into a simple story about the horrors of racism, thus reducing *Huck Finn} to To Kill a Mockingbird. They do not touch any of the problems in the text (By problems I mean “ambiguities” not “mistakes”) for fear of sounding racist or because they lack faith in their students. Furthermore, many high school teachers have little or no historical background–they can not discuss the social mood of either the period Huck Finn is set in, or the social mood that Mark Twain wrote it in, forty years and an enormous war later. This can lead to many mistakes–for instance, High school teachers will point to Huck Finn and say “Look, it’s anti-slavery!”, completely oblivious to the fact that it was written decades after the civil war ended, when slavery had firmly receded into history.
The second problem I see a lot of with teachers is that most of them teach the idea that one should approach a work of literature through identification with the main character: “How would you feel if you were Huck?” This doesn’t work with Huck Finn or any work of satire, because in satire all the characters are, to a greater or lesser degree, trapped in the culture being satired. Huck never transcends his own racism. It has been brilliantly argued that Huck uses the “ethos of care” in a society that expects him to use the “ethos of judgement”. These terms were coined by a psychologist named Carol Gilligan. What it means is that Huck bases his moral decisions based on relationships and on maintaining relationships, not on any external chart of right or wrong (and he feels guilty about this). Thus, when Huck decides to go back and rescue Jim, he is making a decision about Jim, not about “black people”. He is not forming a new universal moral principle. Twain leaves that step to us, his audience. I am not exaggerating when I say that many, if not most, high school English teachers, do not have the sophistication to understand that the author’s message may be different than the narrator’s. Even if they sorta get it, they do not understand it explicitly enough to explain it to students.
When I talk to high school teachers about why they do not teach Huck Finn the answer is not based on idealism or principle–instead, I hear a lot of: “We can’t get the kids to read it [shrug]”. This makes me want to cry.
Personally, I loved Huck Finn, I plan on keeping copies of it in my classroom, and I would fight tooth and nail anyone who tried to remove it from a school or (perish the thought) public library. But I do not think I would choose to teach it, had I total cirriculum control. For introducing discussions on racism and nineteenth century thought in general, I would prefer to teach “Benito Cereno” by Melville. It also deals with slavery, and it also shows no one in a flattering light–the slaves in question have staged a revolt and have vindictively tortured, murdered, and possibly eaten a good number of people. It also does something Huck Finn does not–it addresses the problem of Northern Racism–people with generally anti-slavery sentiments who still bought into all the insulting stereotypes of the time, and profited indirectly from slavery without a thought. Furthermore, it avoids the word “nigger”, does not infantilize blacks, and does not cause knee-jerk reactions in parents and administrators who have never read it. Our American literary tradition is so rich, and the time we have in school to read books is so limited, that I feel that such a controversial book can be avoided without shortchanging students–as long as “substituting” doesn’t translate into “watering down”. Melville is an acceptable tradeoff, in my humble opinion. Harper Lee is not.
Manda Jo raises many points, but I have to disagree with the majority of them.
First, I have to question on what basis you have decided that teachers are not equipped to know how to teach the book. Surveys, extensive interviews, collected data, or your own opinion based on being a student? If your args are true that teachers can’t teach this book, one wonders if they can teach any book.
Second, a basically forgotten book by Melville (who is also widely censored as a racist, because of passages in Moby Dick) doesn’t seem to me to be an adaquate substitute for what is often called the most important book in American literature, and one that virtually ALL of my international students have read because they thought it was important in understanding America. Do we really need to continue to know less about ourselves than others do?
Third, if the teachers do have a hard time teaching it, there are programs that discuss how to make the book work. Most states require continual education for teachers; one who wished to use the book would be likely to take such a class if they felt they had gaps in their knowledge or abilities.
Fourth, many teachers currently ascribe to “reader response” theory, which does not ask for empathizing with the main character unless that is the reader’s choice.
I may be reading too much into your sig line, in which you say you are a student, but you are committing a lot of hasty generalizations about teachers, teaching, and students that do not bear out what I have found to be the case or what profs of mine who taught in public schools for many years claimed. This does not prove that you are wrong; I simply think tha many of your assertions come off as opinion without sufficient experience or support.
Bucky