Taylor schools expel 'Huck Finn'
The Detroit News
November 2, 2006
By Karen Bouffard and Oralandar Brand-Williams

Forever praised and forever controversial, "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" has been pulled from classes in Taylor because of complaints about its liberal use of common racial slurs.

In a move that's sparking debate that's dogged Mark Twain's classic since its 1885 publication, Taylor School District officials halted instruction of the book some consider the Great American Novel after at least one African-American parent complained about the racial epithet that's repeated more than 200 times on its pages.

The book has been taught in the district for years without incident. The controversy began when an English teacher decided to have a class read the book aloud and act it out. The class had an African-American student who would regularly hear classmates repeat the slurs.

Now, the book is still on the shelves at Kennedy and Truman high schools, but no longer on the syllabus.

"We want to be sensitive to how the children feel," said Lynette Sutton, assistant superintendent for secondary instruction.

Some parents and students in Taylor, however, are upset about the decision. The 10,000-student district is 74.5 percent white, 20 percent African-American and 4 percent Hispanic, according to the district.

Parent Cyndee Push said school officials in her daughter's 11th-grade class told students not to discuss the decision.

"She said, 'Mom, it's a good book; there are other books on the shelves that have worse words in it'," Push said. "It didn't sound like the teachers were happy about it, the kids weren't happy about it, nobody was happy about it.

"We all read this book as a kid -- I want to see this book on the shelves. It's about what it was like then. I don't think it should be removed, it should just be discussed."

Jim Netter, the former chairman of the Legal Redress Committee for the Western Wayne County chapter of the NAACP, said he doesn't think the book should be banned, either, as long as rappers toss racial slurs around in their lyrics.

"We say nothing when it's in rap songs, but we want to burn the books of history," Netter said.

To ban the book "would be to deny all points of history such as the (history) of Rosa Parks and her humiliation the Brown v. Board of Education decision as well as Plessy v. Ferguson," he said."The real story was to set Jim free (The book) is necessary in order to show the unfortunate truth of American history and to bring it to modern history."

Taylor's action is hardly unique. The American Library Association named the classic one of the top five most banned books in the United States during the 20th century.

In earlier years, it was targeted because of its sympathetic portrayal of African-Americans. Now, it's because of the racial pejorative used to describe Huck Finn's friend, a slave named Jim.

The novel remains a staple in many Michigan classrooms.

Kathy Ladd, English Department chairwoman at Stevenson High School in Livonia, has taught the book for more than three decades and said it's a product of its time that deserves to be studied.

"This is an old, old controversy -- it goes back to the '60s, and I think its unfortunate that it can get in the way of teaching what many believe might be the greatest American novel, by the greatest American author," she said.

"It's a picture of a world, that's what it is. You're getting a view of how people lived it reflects not only the times, but also the mood of the times. Kids deserve to be presented with tough issues. They do not deserve to be sheltered."

Lawrence Berkov, a professor emeritus who teaches Twain at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, said good teachers shouldn't be intimidated by language in the "brilliant" and "profound" book.

"The fact that the (word) is used in the novel is disturbing, but it's the job of the teacher to explain why," Berkov said. "The fact that an ugly word appears is no reason at all to ban the book."

The Taylor district also is reviewing other books in its syllabus that could be offensive. "We're trying to see very clearly either side of this situation, and I'm not sure what the right decision really is," Superintendent Lee Lewis said.