"Nigger Jim" is now "Slave Jim"

There’s much controversy over a new edition of "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" that replaces the word "nigger" with "slave."  I wholeheartedly agree that the change does the original Twain novel a major disservice.  The language police are everywhere.

            I recall several contacts I had with the language police during my years spent in broadcast and print journalism.  Several years ago when I was writing the weekly Auctions and Antiques column in the Philadelphia Daily News. I would preview various auctions on tap for the coming weekend.  One of them featured a piece of furniture known commonly as a “Mammy Bench,” like the type and style found in plantation mansions during and after the Civil War.  It was sat upon by female slaves nursing the offspring of their owners.  The description “Mammy Bench” has over the years come to describe that type and style of bench with no other particular meaning attached. The description apparently emotionally irked, or upset or worse, a female African-American Daily News Editor who directed that the description be deleted or changed.  I told her that it was the name of that particular piece of furniture and that calling it something else would not adequately describe what it looked like. She was unmoved and the description was changed.  So much for accuracy.  

            Years earlier toiling as a news reporter and producer at KYW-TV I submitted a story idea to a newsroom executive about an art exhibition at a Philadelphia museum that included a controversial work depicting breast-feeding.  “We’re not going to cover that crap,” declared the news exec. who to this day chirps loudly and proudly about his wonderful contributions to news coverage in the Philadelphia-Metro market. 

            I also recall an incident not entirely related but one which left an indelible stain on my mind.  I was part of a group of reporters touring a Philadelphia elementary school which had been touted as a “progressive” one in which test scores were improving.  We stopped in a classroom where third or fourth graders were drawing trees.  One girl had sketched a skinny tree with almost bare branches, a drawing she appeared proud of.  A teacher leaned over her shoulder and told the little girl “Oh that’s not how we draw a tree.  A tree has full, leafy branches,” and proceeded to draw over the girl’s drawing.  The girl appeared crestfallen, her creativity stifled.  So much for correcting what didn’t need correcting in the first place, kind of like "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."