No uproar over use of ‘Injun’

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/01/2011 (5572 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

An old Dire Straits song made the news recently when the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council banned it from Canadian radio unless the word faggot was bleeped. They say it’s because the word in the song’s lyrics of Money for Nothing is a slur against gay people.

This caused a slight uproar and got some debate started. Some say it’s an offensive word, but still others say in the context of its use, the word is not meant to offend anyone, but to show the bigotry of the character in the song.

I don’t like the word myself either.

Then there’s the fact that music falls under the category of art, and art is often controversial to make people think differently.

Bleeping the word makes the song playable. That’s basically what they do with a lot of rap tunes on the radio. If you aren’t familiar with rap there’s lots of naughty words.

There’s a similar uproar happening in the U.S. about the word n-word in the classic Mark Twain novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The debate has been around for decades, but now some teachers in the southern U.S. are in a tizzy over it.

A publisher in Alabama is planning to print a new version of Huckleberry Finn where he’ll edit out the more than 200 n-words used in the text of the book and replace it with “slave.” Some teachers want to use this edited version and some don’t.

I found out the word Injun will get replaced in the novel, too, but there’s no uproar there. The I-word is fairly outdated, but I guess to be inclusive it’ll get taken out.

I don’t think I’ve ever been called an Injun but I’ve been called an Indian plenty times, and it was sometimes prefaced by a descriptive word or two that isn’t very nice. It kind of bugs you when you’re a kid but, like most minority people, you learn to deal with it.

Of course, there’s not much outrage or a call for the end of the word Indian. After all, even though the word Indian is offensive to some people, it’s still a legal definition.

I’m so offended by the n-word I wouldn’t ever sing it, say it or write it, but I think censoring Mark Twain’s novel is pretty silly.

To edit out the n-word would erase the whole meaning behind the novel. If you censor a book like Huckleberry Finn, you also censor history.

That’s the beauty of reading. I could never experience the racism that existed in the deep South in the late 1800s, but I can read it and understand it through the eyes of Huckleberry Finn.

That’s why it’s an important book and a good book for young people to read.

To erase the n-word from the novel, as ugly as it is, does a disservice to Twain’s writing and the intelligence of young people. Twain didn’t use the term lightly; he simply wanted to honestly reflect the way of life that existed at a certain time and place in the American South.

He probably wanted us to read and talk about Huckleberry Finn and maybe hoped for a time when people were up in arms over the racist attitudes and stereotypes in the book.

That Huckleberry Finn was written more than 100 years ago and is still hotly debated is a testament to its value and importance. We’ve got to acknowledge the past in order to move forward.

And these days, it seems the only n-words we hear come from rap lyrics and, like I said, they get edited out to get played on the radio. But are they said with purpose? It’s possible.

Hip-hop mogul Jay-Z said something in defence of using the n-word in his songs. It really made a lot of sense. He said “the n-word isn’t the problem; it’s the intention behind the word.”

Jay-Z says he’s from a younger generation that’s trying to take back the n-word and make its meaning something more positive than it was in the past.

In effect, taking a negative word and making it your own positive, even a term of endearment.

Not exactly what Twain may have had in mind, but it’s a good change, too.

colleen.simard@gmail.com