Oleta Prinsloo, a visiting professor of history and black world studies, began the discussion of the word, which has its roots in the Spanish and Portuguese for “black.” She said the first recorded use was in the form “negra” and descriptively referred to Africans coming to America in the slave trade.
It wasn’t used as a racial epithet until the 1830s, mainly by poor, uneducated white people, such as Huck Finn’s family, and Twain used it as a way of making fun of the white characters in his novel rather than to be disparaging against blacks, Prinsloo said.
“We would not have the same sympathy for the character by calling him ‘Mister Jim,’ ” she said.
“Racial slavery in America ... was ugly. It was about disparaging people of the other race and (by changing the word), we lose the historical impact.”
Panelist Karen Brentley, a visiting professor in black world studies, said, “When you sanitize a word ... you are taking away from the intensity of what was going on in society. Educators should make people feel uncomfortable because we are looking at it in a context of challenging the system we have today.
“We do not live in a post-racial society,” she said, but she and Prinsloo both stated that when teaching the book, they do not use the word in discussions and do not allow it to be used by students.”
Miami English professor Katherine Kickel discussed the historical importance of the book and the reasons it has been included in the canon of 19th century American literature. She said it was the first American novel that was written in the vernacular of the American people and not modeled after English novels.
“Twain used words that are in the historical context of the times,” she said, asking that if we change the words of Twain, when do we stop changing the words of other authors to make them more palatable.
“Twain is definitely participating in the long history of novelists using violence and the grotesque in his work,” she said, also citing Twain’s influence on Southern writers that came after him, such as Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner. “It’s a slippery slope,” she said.
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