When is it inappropriate to teach the truth? How long must babies come from storks? When do those once routinely referred to as "niggers" no longer receive that white man's lash?
"To Kill a Mockingbird," Harper Lee’s classic novel about racism and the American south, has been removed from a junior-high reading list in a Mississippi school district because the language in the book “makes people uncomfortable”.Strange to think that the word "nigger" might grate on an adult ear and yet mean little or nothing until an eighth-grader hears it from an adult mouth or mind.
The Sun Herald reported that administrators in Biloxi pulled the novel from the 8th-grade curriculum this week.
Kenny Holloway, vice-president of the Biloxi School Board, told the newspaper: “There were complaints about it. There is some language in the book that makes people uncomfortable, and we can teach the same lesson with other books. It’s still in our library. But they’re going to use another book in the 8th-grade course.”
Published in 1960, Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winner deals with racial inequality in a small Alabama town, in the aftermath of an alleged rape of a white woman for which a black man is tried....
An email to the Sun Herald from a concerned reader referred to the book’s use of the word “nigger” when it said the school board’s decision was made “mid-lesson plan”. “The students will not be allowed to finish the reading of 'To Kill A Mockingbird',” the email said “… due to the use of the ‘N’ word.”...
“When do those once routinely referred to as "niggers" no longer receive that white man's lash?”
ReplyDeleteSeems the answer is “Never!” in Trump’s Great Remaking & Re-Whitening of America.
In Trump’s warped world, “Take a knee in protest of racist policies and practices and, ‘You’re fired!’”
I always come back to how we can't evolve beyond our pack/herd instincts. We talk about it, but it's always tabled 'til after dinner.
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