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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
@Soban: I don't think anyone has said that we should send death threats to legislators whom we disagree with. That should not be done by anyone regardless of their position or 'tribe'. Trying to frame the argument in terms of this is really puerile and disingenuous.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"As I said earlier, I never did read Huck Finn in high school, so I’m don’t think it’s absolutely necessary to teach it. Are there better, more diverse choices? Well, I can’t speak for the quality, but for diversity, definitely. So I do think it’d be worth replacing it in the curriculum.
I don’t know if passing a law banning it is the right way to go about this, though. I’m not saying that no books should be banned from schools, mind you, but I think that should probably be saved for books that are essentially hate speech in text, like Mein Kampf and the like. And Huck Finn, while certainly problematic in portrayal of race, is not that from what I understand.
My personal worry is that this would set a bad precedent, and encourage reactionaries to advocate for schools to ban books THEY find distasteful, which could spell trouble in states they have a substantial foothold in. I suppose that might all be hand-wringing, though.
Now, I would suggest the way to go about this would be to put pressure on the school board to make changes, though I’ll confess that I don’t know how well that would work.
Oh God! Natural light!Apropos of nothing, I didn't read Huck Finn, did read Tom Sawyer, but the Mark Twain book that actually stuck with me the most that I read in school was Puddnhead Wilson. It was, if nothing else, my first exposure to the absurdity that is the One-Drop Rule.
Was out in the garden and a thought occurred to me,if they drop the book because they object to the book's racist language,whose to say someone else with less noble intentions might try to use similar logic to get other books pulled from the school's teaching mandate?And to my knowledge it has happened with books such as the Colour Purple and To Kill a Mocking bird
have a listen and have a link to my discord server@Soban
Respectfully, shut the fuck up. Looking throughout history, no marginalized group ever got out from under the heel of the ones keeping them down by being nice to them and asking respectfully. They got out by being mean, rude, assertive, and sometimes forceful.
Gandhi and Martin Luthor King Jr didn't win their respective battles for Civil Rights by being nice, they won by demanding it. They didn't physically fight, but they sure as hell didn't listen when people told them to "be nicer", they demanded rights and they fought for them using words and protests.
No-one ever enacts great change unless someone suffering under the current system makes a big stink about it, and anyone who says otherwise is either misinformed and naive or a coward afraid to step forward for the sake of others, including you.
Also, two wrongs absolutely make a right, as anyone who knows basic multiplication with negative numbers can tell you.
I concur, although not with the first sentence expletive part. See: MLK’s letter about white moderates.
I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.
In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn't this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn't this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn't this like condemning Jesus because his unique God consciousness and never ceasing devotion to God's will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber. I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.
Edited by wisewillow on Mar 22nd 2019 at 1:44:24 PM
I'm gonna go ahead and say the arguments for keeping an incredibly dated book in school curriculum are not very strong at all. No one's asking for Song of the South to be re-ran in select theaters.
i'm tired, my friend>If niceties and official channels won't make politicians listen, then breaking into their routine and shaking them up may be the only way.
I think that probably only works if they would already be predisposed to helping you. If they aren't, then you are not likely to be saying something that they haven't heard before. Especially in today's day in age where politicians are well informed of the issues and still make wrong decisions.
What I've found when I look back at times that I've changed my mind, it's been because of slow pressure in a direction from people I already like. I doubt there is much someone I strongly disagree with can say (even if they are completely correct and factually accurate) that would change my mind. However, the exact same thing said by someone who I occasionally do agree with is much more likely to make an impact. People rarely make 180 degree turns in a day, and when they do it's because many small 1 degree turns have built up to a tipping point.
>At the very least, how could it make things worse?
Other then by pushing them away from your point of view?
>If getting social justice was as easy as being nice and patient then we would have solved it a long time ago.
People equate being nice with softness and being unable to get what they want. Good Is Not Soft. Also I think there is plenty of room for impatience and resistance to things that we are against. Once we are in power, how do we want people to resist against us? If we don't want harassment, then perhaps we shouldn't harass.
>Looking throughout history, no marginalized group ever got out from under the heel of the ones keeping them down by being nice to them and asking respectfully. They got out by being mean, rude, assertive, and sometimes forceful.
I was writing this before I posted, but I agree. However, You seem to be equating "Hey guys, perhaps we shouldn't do things we wouldn't want done to us" with "be nice". That's not true. It's like showing love, showing love doesn't mean the person you are loving will like what you are doing. To paraphrase Freefall
, "That's because you think of civility as something light and fragile. My version of civility has calluses and dirt under the fingernails and isn't above bringing brass knuckles to a fight."
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Well, if your class is American literature, well, Huckleberry Finn IS American literature. You might as well ban teaching Moby Dick if your reason is "This is old" which in a lot of cases would kind of hamstring teachers trying to teach about the subject. And eliminate several black authors as well. So yeah, that specifically is a poor argument for it.
In any case, I sort of agree with Raineh? Mostly in the sense that dunking on something (for whatever reason) is not enough to promote diversity. Eventually, you have to start promoting the books you'd like to see in the curriculum. And I think starting with a positive is generally a better way to generate enthusiasm for a particular subject than starting out with a negative. "This is bad" just tends to generate defensiveness. "This is pretty awesome, and I'd like to make more room to share it" seems like a stronger way to start.
(Unrelated I'd be for dumping Shakespeare due to oversaturation in the culture. We have other historical playwrights for fuck's sake. But this is probably going off topic.)
Edited by AceofSpades on Mar 22nd 2019 at 11:59:18 AM
Ok so I went and read that article and it turns out it's a non-binding resolution. Meaning they'll ask the schools to "play nice" according to the resolution. But with no way to enforce this it's entirely toothless to start with.
Probably because this way they won't get a "free speech" kind of lawsuit. But this is a lot of fuss for something no one will be forced to do.
(Also brought up in the article was a kid who talked about lynching and such I have to say that there's a current culture the classroom can't control which is a likely contributor to that situation, so identifying Huck Finn as the instigator seems... not right, I have to say.)
@Ace Of Spades: I posted about something similar in the Racism thread: getting HF out of schools curriculums will not somehow solve the problem of books written by the white sausage party being the only ones in the curriculum. It'll just get replaced by something else written by a white sausage author, and this time it might not be something that condemns racism.
Pressuring schools to get books written by minorities is a much more efficient strategy. At least in my opinion.
Edited by HailMuffins on Mar 22nd 2019 at 3:04:51 PM
Obama to meet with freshman Dems next week – After keeping a low profile for much of Trump’s first year and a half in office, Obama was heavily involved in the midterms, endorsing dozens of candidates.
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/21/barack-obama-meet-freshmen-dems-1231285
Literally the only thing I remember about Huck Finn is that they did a movie with him and Tom Sawyer teaming up. They painted a fence and I think they fought a mafia guy? I don't remember.
I'm curious about something in this conversation. Is cultural inertia the main defense of teaching Huck Finn in schools? Ie. Things should stay the same as it was when I was a kid because that's how it was when I was a kid.
If the conversation was reversed, if we were talking about a bill being passed that will make Huckleberry Finn the required reading for kids in schools because it was not already, what would the argument be for doing so? I'd like to hear people's reasons for why Huck Finn, more than any other book ever written, should be mandatory reading in classes.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Mar 22nd 2019 at 12:36:01 PM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.

Being nice to my congresswoman has worked for literally no one trying to change her mind on important issues. She flat ignores or deliberately misconstrues all criticism from Democrat or independent constituents. It’s also almost impossible to contact her; she hosts events in the middle of the work day or during evening rush hour, and she only meets one on one for an hour total (so, 1 hour for everyone who shows up, or 1-3 minutes each at best).
I owe her no courtesy beyond the bare minimum of not making sexist comments, harassing her, or making threats.
Edited by wisewillow on Mar 22nd 2019 at 12:53:30 PM