Posted by Peter H on December 31, 2005 at 17:42:09 from 86.130.132.202 user Peter_H.
In Reply to: Re: Bowlderising AR (was Political Correctness was AR v HL) posted by Charles on December 31, 2005 at 10:56:01:
I totally agree with Charles. First of all, phrases such as ‘political correctness’, ‘censorship’ and ‘bowdlerisation’ have no place in this argument. What Charles and I and others are advocating is merely the removal of a word which is guaranteed to give offence to a certain clearly-defined category of child reader. Even if the child does not take offence (because eg they are used to the term) they will certainly feel alienated from this white author who wrote his books in the English language at a time when racial segregation was still widely practised in the deep south of the US.
John asks the usual question – ‘where do we draw the line?’ Well, we draw the line after we have removed any word from AR which will give needless offence to ‘innocent’ readers, and which we can almost guarantee AR would not have used had he been writing today. By ‘innocent’, I mean any reader who is seriously offended by reference to his/her natural state, ie race, disablement, gender. (Obviously, this would not include a burglar who objected to the pejorative treatment of the burglars in SA!). There cannot be many examples of this, in fact I reckon that ‘n*****’ is the only example.
Like others, my natural instinct goes against any tampering with AR’s text, but I feel strongly that it must now be done, where possible, to avoid offending other human beings and to do a little bit towards British multi-racial assimilation and promoting AR in inner-city schools. But I’ll be practical. Ed has very kindly located all the places where ‘n*****’ has been used. Let’s go through them:
PD, p 171: ‘Then there was Mogandy, the n*****, blacker’n Black Jake . . .’
Here the word can easily be omitted. – no problem.
PD , p 346: The children are looking at the pearls, and John is reading ‘Bonies’, ‘Mallies’ . . . ‘Niggers’, ‘Roses’
This is difficult. On the basis that, like it or not, ‘nigger’ was an old term for a type of black pearl, it could be justified here narrowly. It is not easy to replace the word, and it is needed.
PD, p 419: ‘ What about the ‘Niggers’? asked Titty. Capn Flint explains: ‘Niggers. Negritoes. Niger . . . Black’
This does explain the use of the term and actually does help to justify its inclusion. It is unfortunate, but we might have to live with this.
BS, p 379: Pete says, on seeing Dick’s negative: ‘Geewhizz! N*****s!
And later: ‘Look like n*****s to me’
Here the word should be omitted from reprints. There is no necessity for it. The fact that it was a word which Pete might well have used at that time is irrelevant. What is wrong, instead, with something like: ‘Geewhizz! We’re all black!’