My Dad is Li Gang!

Reposting this from elsewhere, it is my last word on the Mark Twain issue. I chalk up the stupidity I saw on display in that elsewhere place, from people of letters whom I heretofore respected greatly, to that outsized sense of entitlement certain segments of American society seem to be born and raised into. Compounded by years of living in that fucking reality distortion field.

As one of the actual persons of color who use this forum, I have no problem with this book being censored. Though I would have preferred they used "negro" instead of "slave".

I've been noticing a trend on forums where this topic is discussed, of certain people painting this move with the brush of political correctness. Let me explain something to you, as a black man the word NIGGER, the word that doesn't mean anything to many of you because you've never had it thrown in your faces by an ignorant bigot. It is an ugly word, given weight by centuries of murder and enslavement. Often that word was very the last thing a black man heard before he was lynched, that means they put a rope around his neck and hung him from a tree until he suffocated. And they did this because we were not considered human, and that word was part of the process of dehumanization.

I also always love it when someone in the back of the room mentions that "a certain urban subset of black people have reclaimed that word, so it can't be all that bad".

I'd rather not see the word in my literature, I'd rather my nephew not have to see the word. That is of course, an opinion, my opinion. And you are entitled to your own opinions, no matter how wrong headed, distasteful or ignorant the opinions you express may seem to me.