Is Huck Finn Racist
... In Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, the word “nigger” is used constantly throughout the novel as the official term for a black man who was a slave. This term is also even today considered a vulgar and racist term as well. So to some people, Mark Twain’s use of the word “nigger” signified that he was a racist author. And since Classic American novels were not supposed to teach racism, Huck Finn was an automatic controversy, and was immediately the subject of criticism and rejection. Parents of Black students wanted to ban Huckleberry Finn from bookshelves of schools, bookstores, and public libraries. They did this because of the controversy that occurred in the novel with the supposedly vulgar language, horrible examples of good, proper grammar, and the racist and demeaning tone that was apparent in the novel. Of course, critics that actually took the time to analyze Mark Twain’s writing, let alone read it, saw Huck Finn from a different point of view. An optimist and a positive critic saw Huckleberry Finn as pure American Classic novel material. Huck Finn was realism. ... The reason that Huck Finn was such a controversial novel, and still is today, is because people are afraid of the truth, and people are afraid of change.