What REALLY Happened To Nigger?

[johngreen]

If it is considered to be acceptable to call Gibson’s dog by his original name, what does the team think about the recent furore on the other side of the pond about intentions to produce versions of Huckleberry Finn with not only the word ‘nigger’ removed from the text but also the word ‘injun’?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/books/07huck.html

Is it appropriate that youngsters should grow up being protected from the truths, however unpleasant, about their own country?

If so, where then does one draw a line?

Do the same people who answer the above question with a resounding ‘yes’ think also then that the Germans should therefore remove from their education syllabus the compulsory teaching of children about their recent ancestors’ involvement in such matters as the Final Solution?

And how might they respond to the fact that very few young Japanese have ever been taught about the most dubious behaviour of their country through the first decades of the 20th century?

Come to that, what should best be done with regard to teaching English and American students (among others), about the comparative realities of involvement of their own countries and the Soviet Union in WWII? That’s not the Hollywood version of events but rather the actual history of a conflict in which the two former nations sacrificed approximately 400,000 lives apiece while the later lost more than 20,000,000…

Doesn’t ‘our’ system of Civilidsation absolutely rely upon the strength of a Justice meted out by the use of the term ‘The Truth, the Whole Truth and nothing but the Truth?

Sorry for those of you who dislike thread drift. Quite an achievement I reckon to get from considerations of the name of a dead dog to considerations of what amounts to Civilisation in half a page…