Absolutely moronic. Would I use the terms? Of course not. But the racial slurs are part of what Mark Twain wrote. They’re a part of his work. A publisher shouldn’t be removing terms from classic novels simply because such terms are politically incorrect in today’s world.

A PUBLISHER is planning to release a new edition of two of Mark Twain’s classic novels that replaces the racial slurs used throughout the books with less offensive language.

NewSouth Books will release a single volume containing both novels, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, overseen by Twain scholar Alan Gribben, Publisher’s Weekly said. In both, the n-word is replaced with the word “slave” and the word “Injun” is removed.

Let us recall that Twain, whose real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was a leftist and civil rights activist. He supported abolitionism, women’s rights, labor unions, and a variety of left-wing causes. Now granted, his views on Indians were less-than-pleasant early on, but I wouldn’t call him a racist.

So it can’t even be said that the publisher is removing unnecessary words thrown-in by a racist (though that wouldn’t be grounds for removing the terms, either). Twain clearly had a purpose for using the exact terms he used. What’s the publisher’s excuse for editing masterpieces?

The n-word appears 219 times in the current edition of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, including the table of contents. The racially-charged language has resulted in the book being banned from many grade school curricula and libraries over the decades despite its status as a classic of American literature.

Mr Gribben said he was inspired by speaking with teachers who were disappointed that the language in the book prevented them from teaching it.

“They said ‘we would love to teach [Tom Sawyer] and Huckleberry Finn, but we feel we can’t do it anymore.’ In the new classroom, it’s really not acceptable,” he said. “For a single word to form a barrier, it seems such an unnecessary state of affairs.”

Another Twain scholar, Thomas Wortham, argued that altering Twain’s text will make for a book that “doesn’t challenge children [and their teachers] to ask, ‘Why would a child like Huck use such reprehensible language?’”

Instead of hiding the true text from our nation’s students, perhaps the more educated course would be to confront the text head-on. Explain that those pejorative terms are unacceptable in today’s world but were once common-place. Explain that Twain used the word repeatedly to tell a better story.

But Suzanne La Rosa, one of the cofounders of NewSouth Books, said the new edition does not replace the other editions of Twain’s works on the market.

“We recognised that some people would say that this was censorship of a kind,” she said. “But our feeling is that there are plenty of other books out there – all of them, in fact – that faithfully replicate the text, and that this was simply an option for those who were increasingly uncomfortable […] insisting students read a text which was so incredibly hurtful.”

It is censorship, and I’m sick and tired of public schools educating our children on sex while neglecting to expose them to the rest of the real world, which can often be “incredibly hurtful”. Yes, the n-word is there. Point it out, explain it’s not acceptable to use, explain why Twain was using the term, and then move on. Instead of pretending it doesn’t exist.