School district removes "To Kill a Mockingbird" and Huck Finn because they contain racial slurs [View all]

[davidn3600]

A Virginia school district has pulled copies of “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” from classrooms and libraries while it weighs whether it should permanently ban the American classics because of the books’ use of racial slurs.

In response to a formal complaint from a parent, Accomack County Public Schools Superintendent Chris Holland said the district has appointed a committee to recommend whether the books should remain in the curriculum and stay in school libraries. District policy calls for the formation of the committee — which can include a principal, teachers and parents — when a parent formally files a complaint.

The parent, Marie Rothstein-Williams, made an emotional plea at a school board meeting Nov. 15, saying the works had disturbed her teenage son, a biracial student at Nandua High School on Virginia’s Eastern Shore.

“I’m not disputing this is great literature,” Rothstein-Williams said. “But there is so much racial slurs in there and offensive wording that you can’t get past that, and right now we are a nation divided as it is.”

School libraries and curriculum are frequent culture war battlegrounds, and it is not uncommon for parents to raise objections to books that many consider classics but that also contain offensive language or mature themes.

Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” is the book most often targeted for removal from school classrooms and libraries among the titles the American Library Association tracks. “To Kill a Mockingbird,” the Harper Lee classic set in 1936 Alabama, is also high on the list of works that people seek to remove from schools. Both books use the n-word liberally.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/school-district-weighs-ban-of-to-kill-a-mockingbird-huck-finn-after-complaint/2016/12/03/92701c80-b8b0-11e6-a677-b608fbb3aaf6_story.html