Download Magazine - Levin College of Law - University of Florida

Huck Finn
Professor Says Icon is Causing Harm
FACULTY BOOK
B Y S U S A N V E R G N A N I
The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn, the iconic American
classic, should be removed
from mandatory reading lists
in public secondary schools
because of its racist content,
according to a new book by
civil rights lawyer and Irving Cypen Professor
Sharon Rush.
In “Huck Finnʼs “Hidden” Lessons, Rush, who
co-founded the Center for Race Relations at the law
college and is an associate director of the schoolʼs
Center on Children and Families, brings a new
perspective to the long-running controversy in the
United States over whether Mark Twainʼs 19th
century tale of friendship between a boy and a
runaway slave is racist.
Secondary school students are not emotionally
and intellectually mature enough to properly
understand the novel, according to Rush. This results
in the isolation of black children in mixed race
classrooms where the novel is taught, a phenomenon
that Rush describes as emotional segregation. It is
her key premise for wanting the book taken off of
mandatory school reading lists.
Inspired to write Huck Finnʼs “Hidden” Lessons due
to her experiences as the white adoptive mother of a
black child (which also prompted her to write Loving
Across the Color Line in 2000), Rush painstakingly
examines what she views as The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finnʼs racist content, including Twainʼs
use of a derogatory racial epithet no less than 200 times.
She also is concerned that Huck and Jimʼs relationship is
presented as “loving,” even though Huck treats Jim with
tremendous disrespect. Her book also explains why
Rush thinks the classicʼs continued presence on schoolsʼ
required reading lists is a prime example of the systemic
racism that still exists in contemporary society.
“I think ʻHiddenʼ Lessons provides a wonderful tool
for understanding racism better than we do, and I hope
that it helps us heal,” Rush said. “With better
understanding we can move towards achieving equality
in education and in general. If I achieve my goal, a
teacher who reads my book and understands it would
not feel good about teaching Huckleberry Finn in middle
school or high school as part
of a mandatory curricula.”
Internationally renowned
scholar Joe Feagin, a sociology
professor at Texas A&M
University who has written
extensively on race relations
and racism, thinks the book
is both a compelling and substantive
argument for removing
it from secondary school
Rush
required reading lists.
“Though the holistic
portrait of Twain has some positive points, heʼs also
infected with the systemic racism of his day,” Feagin
said. For example, why didnʼt Twain have Huck
speaking in dialect as much as Jim, and why arenʼt
there more white caricatures in the first edition Further,
why is Huck treated in such a half-deified way He
offers a very white manʼs perspective of the day.”
Another misperception of The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn from Rushʼs perspective, that she
hopes her book will debunk, is the widely held view
that the canonized classic is actually antiracist.
“It perpetuates racism under the guise of undoing it,
because it often is taught as if it were an anti-racist
classic,” Rush said. “This is even more pernicious.
There is no other book out there with Huck Finnʼs
stature—it has been translated into hundreds of
languages, which for me means there is widespread
harm associated with it.”
Katheryn Russell-Brown, a black faculty
member and director of the Center for the Study of
Race and Race Relations at UF Law, hopes skeptics
will acquaint themselves with Rushʼs assessment before
dismissing it outright.
“I think what Professor Rush has managed to do is
have us take a second look at Huck Finn and ask
whether the book deserves the reverence it currently
has, considering what it says,” Russell-Brown said.
“Her book challenges the dominant paradigm of whatʼs
acceptable, and a lot of people will be hesitant about
pulling it from required reading lists. But it should be
considered because of the message of inequality it
sends about race to all students, black and white.” ■
KRISTEN HINES
S U M M E R 2 0 0 7 49