Quote:
Originally Posted by speakingtohe
While I think censorship is wrong overall, I think discriminatory perjorative terms should in many cases be expunged. Not advocating this as they are often used to illustrate the true character of the bad guy in many books. Still I often find it disturbing.
I am not talking Huck Finn here, which does use the word as a noun? without a discriminatory or hate context IIRC and probably the Haggard series is the same.
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Books are a product of their time. When I was growing up in England in the 1960s, the word "nigger" was an everyday, descriptive, non-perjorative word. Eg, consider Agatha Christie's book "Ten Little Niggers" - she was making use of an everyday British expression, not being a racist. The book continued to be published under that title in its British edition under the mid 1990s, at which time it first changed to "Ten Little Indians", and then to the US title of "And Then There Were None". Look on Amazon UK and you'll still find lots of copies of the book available under its original title.
We shouldn't censor books simply because language and cultural values change; simply accept the fact that they have changed.