Rascism

Authors such as Ellison, Morrison and John H. Wallace weigh in on their commentaries.

From Wallace:

'Huckleberry Finn uses the pejorative term 'nigger' profusely. It speaks of black Americans with implications that they are not honest, they are not as intelligent as whites and they are not human. All this, of course, is meant to be satirical. It is. But at the same time, it ridicules blacks. This kind of ridicule is extremely difficult for black youngsters to handle. I maintain that it constitutes mental cruelty, harrassment, and outright racial intimidation to force black students to sit in a classroom to read this kind of literature about themselves.'

Huck remarks about Jim after a particularly human story from Jim (TBD):

'I knowed he was white inside' This is probably the most racist line in the book, and exhibits the racism not only of Huck, but probably the unconscious racism of Twain.

Scenes constructed to counter racism using satire:

Pap's tirade against learned blacks in Chapter 6, known as the 'call that a govment?' speech:

“Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful.  Why, looky here. There was a free nigger there from Ohio—a mulatter, most as white as a white man.  He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the shiniest hat; and there ain’t a man in that town that’s got as fine clothes as what he had; and he had a gold watch and chain, and a silver-headed cane—the awfulest old gray-headed nabob in the State.  And what do you think?  They said he was a p’fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything.  And that ain’t the wust. They said he could vote when he was at home.  Well, that let me out. Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to?  It was ‘lection day, and I was just about to go and vote myself if I warn’t too drunk to get there; but when they told me there was a State in this country where they’d let that nigger vote, I drawed out.  I says I’ll never vote agin.  Them’s the very words I said; they all heard me; and the country may rot for all me—I’ll never vote agin as long as I live.  And to see the cool way of that nigger—why, he wouldn’t a give me the road if I hadn’t shoved him out o’ the way.  I says to the people, why ain’t this nigger put up at auction and sold?—that’s what I want to know.  And what do you reckon they said? Why, they said he couldn’t be sold till he’d been in the State six months, and he hadn’t been there that long yet.  There, now—that’s a specimen.  They call that a govment that can’t sell a free nigger till he’s been in the State six months.  Here’s a govment that calls itself a govment, and lets on to be a govment, and thinks it is a govment, and yet’s got to set stock-still for six whole months before it can take a hold of a prowling, thieving, infernal, white-shirted free nigger, and—”

Not only does the reader laugh when Pap threatens to leave the country in the prior paragraph

Sometimes I’ve a mighty notion to just leave the country for good and all. Yes, and I told ‘em so; I told old Thatcher so to his face. 

and then he threatens to stop voting because a freed black man can vote, but we can hear our inner readers voice shout 'Go ahead, what's stopping you?'.


And in Chapter 32, the reader is asked to confront the racism of Aunt Sally, and for a moment, his own racism:

“Now I can have a good look at you; and, laws-a-me, I’ve been hungry for it a many and a many a time, all these long years, and it’s come at last! We been expecting you a couple of days and more.  What kep’ you?—boat get aground?”
“Yes’m—she—”
“Don’t say yes’m—say Aunt Sally.  Where’d she get aground?”
I didn’t rightly know what to say, because I didn’t know whether the boat would be coming up the river or down.  But I go a good deal on instinct; and my instinct said she would be coming up—from down towards Orleans. That didn’t help me much, though; for I didn’t know the names of bars down that way.  I see I’d got to invent a bar, or forget the name of the one we got aground on—or—Now I struck an idea, and fetched it out:
“It warn’t the grounding—that didn’t keep us back but a little.  We blowed out a cylinder-head.”
“Good gracious! anybody hurt?”
“No’m.  Killed a nigger.”
“Well, it’s lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt. 

And there is a whole trope of laughing at Jim through out the novel as a fool, a minstrel show, superstitious, a person who wouldn't mind ridicule or being used for adventure.