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Lee Berman · 18 Jan 2011, 02:50 · from 2011-January.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2011 21:50:39 -0500
Subject: (urth) (no subject)
Message-ID: <SNT123-W3C396A52B2665D5199EF4CFF70 at phx.gbl>

>Gwern Branwen: >> Conrad's _Heart of Darkness_  I love the book. I hate the racism. And I think 
>you can have it both ways in the realm of fiction and art. There's no contradiction there."

Made me think of Huckleberry Finn and how there is a strong movement to require schools to carry a
version which finds a less offensive term than "nigger" (the N-word) which is repeated over 100 times
in the story. To me that move would suck the life out of the book. It was a book about slavery written
in a time when slavery was a living memory for most people. Nothing hammers that home more than free
and liberal use of the N-word which is exactly what Mark Twain intended.

I guess I can't exactly hate racism..how can I hate what is an integral part of my own species? Or perhaps
it is the broader human reflex of xenophobia which is the integral part. Either way, I think we will 
forever be..cursed?...with the tendency to divide into groups and fight. Heh, when I used to work in 
prison, the inmates managed to divide themselves not by race, not by gang affiliation but by home telephone 
area code and fight over that. Heck I've even known people to fight over fictional interpretations ;- ).

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