And they’re going to learn by never being exposed? Right.

There are folks in HF who use “nigger” as an insult. They’re the bad guys.

Those kids live in a world where strangers say “nigger”. They cope. It’s absurd to believe that they can’t handle the word in a book.

>>Feel free to argue that “The Handmaid’s Tale” treats men acceptably.

> I don’t feel it does treat men acceptably

The double standard is the point. It’s okay to trash white boys. It’s not okay to expose any kids to bad people who insult black people.

I don’t really care whether HF gets taught, but the double standard is wrong and a culture that disdains education doesn’t have standing to complain about reading assignments.

The prejudice Scout had to confront in herself wasn’t racial but her fear of the mentally ill and that whole storyline was handled more deftly and thoughtfully then the racial prejudice storyline.

In retrospect I wonder if the novel wasn’t actually aimed more at prejudices about the mentally ill then it was about racial prejudice.

I agree with BadaBing. “To Kill a Mockingbird” is like “The Catcher In the Rye” in the sense that the older you get the less worthwhile it seems. (I wouldn’t compare them on another basis.) When I first read Salinger’s book I was in eighth grade and thought it was the greatest novel ever. I reread t a couple of decades later and realized that Holden’s problem isn’t that everyone misunderstands him, it’s that he’s understood all too well.

“To Kill a Mockingbird” does indeed let us all feel very, very virtuous when it’s over. It’s a decent novel; a great one causes us to think about the issues, not be smug about them.

I’m not sure once you go down this road where you roll to a halt. “Moby Dick” is about killing whales, quite un-p.c. these days. “The Red Badge of Courage” probably is seen as glorification of war. “The Grapes of Wrath” is long and doesn’t necessarily offer an unalloyed positive view of poor people, but Steinbeck was pretty much a fellow traveler at the time so to this crowd that’s a point in his favor.

And for goodness sake, what kind of teacher would offer a student something the student finds challenging, or require a book whose setting and characters are beyond that with which the student is immediately familiar?

Within the group yes. Outside the group, the question of insults gets more complicated, because you don’t know the intentions of the other group. Mis-communications happen all the time across cultures – I doubt that black American kids are the one group in recorded history to have the magic ability to always accurately figure out what people from other cultures mean. And sometimes, even if you do intellectually know what someone meant, the emotional impact of what they said can be too hard to work through, which is why I gave the example of my reaction to Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe.

Also, of course, using racist words when you are obviously a member of the group referred to has an impact different to using racist words about another group. It’s like joking about your own incompetence, versus joking about your spouse’s incompetence. If you “insult” a group you are clearly a member of, you are “insulting” yourself, so people are much more likely to read it as a joke than as a purposefully-meant insult. (The “clearly a member” qualifier is important, Jeff Foxworthy can tell jokes in a Southern US drawl that just wouldn’t work for a random person communicating in text. And of course people can launch criticisms of their own group that are clearly meant as insults and often get taken as such).

Feel free to argue that “The Handmaid’s Tale” treats men acceptably.

I don’t feel it does treat men acceptably, so I would have difficulty making such an argument. One of the reasons I quit English classes as soon as possible was that I disliked making arguments I didn’t believe in. I know that freedom of speech gives me the right to make such an argument, and I don’t wish to prevent anyone else from making such an argument, but just because you have told me to feel free to do so, doesn’t mean that I actually feel free to do so. Not everything boils down to legal rights. Sorry, if you want an argument that “The Handmaid’s Tale” treats men acceptably, you will have to find someone else, even repeating your phrase makes me feel slightly icky.

Since those kids call each other “nigger”, both as an insult and as affection, they’re perfectly capable of figuring out when they’re being insulted.

The great sin of HF is that it shows white trash improving himself. Even the character’s expression of white guilt isn’t enough to save a book that shows something so beyond the pale.

Feel free to argue that “The Handmaid’s Tale” treats men acceptably.

That’s because it’s a well-written screed that argues that they’re evil.

> so I can see his point about the difficulties of teaching a book like Huckleberry Finn nowadays.

What difficulties? It’s a freakin adventure story.

There may be some difficulties in convincing them that there’s an abortion subtext, but ….

Also, the story’s told from the point of view of a little girl whose father seems to be a mensch. That may be as close as most guys get to genuine demigodhood.