Reply #186: You could also have used this approach.....

[Nye Bevan]

It was 1967. I was eight years old, and I remember as clearly as yesterday my mother sitting reading me "Huckleberry Finn" in session after session in the evenings. In the first few pages, after Clemens' narrator uses the word "nigger" in context, she turned to me calmly and said, "You know, this takes place a long time ago, and we don't use this word for black people any more, right?"

"Yes, Mom."

"You're *never* to say it to a black person, or about a black person, understand?"

"Yes, Mom."

That was all it took. And she proceeded to read it to me from the unedited version that my uncle had sent us for Christmas, without leaving out a word.

I got it. At eight years old, I got it. And the lesson took, as well as whatever meaning Clemens had imbued his extraordinary characters with to teach to his readers that I was able to comprehend.

Anybody who cuts a single syllable from this, one of the masterpieces of American literature, is a fool and a coward.

http://letters.salon.com/books/feature/2011/01/04/huckleberry_finn_cleaned_up/permalink/c925eeac6289713827d8077a7df8fef5.html