I have no problem with people who read unabridged books. As I pointed out in my post, I do it myself. I seldom read the other kind unless an unabridged copy is not available.

Well, I'm not the one making the false comparison between the two. I didn't bring them up, you did.

But that's a story, not a single author's original work. The actual story behind Sleeping Beauty is ancient and in the public domain. These comparisons have nothing to do with what is being done in this case, anyway.

Yes, that's how I obtained a decent education.

That does not make it right. As you suggest, they can just assign a different book. As far as black students being exposed to the word, they can suck it up and deal. That's how the characters talked. That's how people used to talk. What point to hiding it from them?

Why? At worst, that could provide a teachable moment, instructing any little retards who get offended on the difference between a quotation and the actual offensive use of a term. Quite frankly, it would be a good thing if black children learned at an early age when it is and is not proper to get offended at the use of that word.

And those people are WRONG. You do NOT change things to appease those who do violence wrongly! You especially do not do violence to the work of one of the earliest and best advocates of the equal humanity of black people, and one of the works which most advocates the same, merely to appease ignorant and wrong-minded people.

Well, they're wrong, so fuck 'em.

And you can take that position in favor of other censorship too! If the censored porn or artwork bothers you, don't look at it! That public funds argument was scoffed and dismissed when Giuliani used it on the museum that showed a gratuitously religiously offensive work of art. You're the one who doesn't understand logic with your use of that argument.

So what? They wrong to have banded it back then and are wrong now, and for the SAME reason. Your ineptitude at logic is further demonstrated by your use of a straw-man argument, and your apparent inability to understand my demonstrated example suggests that someone of your reading comprehension level should not be passing judgement on reading material.

Except it's not, because he never uses it that way regarding his relationship to Jim, which was the point of the incident I cited. The word is used for black people and used by the people to verbally obfuscate the reality of the institution and denigrate blacks by using the same word for all blacks, free or slave. They don't say "his slave" they say "his nigger" and they use the word to describe characteristics of the people independent of their socio-economic status.

All of them! The denotation might be the same, but the connotation of the words is entirely different, which is why Samuel Clemmens, a man of vastly superior intellect to you or writing talent to anyone on this site, used the one and not the other. He was not using "nigger" because that was how he talked (in fact, in a footnote in Tom Sawyer, one of the few points of author intrusion in either books, he uses the term 'slave' to explain a point of usage, to show that the characters are using a naming convention in a different manner for a dog than for a slave), he was using it to demonstrate how the characters of that time and place talked and thought.

Teach the kids that it's not something to shy away from and grownups will eventually stop worrying about it.