Racial slurs!

[arewethereyet]

I like to think that there's a difference between using racist language and simply saying words with a racist connotation. Consider the following hypothetical post:

'Mark Twain's classic Huckleberry Finn contains 219 uses of [the n-word], which means Twain was a filthy, degenerate [n-word] lover.'

The first clause is a simple statement of a literary fact and is clearly not using the word as a slur. I don't think it can be argued that the second clause is so innocuous.

This is the chief source of my issue with the rule as it stands, but I don't see any way round it.

Boru

I read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and also Huckleberry Finn (un-PC versions) to my son when he was around 9.  I used the use of language as a teaching moment, explaining to him that they were written in another time and about another time and explained why certain words were no longer acceptable.  

I'll add that husband was raised in the dirty south and he frequently threw around the 'n' word as well as tending to refer to women as bitches.  I learned from being around his family and around the people we lived among that this was something that was commonplace.  Because of my kids not being raised in that way I worked hard to erase those words from his regular vocabulary.  He may still talk like that out among the "boys" but he knows it's not acceptable around me or my kids or grandkids.  Again, a teaching moment.