Percival Everett on Mark Twain’s use of the n-word in his literature

“That was a common word then … To not have it in the text—say to do what someone tried to do—republish “Huck Finn” with the word ‘slave’ replacing that particular, unfortunate word is to try to clean up American history. The word belongs there because it was there. What education does is it allows us to see what the word represents, what it means about America, what it means about the culture’s attitudes towards an underclass at that time. It is much better to have it there and to educate people than to remove it and have them be ignorant." - Percival Everett