Editing literature to conform to current custom

[ssk7882]

This is a potentially inflammatory topic, but I really
did feel the need to respond.  If people wish to follow
up, please let us all try to remain civil.

In a discussion on the main list about the insertion of
Dean Thomas in the sorting ceremony of the first book,
Amanda wrote:

> But I must throw to you my personal least-favorite 
> literature change, from the Just So Stories by Kipling, 
> from "How the Leopard Got His Spots." After the Ethiopian 
> has changed his skin to black, and then dotted the leopard 
> all over with his fingertips (nicely explaining the little 
> rosettes of dots), and the leopard asks why the Ethiopian 
> doesn't go for spots too, what Kipling originally wrote was, 
> "Plain black's best for a nigger." In every single copy I 
> have seen that was printed within, say, the last 20 years 
> (at least), this has been changed to remove "nigger."

That's your *least* favorite editorial change in the history
of all literature, Amanda?  Really?

> This alteration offends me because it changes the words the 
> author chose.

One thing to keep in mind about "Just So Stories" is that
it is a children's book.  It was written for children (as
well as for adults), and it is read by children (as well as
by adults).  Many of the currently available editions of 
this book are marketted specifically for children.

One of the things to consider about young readers is that
they do not have the historical knowledge that adults do.
If they learn vocabulary from a book, they are likely to
believe that it is acceptable vocabulary for use in their
everyday lives.  "Nigger" is *not* an acceptable term in
most circles of contemporary English-speaking society, for
reasons that younger readers might well not yet have the 
background or the knowledge to appreciate.

"That is the parents' job."  Well, yes.  But children don't
only read with their parents.  They also read on their own.  
Reading is in fact how many children -- particularly bookish 
and anti-social children, like the child that I once was -- learn 
much of their vocabulary.  

I certainly didn't discuss every word that I learned from reading 
with my parents.  Most of it I just soaked up, deducing from 
context what various words meant and how they were properly 
used (although not, alas, how they were pronounced -- weird 
pronunciation is often the hallmark of somebody who learned 
more from reading than from speaking and listening).

So while for an adult reader who understands the historical
context in which Kipling was writing, and who is hip to the
fact that usage has changed a bit since his time, the editorial
change might be an annoyance, it strikes me that such a change
serves a perfectly reasonable pragmatic function in a book that
is marketed to children.  It prevents younger readers from 
coming to the incorrect assumption that Kipling's usage of
this word means that it is an appropriate, polite, or value-
neutral word for them to be using in a similar context.   


> Those words came from an older culture and value system, but 
> they are the words he wrote. I object to changing them to 
> pander to the sensibilities of a modern audience.

"Pander?"
 
Pandering means *pimping.*  In this context, it would mean "raping" 
the text, violating its author's intent to satisfy the demands of a 
hostile or uncaring audience.  
 
Now, Kipling wasn't exactly a PC sort of fellow even in his own
day, but I really don't think that his use of the word there was 
intended to be offensive.  I don't really believe that the author's 
intent there was to use an extremely derogatory term with the weight 
of generations of enslavement, colonialism and oppression behind it 
just to make some aesthetic or philosophical point.  That is really 
not how I, at any rate, read the authorial intent behind the use 
of the word in the passage you cited.

So I'm afraid that I can't quite see the editorial change as 
"pandering."  It is not pandering.  It is a form of translation
designed to keep the book accessable to readers who lack an adult's
understanding of history and usage (ie, children) without leading 
those readers astray as to what constitutes acceptable or polite 
usage in the time and place in which *they* are living.

The edition of "Just So Stories" which I read as a child, by the
way, retained Kipling's original phrase.  In fact, I believe that
it may well have been the first place that I ever even *encountered* 
the word, as I grew up in a very homogenous community where the N 
Word was held to be an Unforgivable (I never even heard it spoken 
aloud until I became an adult).  I seem to remember coming to the
conclusion that the word meant "Ethiopian."  Fortunately, I never
actually put this new and exciting bit of vocabulary to the test
before learning both what the word really meant and the nature of
its contemporary cultural significance.  But other children in
similar situations might not have been so lucky.


-- Elkins (who also devoured unedited Enid Blytons as a child,
and who doesn't think that they have been harmed in the least by
recent decisions to edit them for contemporary children's consumption)