Examples Of Prejudice In Huckleberry Finn

Racism and prejudice are different and I argue that in the story “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, it had elements of both, but Huckleberry Finn was prejudicing Jim at first because of how he was raise. Prejudging according to Irwin Katz, “was the central problem of majority-minority relations”, and the cause of “social, political, and economic inequalities between groups” (Katz 126). This was the most dominant opinion when it came to most Caucasian people in the south around the 18th and 19th centuries which goes along with the book “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”. The act of discrimination on African American slaves were “openly practice and widely accepted in the society” (Katz 126), during that time especially in the south. Stereotyping

So at the beginning, Huck had quoted that “It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger"(157). Huck said this after he had thought that Jim was dumb enough to believe what happen in the fog but Jim did said that “en all you wuz thinkin’ ’bout wuz how you could make a fool uv ole Jim wid a lie”(157). Basically Huck had underestimated Jim at that moment and was completely upset and he didn’t want to apologize to a slave that he felt was beneath him. People will look at this and think that Huck was racist but people have to remember that he was only a kid who was brought up in the life were whites were said to be more superior to slaves or freed slaves were education enough to own land or etc. Before Huck got to know Jim, Huck was a kid who was living with no parents and the father he did have was a drunk and who said racist comments like “It was ‘lection day, and I was just about to go and vote, myself, If I warn’t too drunk to get there; but when they told me there was a state in this country where they’d let that nigger vote, I drawed out” (122). So Huck was influence by what he was saying even though he hated his father but Huck still would have chosen his father over any slave before he was

Mark Twain was said to have the “most grotesque piece of racist trash ever written” according to John Wallace, a Chicago schoolteacher because of the use of the n-word though out the story(“Huckleberry Finn: racist trash?” 1). But many scholars didn’t believe that it was racist trash of work. Shelley Fisher Fishkin from Yale University said that he discovered that Mark Twain had paid for an African American student’s tuition to prove that Mark Twain wasn’t racist or his book. Mark Twain quoted that “we have ground the manhood out of black men and the shame is ours, not theirs" ("Huckleberry Finn: racist trash?" 1) .The source from Christian Century explain that “Huck reflects before making up his mind” ("Huckleberry Finn: racist trash?" 1), Huck was thinking about what he was doing before making a decision and the decision was about telling on Jim and if it was a good thing or a bad thing. Huck thinks if he help a slave than he is going to hell but he said “All right, then I’ll go to hell” (234) because he has started to realize that he needed Jim and Jim needed Huck. According to Christian