The Western canon is under assault. It is common to read news stories in which the great classic works of Western civilization are being banned for not being “politically correct.” Some attacks on freedom of thought are taking place in U.S. high school literature classes, and it is time that they stopped.

“Huck Finn must go!” chanted the demonstrators, according to a June 25 story in the Renton Reporter, which discussed a protest taking place outside the office of the Renton School District in Washington state. The demonstrators carried signs bearing messages such as “Nigger nigger out the door, don’t call us ‘niggers’ anymore” and “Racism in RSD” (Renton School District). What was going on here?

The Renton School District was experiencing how difficult it can be to balance competing goals of education and sensitivity. Some members of the community were incensed by what they perceived as harmful racism in one of America’s best-known works of literature, Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”

“Huckleberry Finn” is widely considered the quintessential American literary classic. Its story, characters and description are highly compelling, so it is a commonly required text in high school literature coursework. The novel also is a masterful depiction of race relations in 19th-century America. Yet the touchy subject of race can cause trouble; some do not think 21st-century schoolchildren should read about the racial bigotry that Twain observed in his society.

At the Renton School District, a 2004 graduate of Renton High School named Calista Phair objected to the use of the word “nigger” throughout Twain’s novel. Miss Phair said she was “beyond offended” by the class discussion of the book’s racial content and that it “made me feel lesser of a person.” She and her supporters lobbied unsuccessfully to have the book removed from Renton High School’s approved reading list. Miss Phair’s grandmother, Beatrice Clark, had tried the same thing in 2003.

“I still feel very passionate about the book,” Miss Phair said, according to the Renton Reporter. “I still feel that due to the fact I was in Renton School District, I did graduate, I was in the classroom, being told ‘It’s your history.’ I still think it should be out of school.”

Similar protests arose in 2007 at Richland High School in North Richland Hills, Texas, when the mother of a black student objected to her son being exposed to the n-word in class, and a coalition of groups tried (again, unsuccessfully) to have the novel banned from school. The Pennsylvania chapter of the NAACP would like to see “Huckleberry Finn” removed from required reading lists in the state’s high schools and colleges, though it doesn’t object to people reading it voluntarily.

“The concern we have is that, to a black child, it might be damaging,” NAACP Pennsylvania state President Charles Stokes once said in 2000, according to the Harvard University Gazette. “Also to a white child, or a Hispanic child, those words could be damaging...What the NAACP has done is take up a posture that the book as written is not good for America.”

Thus, critics claim that no black Americans—or any Americans—should be exposed to the language of hate. Exposure to hate, however, is not the issue. Twain’s depiction of racial hatred is intended to condemn and ridicule a culture of bigotry. The black slave character Jim is a likable and sympathetic figure, and by the end, Huck is willing to risk everything in order to free him. The story is an eye-opening, touching commentary on human friendship bridging a poisonous racial divide.

The issue at hand is whether books of classic literature should be stripped from the school curriculum, preventing any students from learning them in the classroom in order to supposedly protect them from racist thinking. Not only would this be an abandonment of responsibility on the part of educators, but it could also have the opposite effect. The suppression of ideas might result in more students being ignorant of and insensitive to racial bigotry.

The American Library Association lists “Huckleberry Finn” as one of the most frequently challenged books in the country because of its racial content. Critics of depicting racism in literature have antagonized other classic books as well. Harper Lee’s venerable “To Kill a Mockingbird” has been threatened because of the use of the n-word, a use which again is meant to denounce racism. The NAACP’s branch in Pasadena, California, attempted unsuccessfully in 2006 to lobby a Pasadena school to drop Miss Lee’s novel from its English classes. Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” is also frequently challenged due to racial themes illustrating a white European view of Africa under colonial rule.

Those who object to teaching such works of literature err in the notion that people need to be protected from unpleasantness. It is certainly true that individuals who may have genuine personal objections to these books could choose to opt out of them, but they should not block others from sharing in what these works have to offer. Instead, English teachers should be encouraged to design their lesson plans so that students are not only introduced to the literature itself, but are also taught historical context. This would help students to understand that an examination of the racial tensions in our nation's history is in no way intended to ignite racial animosity. At the same time, students will get a healthy dose of both literature and history. Who can find fault with this?

Banishing great works of literature from the school curriculum is ridiculous and intolerant. Only in an educational setting of free thought and inquiry will students learn how to address race and acquire the skills of critical analysis. In such a setting, we should encourage students to learn from difficult, unpleasant issues like racism. We should not teach them to run away from those issues by purging classic books from our schools.