I was listening to the Dire Straits song "Money for Nothing" on Sirius last week and there's an entire verse that was just edited out of existence (if you're old enough to remember the song when it came out, you can probably guess which verse). Never mind that the verse itself was poking fun at people who talked like that.
It's ironic because so many of these things being targeted for censorship not only are completely inoffensive, but completely mocking the stuff in question. I suppose humor and irony are always the first victims of authoritarianism. Another excellent example is the adventures of Huck Finn. That literally the only genuinely good person in the book was called "[racial pejorative that would probably get this post auto-flagged] Jim" was the entire point.
Mark Twain was making a point about judging people by labels or how they look on the surface, instead of judging them by their character and actions. Of course now we're back to square one to judging people by labels and how they look on the surface, but this time it'll be different.
We as a species seem doomed to repeat history on loop, like some sort of real life Ground Hog Day.
He's not called that in the book. People constantly say he is, with an air of authority, but go read it yourself. Go do a search on the Project Gutenberg text. He's just called Jim. Not once is there any instance in the book where anyone takes his name to be anything other than Jim. I don't know where this popular misconception was invented. Yes, the racial term is said in the book, but not as part of his name.
I checked here [0] and you are correct. There is one match for "n-- Jim", however the n-word is used as an adjective, not as part of a proper noun, similar to "your coworker Bob". Searching for just the n-word brings up over 200 usages, however.
The entire song was (as I recall) poking fun at people who talked like that, and all of the lyrics in the song came were overheard by some working class patrons and their observations watching MTV.
