From the Letters to a Young Writer series at Narrative Magazine, Richard Bausch responds to a student’s struggle to read offensive words from literature aloud in class verbatim.
We can best address the injustices of the past by never forgetting them, never forgetting how it was—and in many sad instances how it still is. In a way, to “translate” the words in class is a kind of racism, isn’t it? For the assumption is that one’s colleagues of color, or one’s friends who are part of some minority, are not adult enough or intellectually strong enough to handle the facts of the social history.
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