In response to Streitfild’s blog, I must say that I completely agree with his actions and statements. In the story A Rose for Emily we see a woman by the name of Emily Grierson that was raised by her father’s views and teachings which she harshly displayed with great pride in her later years. Even though these lessons caused dramatic set backs in her love life, she refused to change. The story took place in the late 1800’s; a time when freedom was not widely known by the African ethnicity. This now brings up a controversial topic that is still troblesome until this day. The word nigger and it’s use in this text. The word nigger today is deeply frowned upon by countless people in many ways and for diverse reasons. In David Streitfeld’s blog he discussed the use of the word rigger in replacement for the word nigger. Rigger is used to define a person or a company that is highly experienced with lifting or arranging large or very heavy objects. The use of this word makes sense because it basically describes the job description, for the most part, of the African ethnicity of that time in history. The reason it can not be used is simply because it banishes the history of the word all together. This now brings up some interesting thoughts; how do we shield future generations from the use of such a word or should they be shielded at all. Looking at society today we can clearly see how this word is rooted deeply in the entertainment world of music, movies and games to the education of students learning about American History. The thought of shielding this word resembles someone running away from their shadow; you simply can not get away. In my view, changing the word nigger in this text may only create questions and curiousity about the word which defeats the purpose of the intial change. In today’s society the only thing more affective than changing the word nigger to rigger is purely, maturity. This may be more easily said than done, especially towards a younger generation of readers. This is where the maturity of our society, as a whole, has to play it’s roll. This is done by setting an example for future generations which includes unity and understanding for one another that is not only spoken but practiced world wide by each individual.
