A slur is the naked man's genitalia

I find myself in a little bit of a crisis because I've never been a proponent of censorship, but I feel uneasy supporting the open discussion of slurs among young students. Although I feel like these two seemingly conflicting thoughts may not contradict each other quite as strongly as it seems.

I oppose censorship in its purest form because it restricts knowledge. Censorship hides away material and ideas that can enrich a student's educational experience; it decides for students the information they have a right to know. This ultimately takes away the diversity of education, providing only the information that is congruent with the ideals and beliefs of the censor. A heavily censored young adult education alienates any students who don't match these ideals and beliefs.

The use of slur in the classroom has a similar effect. It forces the minorities of the classroom to the outside. It can make them feel uncomfortable. It can distract them from the rest of the material and the major context of the topic at hand. Similarly, it can distract their classmates. It can cause them to focus on only a small portion of the information available to them. In this sense, it restricts knowledge in a manner close to censorship.

I don't think that I would support throwing To Kill a Mockingbird out of the curriculum based on the N-word, but I do think that it is something that should not be stressed or specifically mentioned in classroom study. To Kill a Mockingbird is so much apart from that word, and any amount of emphasis placed on the word would be at the cost of so much else. In a performance for a young audience, I feel like speaking the word again is a distraction. The novel contains many, many more words than the play. In the play, the word would stand out. It would take away from the rest of the message, from the unfair conviction of a black man based on nothing other than his race.

I guess I need to justify using the word "genitalia" in my title now. The naked man exists as more than a naked man. He represents something. He is a message or an expression of art. That message might be lost if the viewers are too distracted by his penis to pay attention to anything else.