Huckleberry Finn: Pro-Racism book, or Anti-Racism book?

I don’t believe that Mark Twain’s novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a racist novel. While its over-excessive use of the N-word, and the way that Twain describes how slaves are thought of in the book, may make the novel seem pro-racist, I believe that Twain’s intention was to expose how southerners thought of and treated slaves in pre-civil war America. I find this book to be very anti-racist, mainly because of Jim. Though Jim’s dialect and his slave roots may make him seem as though he was a very ignorant, and stupid character, I think that Jim is the most mature, and caring character in the story. For example, Jim cares for Huck, and treats him like he was his own son, protecting Huck from things he can’t handle, such as the dead body in the submerged cabin, or desperately worrying about Huck when he is lost in the fog. He is also very loving to his family, and has one of the few working family relations in the story, as he loves his entire family, and was willing to risk his life in order to keep himself from being permanently separated from them.
Another reason why I believe that the novel is supposed to be anti-racist, is how Huck begins to mature during the novel. In the beginning of the novel, Huck was very ignorant, and believed that slaves were exactly the way that his society stereotyped them as, which is uneducated, stupid, and ignorant. However as the novel progresses Huck sees through the stereotype, and begins to see Jim as a person, and not a piece of property that wants freedom. Huck begins to see that while slavery is accepted in his society, he wants to go against this and eventually sets out to even re-free Jim from his slave status once again, after he is sold by the King.
posted by Eddie D.