It’s not surprising that the latest edition of Mark Twain’s paired classics, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn,” will remove all traces of nigger and Injun from its pages when our leaders confuse books with bars, Charles Dickens’ words with Leo Tolstoy’s, and omit slavery from Confederate History Month. Our leaders obviously aren’t reading. So why should we care about an old book like Twain’s? Here are 10 reasons.

The latest racial gaffe regarding our president came late last month from Rep. Steve King of Iowa. By way of a little background, King’s comment concerned Pigford v. Glickman, a massive class action lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture alleging racial discrimination in its allocation of farm loans and assistance to black farmers between 1981 and 1996. The USDA settled out of court in 1999, admitting to widespread racial discrimination against black farmers in its loan programs. About 15,000 farmers were paid a total of more than $900 million in the settlement, but tens of thousands of farmers filed claims after the deadline, and many charged that the government’s outreach had been insufficient and that they had incompetent legal counsel, causing them to miss their opportunity. In February 2010, President Barack Obama and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack promised an additional $1.15 billion to cover the remaining claims, which was appropriated by Congress in December 2010.

FRANKLIN, Tenn.—Tensions are high in Tennessee, as they have been all over our nation, in anticipation of the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Controversies abound. Mosque-building, book burning and threats of violence are making it increasingly difficult to separate what pastor/author Rick Warren is calling “church and hate.”

Like many other Hispanics, I am a member of Generation E.A. (ethnically ambiguous). Over the years I’ve been mistaken for just about every racial or ethnic combination—from Eurasian to Afro-Irish to Arab-Native American. This guessing game is something members of Generation E.A. are used to in discussions with acquaintances, classmates, co-workers and curious passersby.