By: Natasha Archary
James Bond author, Ian Fleming’s spy novels are being sanitized to remove racial references which may be considered offensive to modern readers.
Flemings books gave birth to the popular British MIA movies with Pierce Brosnan, Roger Moore, Sean Connery and more recently Daniel Craig.
With the 70th anniversary of Fleming’s classic book, Casino Royale coming up in April, the author has decided to reissue a full set of the Bond books series.
Some of the changes will include the removal of the ‘N-word’ and omitting a number of ethnic references.
According to Fleming, his books were written in a time when those terms and attitudes were considered “normal” but times have changed.
The conversation on Kaya Drive focused on whether erasing literature from the past will change what happened? Mask the truth, if you will, and a number of listeners felt that sanitizing past literature will do just that.
“Editing the books are not going to change the fact that racism existed. It’s not going to erase the struggles that slavery inflicted on our ancestors.”
For many listeners, history should be left untouched, to not cause confusion. If anything, the books from the past would serve as proof for the younger generations that there were periods where certain racial profiles were treated differently.
“It’s not a story, slavery happened. Racism happened. The way black people were spoken to, wasn’t made up. This would give modern readers an idea of exactly how offensive racists were.”
What’s more is that some of the literature from the past is still being taught in schools as part of the curriculum.
Works by William Shakespeare for example, makes reference to light/dark, black/white and if one were to pick apart what the playwright may have meant would be futile.
Listen to the conversation on Kaya Drive:
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