The country is poised to mark the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s iconic “I have a Dream” speech.

However, it is apparent that the lessons within that King speech have been lost on some people.

The central message of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, according to Florida State University’s Margaret E. Wright-Cleveland: “White people are the problem.”

It’s just that simple.

This piece of wisdom from the ivory towers of Tallahassee comes to us in a symposium on “the great American novel.”

“Twain confronts American history head-on and tells us this: White people are the problem,” she wrote.

Wright-Cleveland is listed at the college’s director of faculty recognition.

Readers wondering why race relations don’t seem to be getting better may find her continued thoughts on the subject most illuminating:

Hemingway was right when he said, “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.” Hemingway was wrong when he continued, “If you read it you must stop where the Nigger Jim is stolen from the boys. That is the real end. The rest is just cheating.” For if we stop where Hemingway instructs, we may read the actual wish of many whites – that someone else would take their “black problem” or their “Indian problem” or their “immigrant problem” away – but we miss Twain’s most important critique: White men like Tom Sawyer will forever manipulate the Huck Finns of the world.

Huck and Jim (never named “Nigger Jim” in the book, by the way) make good progress at working their way out of the hierarchy into which they were born until Tom shows up. Then Huck does unbelievably ridiculous things in the section Hemingway calls “cheating.” Why? Huck does so to keep himself out of jail and to save Jim, sure. But he also does so because Tom tells him he must. In spite of all he has learned about Jim; in spite of his own moral code; in spite of his own logic, Huck follows Tom’s orders. This is Twain’s knock-out punch. Tom leads because he wants an adventure; Huck follows because he wants to “do right.” In a democracy, shouldn’t we better choose our leaders?

If the Great American Novel both perceptively reflects its time and challenges Americans to do better, Huck Finn deserves the title. Rendering trenchant critiques on every manifestation of whiteness, Twain reminds us that solving racism requires whites to change.