How do we handle quality literature written with racial prejudices?

I was struck by the timeliness of the article on racist books. I am reading out loud to my 14-year-old daughter Gone With the Wind - one of my all-time favorite books. Yet, as I am reading out loud, I am struck by the representation of the slaves in the book - the way they talk, the way their owners treat them, etc. As we live today - this is appalling. Yet, this is a book about life in the 1860's - and that is how the slaves talked and were treated in that time. I know this discussion has gone on for years - how do we treat books like Huck Finn, etc.

Do we reject generations worth of literature because they were written with standards different from what we believe today? Or do we read the literature as it was written and use this as a springboard to discuss how times, and attitudes, have changed? I think we must do option two because the precedent of judging the past based on today's standards is too dangerous - do we continue to throw out accomplishments of the past - what a loss! And as much as we know today that this behaviour is wrong - it was what it was at that time in our history. To ignore that it happened has it's own dangers.

I think the long-term answer must be an awareness of rightful sensitivity to these issues and working to minimize the abudance of them - as well as combining a mixture of literature from a standard that is more appropriate to today's understandings of fairness - racially, sexually, etc.