The Ending of Huck Finn: Rascist?

Essentially, I think the answer to this question is no. Upon reading the ending of the book, I was not struck by its racism, although it is present. What I focused on more was the pure childishness of the two boys. Huck and Tom both acted very childishly throughout the whole ordeal of freeing Jim. The two of them scared Tom's relatives half to death, stole and ruined a lot of their personal property, and put Jim through a lot of trouble, all because they were pretending they were prisoners trying to break out of jail. This is a dangerous thing because the boys can't tell real life and make-believe apart, which will cause a lot of heart-ache and distress for Tom's family in the future.

Tom, especially, is severely childish because he knew the facts about the situation the whole time. Not only did he suggest the whole notion of the three of them being prisoners that had to break out, but he's the one who suggested they break Jim out the hard way, rather than just letting him go free. And the whole time, he knew that Jim was already a free man! He could of told his aunt how Jim was already free, or he could have easily gone with Huck's plan of just letting Jim go, and everything would have worked out fine and would have been very easy. But no, Tom had to have his "finesse", and so he put Huck and Jim through all that trouble to "break out of prison".

The worst thing about it is that people were hurt by the boys' decisions. The aunt was extremely distraught for days, afraid of everything that moved. Huck had to lie for extended amounts of time, pretending he was someone else. Jim had to go through all the trouble of following Tom's directions because he didn't know any better, and then proceeded to be caught again and treated worse than before. And Tom got himself shot, which seemed to have become infected judging from the way he acted afterwards.

I can see the racist elements within the ending of the story, but I believe that the ending Mark Twain created was meant to do more than purely show the power race has. It was meant to show how imaginations can run wild and end up hurting others. It was meant to show the naivety of children. It was meant to show Jim's trust in the boys, and how his trust may have been misplaced. And I'm sure it was meant to do a lot of other things, as well.