I read “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry Finn” to my son when he was VERY little. Maybe 5 years old or something. I used the word nigger when it came up first. Then I explained to him that it was a normal word back then, but today it is a “bad” word - and we don’t use that kind of language. I told him that I would substitute it with “black man” or similar.
Later on as he was a little older (12?) he had read where folks were talking about removing those books from the library because they had the word nigger in them.
“Did they even read the book? Tom is friend’s with Jim - and helps him escape slavery!! How is that racist?”
Read Agatha Christie. She clearly didn’t think much of “niggers” and uses it as a slur quite often. She’s dead so Why TF should I care - her books are still genius. She was a big bigoted yes, so is my grandpa. They had/have a right to be so.