N-Word Or No N-Word? That is the Question

I believe that there are many legitimate directions one can take when approaching the question of whether the "n-word" should be removed from "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." The first legitimate direction, I feel, is to approach it in context of the events of the last couple weeks. Ultimately, at its very root, the sort of violent language that conservatives were accused of using was exactly like "that opinion makes me uncomfortable and makes me want to hurt those responsible." The very essence of the push to censor is "that makes me uncomfortable" or "that offends me" followed by "let us get together and throw it in a pit of fire and dance on the ashes." Of course Jordan's opinion is legitimate and ought to be respected but there is a reason I'm quoting her: her emotional knee-jerk sentiment expresses the impulse to reject and destroy what upsets us instead of confronting it and pushing passed the pain to be better for it.
Another direction of approach is to consider who wrote these words. More often than not, black rap artists who use the "n-word" in their music are not taken to task for the use; for whatever reason, the use is deemed to be different than a harmful use. It is wholly credible to point out that Mark Twain, who was an abolitionist, put the derogatory term for a black person in the mouth of Huckleberry Finn as a powerful story device. The book is a story about a white boy who grows up in a culture where "n-word" is just the word one uses for a black person and by degrees, realizes the humanity of Jim and comes to regard him as a friend. It is no accident that Mark Twain is an extremely well-regarded author: his language was deliberate and meaningful and our role as modern readers and scholars of his work is to discover and confront the meaning of Twain's choices.
One last direction to use is to examine the why of the language. Like Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin", Twain meant to prick the consciences of readers and make them confront very hard things. It is good for students, especially students offended by his choice in words, to face down those hard things; diminishing the work by replacing a word allows a student to avoid a confrontation that will make them better and for that reason, we cannot afford to do it. It is tragic that in our larger culture, there is social pressure to treat language like a soap bubble, fearing to use certain words out of fear of causing offense. In the end, no one benefits because the racist will be validated by the implication that other races are too fragile to handle all but the most careful wording, the anti-racist will be discouraged by the feeling that even in their most noble intentions they can be found to have trespassed, and those who may be offended are infantalized by never having to face down anything they don't want to. The entire point of language is to communicate accurately and if we strip an admirable author of an offensive word, we are deliberately choosing to remove part of the man's message and thus corrupting the entire purpose of studying his writing.
No good ever comes of censorship, ever. When we are tempted to ban one offense, the temptation to ban the next is even stronger; all censorship can be justified by "I am offended; destroy that which offends me." Perhaps Jordan is hurt and emotionally-wounded by "n-word" in Mark Twain's work but like a Christian who may one day be called upon to swallow the bitter pill of policies (like gay marriage) that offend them, her wounds will callous over and she will be stronger when the next offense comes--and it WILL come. This is a situation where our responsibility as teachers is most important, when we can help our students with some hardness or cripple them with softness.