Opressive words in Literature

Over the past few weeks my ENG21o class as been discussing the book There Eyes Are Watching God.  During class a student was reading a passage with the "N" word in it.  As she read she changed the "N" word to black.  This ended up spuring a huge controversy in our class.  Our teacher believed that as we are in a college setting we should feel comfortable reading the word and by not reading the word just gives it more power.

In my opinion I agree with this logic, however I don't think that people should feel forced to read the word if it makes them uncomfortable.