"I totally agree - let them think for themselves and let them read and research what they want. Forcing them to do so on the other hand helps no one."I have to disagree here. Certainly, you can make the "at least they're reading something!"-type of argument. That is, when you let them read Twilight or something of similarly less literary value than The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, well, "at least they're reading something!" I think this is doing a disservice to "the kids", though.
I mean, it's a tough argument. It sucks that we can't just make kids be seriously interested in literature, science, and mathematics. It's quite possibly (probably?) an indictment of our teachers that 95% (totally made up statistic) of kids who read Huck Finn just don't get it. I mean, I know I didn't when I was 14 and had to read it.
"As a product of it's day, I understand the context in which the language is being used but that didn't make it any less demeaning..."
I can't imagine what it was like to be a black kid being forced to read Huck Finn in school. I'm sure most teachers have some cursory 5-minute CYA lecture about how Twain was using vernacular to best illustrate his point about what things really were like in America in the 19th century, but I imagine as a black kid the language was still shocking. As a white kid the language is shocking, but obviously not in the same way. Re: your "as a product of it's day" comment, though, you're completely missing the point! "Nigger" wasn't used extensively in Huck Finn because Twain thought it was the best descriptor or what his readers would be most familiar with, he used it because he was decrying the mindset that makes that word acceptable altogether! Probably the biggest point made in the book was that even Huckleberry Finn, a poor, uneducated, half-illiterate southerner could realize that Jim is no less a human being than he or anyone else, and that his entire worldview has been wrong. Twain was saying "if even the lowly Huckleberry Finn can recognize this, why can't the rest of 19th-century America?"
Let's be honest, understanding subtext and being thoughtfully analytic aren't exactly most teenagers strong suits. So it's easy as a young reader of Huck Finn to chalk it up as just racist garbage with some redeeming attributes. I would encourage you as an older, and presumably more thoughtful, person to re-read it and reconsider your position. Twain is one of America's greatest writers, and while if you've read Huck Finn you've probably read his "greatest"(1) work, there's still a lot else out there worth reading.
(1) - I think it was Hemingway who called Huck Finn "American's Homeric Epic", or something to that effect.