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It seems to me that a racial slur is a racial slur.
A separate issue is whether a given racial slur is "appropriate" in the context. In an ideal world, it never would be, but I can certainly see that for authors striving for realistic characters, depicting certain attitudes or using certain slurs would be appropriate in specific contexts (e.g. historical, sometimes - you likely wouldn't get a whole lot of characters in fiction set in the late 19th or early 20th century talk about African-Americans, for instance, but they'd use other words which are commonly considered offensive slurs now - even if they were relatively enlightened characters and not horrible bigots) or for specific characters in certain situations.
It's how those things are used that makes a difference, and I'd think a modern author needs to be very careful in choosing how to use them or which characters they're used by. It might be realistic for a character - it might even be realistic for the "hero" - but it's still a slur, and if it's obvious the "hero" thinks nothing of it, and is to be seen as a generally good person, then there will be readers who will naturally feel uncomfortable with this and may prefer to avoid the author's future work.
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