I dare say we'd have still used [the "n word"] if we did [know what it meant]; kids are not very pc left to their own devices and at that time there was no general awareness of racism
-Apina

Apina, thanks for the honesty of your post. You described your childhood school as having no non-White students. I wonder if you and your peers would have openly used that "n word" in school if that school had had a number of students who were non-White. I think you probably wouldn't have for a number of reasons, including the fact that those non-White students would not have taken kindly to the use of that word when they were told {by older students in the know, and/or by adults} what it meant.

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As a matter of record, in my African American neighborhood [in Atlantic City, New Jersey in the 1950s], the eenie meenie rhyme was always recited as "catch a tiger by the toe". I didn't know that it was ever anything different than that. And "catch a tiger by the toe" is the way that I've heard that counting out or choosing It rhyme recited by African American girls & boys in my adopted hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania since I moved here in the late 1960s.

And as an aside, let me say that in the ten years that I've been formally collecting children's rhymes, including taunting rhymes, I've come across very few children's rhymes that refer to race or ethnicity or skin color.

I'm glad that this version of the eenie meenie rhyme-with its use of a derogatory referent-has largely been retired.