Rauchway on Grad School; Also on the N-Word

Over at Open University Eric Rauchway addresses the question that so many ask this time of the year: Should I go to graduate school? He begins to provide an answer. I provide my own input in the comments where I weigh in with one of my hobby horses.

At the same blog Rauchway also addresses using the N-word, even in the context of quoting racists who used the word in the past. I especially appreciate the following excerpt:

Why should we quote these sentences, which are a dime a dozen? Not primarily to shock and certainly not to titillate, but to illustrate to students the silliness of relying on "states' rights" or similar explanations that attribute the parlous state of African Americans between the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement to some complicated cause that isn't racism. Because, sure, you can start from a principled defense of limited government and find your way via circuitous logic to a regretful denial of civil rights to black southerners--but Occam's Razor asks that we notice the much shorter route, by which you get to denial of civil rights much more quickly if you start from abundantly evident racism.

Rauchway is fast becoming one of my favorite academic bloggers.