Sterilizing History

I find the desire to scrub history free of offensive content disheartening and counter productive to learning about history. For example, taking the word nigger out of Huck Finn or the internment camps out of WW2 history discussions or Trail of Tears out of the conversations about settling the west. What do you think? Is it beneficial to sanitize?
 
What inspired the conversation:
http://www.theoakleafnews.com/opinion/2012/05/15/is-the-n-word-appropriate-for-history-classes/

 

Your Morals or Your Bosses?

When is it appropriate to exercise your own morals at work and when is it appropriate for your employer to determine your behavior even if it is immoral? Consider: A bartender not pouring to a pregnant woman, and a pharmacist who won't provide contraceptives or RU486.

Rapey Rape and Rape Rape Rapey Rape

What does it say about American discourse that circumstances in our elections actually force us to discuss rape - good or bad, real or fake, legitimate or illegitimate? I confess, I think less of my fellow citizens today that such patently immoral questions would be debated in public view without shame.

American Shooters: It Isn't About Trench Coats, Violent Movies, or Racist Music

Thanks Mother Jones for the picture.

 On August 5, 2012 a man entered a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, started shooting, and killed 7 people, including himself. The Sikh temple shooting in Wisconsin came less than a month after a man opened fire in a crowded theater in Aurora, Colorado, killing twelve of the seventy people he injured. Most Americans can name five mass shootings with a similar narrative. The Wisconsin, Aurora and other shootings have motivated us to ask questions of our society and ourselves. Unfortunately, we focus so myopically on the particulars of a single case or on finding a simple answer, that we cannot see the overarching problems that connect multiple events. We avoid asking open, complicated questions that could potentially result in a shift of responsibility, conflict, and introspection. I fear we are asking questions of little consequence, and that it is the answers to the questions we do not ask that could stop these problems from growing and blossoming into a meadow of macabre societal wildflowers.

Public VS Public

When discussing the topic of school privatization, we should not compare private schools to public schools. We should compare societies with public schools, and those which only have private schools or offer very limited public education.

Birth Control Coverage is an Equal Pay Issue

Organizations like the American federal government, the Catholic Church, and nearly half the states in US want to or do limit a woman’s access to abortion in their employer-provided health care packages. The new wave of legislation, policy, and social commentary focused on women’s reproduction has been framed as a matter of social policy, but ignored are the economic and legal requirement of equal pay for equal work. These legislative actions hope to limit women’s choices when it comes to reproduction but by limiting the cash value and practical value of health insurance for women and their ability to work uninterrupted by pregnancy, these policies mandate pay inequity between genders.

I Know More Because I Have Kids

I hate it when people say to me, "you don't have kids" when discussing vaccines or education or child development.  Does spitting a child out of your vagina or squirting some sperm into one impart you with some new ability to analyze data?