While I agree with what it sometimes means, it's too associated with awful things in the past and it's easily misunderstood. It's true as some critics have said "states don't have rights, people do." At the same time, states play an important role in balancing the impulses of the national government to take power and infringe on those rights. Federalism or subsidiarity are better terms.
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Shua says it best. The phrase itself may be too tightly entwined with the Confederacy and Jim Crow that it can never be fully restored, but the federalist principle behind it remains as crucial as ever in balancing against the power of the federal government.
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