Article...from Fox News!
I'm wondering if we've all been victims of a cloak-and-dagger maneuver. Just when you thought Arizona wanted to create racial boundaries, they really want to erase them. Will, that is, as long as everyone starts embracing whiteness. You can read the article for yourselves, but here's the low-down.
The Arizona law, if signed by the governor, would prohibit:
1) any course that advocates the overthrow of the U.S. government. I think this is understandable, but could be twisted to mean students shouldn't learn about economic systems besides capitalism and political systems besides "representative" democracy.
2) any course that would promote resentment of a particular race or class of people. I don't think they're worried about poor black people. Read "white" for particular race and "rich" for particular class.
3) any course that promotes ethnic solidarity or is "designed" (I can't fathom what that means) for a particular ethnic group. That stated object here is to promote individualism rather than ethnic solidarity.
I can't help but be snarky here. Did Arizona not get the memo that the melting pot has never really existed? That it subsumes cultures to "Americanize" them into automatons of Western values and aesthetics? If Arizona schools have to ban any course designed for a particular ethnic group, then history, English, etc. is out. Even mathematics seems a little skewed towards Greeks. Take it away. The good news is that all those students who no longer have to go to school all day (maybe they'll still have music classes) will have plenty of job opportunities in the fields, kitchens, and homes of the state now that hispanics will be harassed away through immigration reform.
Here's a quote from the state school superintendent, Tom Horne: "Traditionally, the American public school system has brought together students from different backgrounds and taught them to be Americans and to treat each other as individuals, and not on the basis of their ethnic backgrounds," Horne said. "This is consistent with the fundamental American value that we are all individuals, not exemplars of whatever ethnic groups we were born into. Ethnic studies programs teach the opposite, and are designed to promote ethnic chauvinism."
What tradition does Mr. Horne come from? Is he talking about the segregated schools of Jim Crow or the barring of Asian American students from any schools? Is he talking about the multicultural experience of the Native American students forced to leave home and be imprisoned in Catholic convents?On of the passages that has stuck with me most from Huey P. Newton's Revolutionary Suicide involves his time in school. He recognized that none of the material was relevant to his life, and neither he nor his teacher made any effort to change that. This lack relevance continues today for numberless students.
Mr. Horne and the government of Arizona have once again failed to understand their own assumptions. They assume that everyone is white or wants to be white. They assume that "white" is not an ethnicity. And they assume that any ethnic solidarity that is not white is dangerous. Have we already forgotten the lessons of the past 50 years? Arizona is leading this country along a dangerous path, and it is our duty and honoro to resist their crusade against difference.
