Salon on Arizona’s Prohibition on Ethnic Studies

As others (most especially Angelique EagleWoman) have asked, does this affect the Indian law programs at U of A and ASU?

From Salon:

When did Arizona get so mean? As if what they’ve done already isn’t bad enough, Gov. Jan Brewer and the state legislature have just passed a lawforbidding state public schools from teaching ethnic studies courses. Or, as they put it in the new legislation, students “should be taught to treat and value each other as individuals and not be taught to resent or hate other races or classes of people.” A promising start there. I’m glad we’re finally rooting out the Mexican Klan meetings in middle schools.

Apparently, state education chief Tom Horne (unsurprisingly, a current candidate for attorney general), is behind this, and he’s especially incensed about one textbook in particular. “Occupied America: A History of Chicanos,” by Rodolfo Acuña, has really gotten his goat. “To begin with, the title of the book implies to the kids that they live in occupied America, or occupied Mexico,” Horne told the Los Angeles Times. You have to love a guy whose argument literally seems to be that we should judge the book by its cover.

So the complaint is that ethnic studies in general, and Chicano studies in particular, teach hate. In a moment of truly dazzling irony, Horne said, “It’s just like the old South, and it’s long past time that we prohibited it.”

The logic seems to be that any time brown folks get together in groups to talk about their identity and history, they must be plotting against white people. Maybe something here sounds like the old South, but I don’t think it’s the students and teachers.

3 thoughts on “Salon on Arizona’s Prohibition on Ethnic Studies

  1. Paul Spruhan May 13, 2010 / 12:02 pm

    The bill language refers to “school districts and charter schools,” and therefore does not appear to apply to colleges and universities. A good question, however. Note also that there is an exception for Indian courses “required by federal law,” whatever that means…..

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