“It’s just like the Old South” –Tom Horne, AZ Dept. of Ed. Supt. of Public Instruction
Arizona is back in the news again, and not just because Los Suns are in the Western Conference Finals. For the second time in under a month, legislation signed by Gov. Jan Brewer has a lot of people across the country asking the logical question: Really?
Earlier this month, it was the controversial new immigration law, which opponents argue will inevitably lead to racial profiling of Hispanics in the state. Now, she’s signed a bill into law prohibiting ethnic studies programs in an Arizona school district, that “advocate ethnic solidarity, that are designed primarily for students of a particular race or that promote resentment toward a certain ethnic group.”
According to the AP, The Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) program offers specialized courses in African-American, Mexican-American and Native-American studies, focused on history and literature, as well as the influence of a particular ethnic group. These courses are designed to educate students on the history, influence and literature of particular ethnic groups, in the context of U.S. history.
While the governor’s spokesperson states that “The governor believes…public school 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”, it’s hard to argue with the conclusion of Sean Arce, the director of the TUSD’s Mexican-American Studies program, that students perform better within a curriculum in which they see people who look like them—meaning, historical figures who represent them, whom they can identify with. It’s even harder to argue with the statements of six UN human rights experts released prior to the bill signing, that all people have the right to learn about their own cultural and linguistic heritage. For this reason, and for anyone who has ever taken a course in ethnic studies, it’s hard to understand what curriculum would feature militant, anti-American teachings.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Horne, has been pushing for the passage of this bill for years, saying the district’s Mexican-American studies program teaches Hispanic students that they are oppressed by white people, and that the bill was written to target the Chicano, or Mexican American, studies program in the Tucson school system. Not surprisingly, the most puzzling statement in support of the bill was made by Horne, when he said of the program: “It’s just like the old South, and it’s long past time that we prohibited it.” Which again, begs the only logical question: Really? He also said the program promotes “ethnic chauvinism” and racial resentment toward whites, as it segregates students by race. Is it not chauvinistic to only teach the history of one of America’s numerous ethnic segments? Won’t eliminating the ethnic studies programs then promote reverse racial resentment towards every other ethnic group?
The United States of America was founded upon immigration. Whether you prefer the term “melting pot” or “salad bowl”, each Census year we are provided more and more evidence of the continued multiculturalization of this pot or bowl. Those in favor of the bill say that promoting ethnic studies leads to resentment and paints white people as oppressors. While this is not the present-day case, is history not about teaching historical truths, whether ugly or commendable? Do we not teach about the Holocaust and Nazi Germany in our European history courses? Communism and The Cold War? As a society, we’ve reached a critical, proverbial fork in the road: How do we define America? To take that further, can we even accurately define America without not only learning about, but understanding the various cultures that make up our nation’s population?
As a multicultural PR agency, we face related questions everyday: How do we reach multicultural audiences? Is there a preferred or most effective method? What are their interests? What do they like to do? What do they read? What do they watch? Where do they go? Where are they from? You know the saying, “you can’t know where you’re going, until you know where you’ve been”? It’s a true statement. To take away the value of understanding our own cultures, cultural nuances, and what makes our ethnic groups different, removes the value we ourselves place upon our nation—a multicultural nation.
Eliminating ethnic studies in public school systems can easily eliminate interest in the cultures that create this country, and make it the shining standard of acceptance and diversity for the rest of the world. If we don’t teach our youth about the struggles of the past, that we collectively fought through, and made U.S. what we are, we do an injustice not only to our students, our teachers, our educational system, and our country—we do an injustice to history.
Tony Balasandiran | New Media Specialist
Thank you for bringing to light Arizona’s attempts to prohibit ethnic studies programs in its schools. Such a law will effectively create the environment their governor is trying to avoid. The less we know about each other, the more we will fear one another…hasn’t America learned that lesson, yet. To tell African Americans we cannot study our own culture is indicative of slavery when our language, drums, music and other means of expessing our language and culture were stripped from us.
I suggest Arizona enact the law equitably, by prohibiting American history which promotes the “ethnic chauvinism” of Europeans and creates racial resentmenet towards whites. Just ask any student of color who has taken an American History class.