Driving While Brown 0
Leonard Pitts, Jr., takes a look at the current legislative proposals in Arizona to penalize persons for looking foreign (as long as “foreign” does not include “Canadian”). A nugget:
That this icon of conservatism would, like Bush, find himself so strikingly out of step with his followers today testifies eloquently to how strident, nonsensical and unpragmatic this debate has become. Rather than offer workable solutions, lawmakers are busy outlawing ethnic studies classes, requiring Latinos to carry papers like Jews in prewar Germany, decrying anchor babies and other boogeymen, competing to prove who can be toughest on dirt poor Mexicans, rousing the rabble in their xenophobic righteousness.
This is not statesmanship. It is not serious policymaking. It is not even adult.
It is a temper tantrum, the incoherent bawling of those who see fundamental demographic change coming and like it not one bit. They scream in the face of an incoming wave. But the wave comes just the same.
