Driving while Brown 0
The Tucson, Arizona, school district has suspended a popular and academically successful program for Mexican American studies in response to the program’s having been specifically targeted by an act of the Arizona legislature. The books that were used in the program have disappeared from classroom shelves.
This seems to be an attempt to deny that, before it was US territory, Arizona was Mexican territory ripped from Mexico during the US’s early foray into imperialism, the Mexican-American War. Persons of Mexican descent have lived in Arizona since long before persons of US descent.
It is almost as if Arizona wishes to deny its history. Calling this a form of cultural “ethnic cleansing” doesn’t seem out of bounds.
Students peacefully protested, and learned that no good deed goes unpunished:
This was, of course, inaccurate: what was suspended by HB 2281 was Mexican American studies, not Mexican studies. When students asked why European studies has not been banned, nor any other area studies discipline, the administrators had no response. And regarding the issue of this being America, apparently this administrator believes that Mexican Americans don’t belong in America (as she presumably meant the United States).
In a development typical of Arizona, the students who walked out on Thursday, protesting the elimination of the district’s Mexican American studies program, have – without a hearing – been directed to perform janitorial duties this Saturday: an amazing message, right out of Newt Gingrich’s playbook (he has been campaigning in the GOP presidential nomination race, proposing the idea that students should be hired as janitors to teach them a work ethic). Apparently, TUSD administrators are paying attention.
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