An Arizona state-legislature-approved ban (HB 2281) of the Ethnic Studies program in Tucson’s largest school district took effect on 12/31/10. What’s the big fuss?
The new law prohibits any curricula that:
- Promote the overthrow of the United States government.
- Promote resentment toward a race or class of people.
- Are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group.
- Advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.
The law has teeth. As it stands now, the state can withhold up to 10% of a district’s funding for a violation, about $15 million per year that Tucson’s schools can not afford to lose. This has intimidated the School Board.
At the time of the bill’s passage, State Sen. Linda Lopez, D-Tucson, said the legislation is “little more than a thinly disguised effort to quash a program TUSD officials have said was proven academically successful.” And she was right; that specific program was deemed illegal. (more)
A “state-wide” ban … for our city.
You have to realize, this bill is aimed specifically at Tucson. We are an open-hearted city that is proud of our ancient roots and actively celebrates our diversity. See my story yesterday, My Tucson. Think about the university’s choice of Dr. Carlos Gonzales to open last week’s memorial with a Yaqui blessing. This is entirely consistent with who we are, and evidently enraged the “White Christian Privilege” folks. More on our response to tragedy tomorrow.
Tucson schools offer Hispanic Studies, African American Studies, Native American Studies, and Pan-Asian Studies. When school opened on 1/3/11, Tom Horne – then Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction and now Arizona’s Attorney General - declared the Hispanic Studies Program violates the law. To make life more interesting, a new TUSD Superintendent started work that same day.
Mr. Horne began this fight after United Farm Workers leader Dolores Huerta visited the high school a few years ago. During her lecture, Ms. Huerta may have said, “Republicans hate Latinos.” If so, it resonated with the students, whose experiences of bigotry towards them have only gotten worse over time. When Mr. Horne sent someone to speak to the students at a mandatory assembly to refute that claim, some students turned their backs, and held defiantly up their fists. Horne was incensed and began working to have the program banned.
Teaching discrimination, or inclusion?
The faculty claim the programs – which offer instruction from elementary school through high school in topics such as ethnic authors, culture, and accurate US history – raise academic performance and graduation rates. They raise self-esteem and make school and literacy relevant to minority students, who too often do not see themselves reflected in the standard curriculum, and find reading texts which exclude them boring and dispiriting.
A faculty member, Maria Federico Brummer wrote recently in Colorlines:
Our opponents claim we teach hatred of ‘Whites.’ There’s no truth to that. Our students see the anti-Mexican sentiment in Arizona, but we teach that we are all human beings and race is a social construct used to divide us. We teach the Mayan philosophy of “In lak ech,” which means “You are my other me.” We ask students to look into each others’ eyes. What you see is your reflection. We teach that human beings should not just respect, but love one another
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Brummer and other faculty maintain that they teaching active and empowered citizenship, which is especially important for a community which has been marginalized.
Horne believes the district is “teaching oppression” and fomenting insurrection. He is especially threatened by the programs encouraging ethnic solidarity, on the grounds that “people are individuals, not exemplars of racial groups.” This actually turns out to be the real crux of the values conflict, when Horne proclaims that teaching students the difference between “white individualism” in the prevailing culture and “colored collectivism” in Hispanic culture promotes resentment towards Whites. Horne believes all students should assimilate into the dominant (individualistic) cultural frame, and that to encourage anything otherwise would harm students.
Support from afar … resentment nearby.
The ACLU argues banning the encouragement of culturally relevant ethnic solidarity is a violation of the students’ civil rights. The United Nations Human Rights Commission has formally condemned the bill on the basis that any group has the inherent right to learn about their own cultural history.
The Asia Times worried about the effect of the ban on South Asian students … “at a time when hate crimes towards Southeast Asians, whose religions are Buddhism and Islam, are steadily rising.” They wrote:
[I]f our “standard” history curricula would include Asian American history — from the bleeding hand of a railroad worker to the fisted one of Yuri Kochiyama, Edger Alan Poe and Louis The Great would be side by side with Tagore and Ashoka. Simply put, if minorities were given a place in mainstream curricula, then Ethnic Studies would not be so necessary
.
Amen to that, from every cultural perspective, including helping young White students understand the cultural stream in which they swim without realizing it so they later lessen institutional racism.
In a recent local Facebook conversation, one person posted, “What if a school set up a program of White Studies? You would all have a hissy-fit about that.”
What the poster, and Mr. Horne, and the republican state legislature, fail (refuse?) to see is that every class in a standard curriculum teaches White Studies – think “English Lit” – and that this curriculum further marginalizes and shames minority students who already look around them and don’t see much of a future.
The program and the federal courts:
The program’s successes were promoted in TUSD’s 2007 Unitary Status Plan, asking the court to lift a 30-year federal desegregation order and allow students to return to neighborhood schools. The court accepted the plan and lifted the order, but noted continued large achievement gaps in minority populations, and wrote that the district “had not thoroughly analyzed how best to utilize its ethnic-studies departments.” And with eight staffers in 2004 making up the Mexican American/Raza Studies unit, the court said that “it is unimaginable” that they were capable of serving the tens of thousands of Latino students in the district.” The District has about 60% Latino students, and the court was certainly correct that too few students could take advantage of the program. The court may yet speak on this issue if the program is declared illegal.
It should be noted that some Arizona lawmakers three years ago nearly passed a bill that would have limited districts’ ability to increase property tax rates to raise money for desegregation. In 2007, 20% of TUSD’s $342 million total budget was for federally mandated desegregation costs, which I believe now includes this program. Is this a case of “starve the beast,” like health care, and financial reform?
What can you do?
For an action item, here is a petition to keep Ethnic Studies: “(These) classes merely expand the world view for students of all races. Moreover, Latino history — including the unsavory parts like injustice and oppression committed against Mexicans — is part of American history and should be included in public education.”
We can not know of course the outcome of this very emotional conflict, which has created strong divisions within the school board, the faculty, the student body, the community. Here is a timeline of the story to date. It gives a lot more detail as to where things currently stand.
But today I read that Dolores Huerta is asking everyone to help, and is offering herself to be arrested to protest.
Just sayin', maybe you could help to spread the word?
Crossposted from BPI Campus.