Arizona's most rac--er, I mean most benevolent ethic studies bill

Good morning Blog Posse,

I...cannot sleep! This normally makes me cranky!

So...I thought, "What else makes me cranky, maybe that will cancel out the previous crankiness."

Lately, any mention of the asshatery in Arizona makes me quite cranky so I looked at that...I dub this THE INSOMNIA BILL

Arizona gov. signs bill targeting ethnic studies

Sigh. I wish ethnic studies out side of "confederate history" was taught at any of the schools I attend or ever will attend.

And here...we...GO

PHOENIX -Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has signed a bill targeting a school district's ethnic studies program, hours after a report by United Nations human rights experts condemned the measure.

 

State schools chief Tom Horne, who has pushed the bill for years, said he believes the Tucson school district's Mexican-American studies program teaches Latino students that they are oppressed by white people.

 

How is this bill proving the contrary, exactly?

Public schools should not be encouraging students to resent a particular race, he said.

 

Well it's a good thing that's not what these classes are designed for! How is banning ethnic studies making minority groups not hate whitey more? You shoot yourself in your own foot sir.

 

"It's just like the old South, and it's long past time that we prohibited it," Horne said.

 

It is just like the Old South sir in that whites tried their damnedest to keep their black slaves from becoming self aware because they knew the minute slaves realized their condition wa--oh, well, you know how that turned out don't you?

 

Brewer's signature on the bill Tuesday comes less than a month after she signed the nation's toughest crackdown on illegal immigration — a move that ignited international backlash amid charges the measure would encourage racial profiling of Hispanics. The governor has said profiling will not be tolerated.

Yeah but you signed the bill didn't ya?

The measure signed Tuesday prohibits classes that advocate ethnic solidarity, that are designed primarily for students of a particular race or that promote resentment toward a certain ethnic group.

 

Ethnic solidarity = consciousness. Promote certain resentment towards ethnic group = whitey. 

 

Again, they aren't helping their own case.

 

The Tucson Unified School District program offers specialized courses in African-American, Mexican-American and Native-American studies that focus on history and literature and include information about the influence of a particular ethnic group.

OMG HORRIBLE.

Horne, a Republican running for attorney general, said the program promotes "ethnic chauvinism" and racial resentment toward whites while segregating students by race. He's been trying to restrict it ever since he learned that Hispanic civil rights activist Dolores Huerta told students in 2006 that "Republicans hate Latinos."

White folks would know all about "ethnic chavinism" wouldn't they? WOULDN'T THEY.

And you can read more at the source. Let me just say I'd never even heard of classes targeting the history of a race or group until high school, not because they offered any but because I was applying for university/colleges and I have to peek at their class lists. We work hard to get funding for literature, in my department, targeting something ELSE besides dead old white dudes. And these classes are fleeting in that unless you're an English major you wouldn't know, and some of them are offered for one semester only.

I get mighty tired of reading Milton and Chaucer, I'd like to read some folks that look like me, relate to me, ANYTHING. I'd like to learn about black history beyond slavery. I'd like to learn just how much Mexican and Chinese people contributed to the United States and the racism against them because white folks couldn't have that. I'm so SICK of history being WHITEWASHED for me.

I've had two white folks tell me now that university courses opened their eyes to the non-sanitized versions of history and I just laughed. Laughed! One guy switched to anthropology because he was so tired of history being negative. Again, fuck that.