The state of Arizona recently passed an "immigration law," which pandered to peoples worst chauvinist sentiments, a law in clear violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which establishes both national citizenship and federal supremacy over the states on such questions. (Actually, rules governing immigration and citizenship were explicit in the Constitution and national matters before the 14th amendment was enacted).
The law has been denounced by President Obama and anti-chauvinists through the U.S. Although the law is popular among those who are susceptible to arguments which scapegoat immigrants for the loss of jobs and the increase in crime, it has hurt Arizona's reputation and most probably the tourist sector of its economy as various groups have been to cancel conferences and conventions in the state
Arizona has now passed a state law barring the teaching of ethnic studies courses in public schools which "promote ethnic solidarity." The law stems from a Chicano studies program in the Tucson school district, but it has much broader implications. Although the school board has pledged to continue its program, which reaches three percent of the 55,000 students in the district, whether it can sustain this is questionable, since the law, which goes into effect on December 31st, gives the state the power to cut state funding by as much as ten percent for districts that refuse to comply,
First, the law is clearly an act of censorship, a restriction on both academic and intellectual freedom and a violation of the First Amendment. I am immediately reminded of the World War I attacks on "hyphenated Americans" (Irish Americans, German Americans, etc) the official banning of German language teaching and sudden name changes, e.g., calling sauerkraut "liberty cabbage" and hamburgers "Salisbury steak," all in the name of "100 percent Americanism."
There was also a great deal of violence directed against German Americans and others considered to be anti-war-violence indirectly sanctioned by state policy.
Arizona has not yet announced that Cinco de Mayo events will be banned in schools and tacos will now be called chip sandwiches in school lunchrooms, but these are certainly possibilities.
The movements over the generations for African American studies, Asian American studies, Latino studies programs, and women's studies program, have enriched and broadened education. They have been open to all students and in many states students who seek certification to teach in public schools are encouraged to take such courses to make them better teachers.
Do such courses promote ethnic solidarity? I have certainly known various nationalists who teach them in such ways, but they are really a small minority. I have also known those who teach that the U.S. was a middle-class democracy from the time of the revolution, that slavery was relatively unimportant and not so bad, and that all U.S. Foreign policy from the Mexican War to the Spanish American War to the A-bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to the interventions in the Korean and Vietnam Wars were wholly justified. They are also a relatively small minority (and one that I would never ban) although what they encourage is chauvinistic nationalism and they are far more privileged and supported by public and private funding than any ethnic nationalists.
Arizona reactionaries and their collaborators in the Arizona legislature may think that they have the right as a state to do what they want to people who cross the U.S. border from Mexico and to deny Mexican Americans and others the right to study their history in a state that was until 1849 a part of Mexico.
But an attack on one is ultimately an attack on all. In principal, this law will be applied to African American and Asian American studies programs. And one can ask how it will affect general curriculum. What will happen to the history of Native Americans, the history of the Civil Rights movement, the history the United Farm Workers, the history of the incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII, in which the Arizona political authorities played a significant role, albeit far less known then their compatriots in California.
The only exemption in the law is for courses devoted to the Holocaust, even though as some have pointed out, such a courses may promote "ethnic solidarity" among Jewish student, and depending on how they are, taught a negative view of Germans. Also although former Vice President Dan Quayle was unsure of this when he was asked about it long ago at a press conference, the Holocaust of course didn't happen in the United States.
We should stand with the Tucson school district and all other non Anglo chauvinists in Arizona who resist this law. Its contemporary version of "100 percent" Anglo-Americanism is an affront to the best traditions of the United States, largest multiethnic democratic republic in history.
We should also demand that the U.S. Department of Education stand with the Tucson district in opposing this law and inform the State of Arizona, which has threatened major funding cuts for those who do not comply with this act of censorship, that it will re-examine its funding of Arizona educational programs because of the laws negative effects on education.
