11 Arizona Teachers Sue Over Ethnic Studies

Eleven educators from Tucson, Arizona have sued the state over implementation of what they call an “anti-Hispanic” law that would ban Mexican-American studies courses in public schools, CNN reports. The teachers are suing the state board of education and their superintendent and asking a federal judge for a stay on the law, which would take effect December 31, because it “violates free speech, equal protection and due process.”

The ban would force the elimination of courses that “promote the overthrow of the United States government” or “resentment” towards a particular race/class of people (gee, there’s none of that whatsoever in U.S. history…) or advocates for “ethnic solidarity instead of treatment of pupils as individuals.”

Tom Horne, the superintendent of public instruction in Arizona, said that “raza” translates to “race,” which is a simplistic and not very accurate translation of the word.  In the U.S. “race” has a lot of connotations and baggage that “raza” doesn’t because of the specific history that happened in the United States, a country I’m sure he knows didn’t evolve with Spanish as a dominant language.

This law is blatantly racist in another aspect, because it doesn’t constrict classes for Native American studies or the Holocaust.  Isn’t that called “racial profiling?”

Perhaps the funniest thing is that Horne’s main objection to Tucson’s program is that it uses a book called “Occupied America: A History of Chicanos” by Rodolfo F. Acuña and he doesn’t like the word “occupied.”  Kinda funny, considering that the Native Americans were here before all of us, thus, logically this country is already occupied.