Arizona and Ethnic Studies

Julianne Hing writing for the Atlantic:

Yesterday I got stuck on a photo from a new Tumblr I heard about, Fuck Yeah API History. (You can explore the meme  here.) It’s a new blog on the block that’s just black and white photos of Asian and Pacific Islander Americans doing their thing. One photo in particular from the site, of a Sikh parade in Stockton, California, made me pause. Sikhs have a long history in the region–the first gurdwara in North America was built in Stockton in 1912. But on May 11, 1945, Sikh men in turbans and beards–and plenty without either–and a few women gathered for a dignified photo that was jarring to my eyes in 2011.

 
When I saw that photo I saw old Asian people, old and proud of their heritage and who they were. Look at those old cars! The beautiful cut of the men’s suits! There could be a hundred people in that photo. I stared at it for a long time.

It made me think about Arizona’s HB 2281 (you know, Arizona’s other new racist law), the one ostensibly meant to protect American students from anti-American curriculum in the state’s public schools. The law forbids any public school course that does any of these things: encourages students to “resent or hate other races or classes of people; promote[s] the overthrow of the United States government; promote[s] resentment toward a race or class of people” or “is designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group” or “advocate[s] ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.”

Its champion is Arizona’s new attorney general, Tom Horne. As the state superintendent he set aside Tucson’s ethnic studies courses for elimination and made it his mission to outlaw the program’s Mexican-American studies courses, even though educators argued that students who took the classes graduated at higher rates than students who didn’t. The history and English electives put special emphasis on Latino history in the U.S., one which happens to include racism, oppression, exploitation and exclusion. Horne has repeatedly said these classes teach kids “ethnic chauvinism.” Read more…

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