The ban on ethnic studies in Arizona has spawned a nationwide debate. The argument over ethnic studies has not been this mainstream since students first demanded and protested for race-based courses and departments four decades ago.
In the late 1960s and 1970s, AALANA (African-American, Latino/a, Asian, and Native American) students, teachers and professors clamored to convince America about the need for specialized courses that explore their peculiar experience. But they did not just want to study and learn about their specific experiences — they wanted to use that knowledge to advance their communities. Taking a supposed middle ground, administrators and superintendents tended to support the former purpose but widely rejected the latter.
The Arizona House Bill 2281 bans public school classes 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, and/or advocate ethnic solidarity instead of treatment of pupils as individuals.”
Mainstream America and the liberal academy seem torn on the bill, just like they were conflicted on the students’ demands 40 years ago. At the same time people seem opposed to banning courses “designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group,” they seem to support the removing of “political” and/or cultural nationalistic courses.
The bill primarily targeted the Department of Mexican American Studies in the Tucson Unified School District whose mission, according to its website, is to “work toward the invoking of a critical consciousness within each and every student” and “promote and advocate for social and educational transformation.”
The bill’s writers and the Mexican-American program’s leaders are being classified as extremist, racist and reckless for dragging politics into education.
In an editorial titled, “Law is problem, but so is message of these classes,” The Arizona Republic writes, “These TUSD activists are the Russell Pearces of the political left. If the nation indeed has come to see Pearce as the personification of the mean-spirited, anti-immigrant right, then Augustine Romero, Sean Arce and the other self-identified “progressive” Marxists of TUSD’s ethnic studies program are his equally sinister mirror image.”
