Rift in Arizona as Latino Class Is Found Illegal

In light of yesterday's events in Tucson, this article shows the dark and hate-filled sentiments that are permeating the state of Arizona, and our nation. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the Tucson community.

-Patricia

By MARC LACEY | NY Times
Published: January 7, 2011

TUCSON — The class began with a Mayan-inspired chant and a vigorous round of coordinated hand clapping. The classroom walls featured protest signs, including one that said “United Together in La Lucha!” — the struggle. Although open to any student at Tucson High Magnet School, nearly all of those attending Curtis Acosta’s Latino literature class on a recent morning were Mexican-American.

For all of that and more, Mr. Acosta’s class and others in the Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican-American program have been declared illegal by the State of Arizona — even while similar programs for black, Asian and American Indian students have been left untouched.

“It’s propagandizing and brainwashing that’s going on there,” Tom Horne, Arizona’s newly elected attorney general, said this week as he officially declared the program in violation of a state law that went into effect on Jan. 1.

Although Shakespeare’s “Tempest” was supposed to be the topic at hand, Mr. Acosta spent most of a recent class discussing the political storm in which he, his students and the entire district have become enmeshed. Mr. Horne’s name came up more than once, and not in a flattering light.

It was Mr. Horne, as the state’s superintendent of public instruction, who wrote a law aimed at challenging Tucson’s ethnic-studies program. The Legislature passed the measure last spring, and Gov. Jan Brewer signed it into law in May amid the fierce protests raging over the state’s immigration crackdown.

For the state, the issue is not so much “The Tempest” as some of the other texts used in the classes, among them, “The Pedagogy of the Oppressed” and “Occupied America,” which Mr. Horne said inappropriately teach Latino youths that they are being mistreated.

Teaching methods in the classes are sometimes unconventional, with instructors scrutinizing hip-hop lyrics and sprinkling their lessons with Spanish words.

The state, which includes some Mexican-American studies in its official curriculum, sees the classes as less about educating students than creating future activists.

In Mr. Acosta’s literature class, students were clearly concerned. They asked if their graduation was at risk. They asked if they were considered terrorists because Mr. Horne described them as wanting to topple the government. They asked how they could protest the decision.

Then, one young woman asked Mr. Acosta how he was holding up.

“They wrote a state law to snuff this program out, just us little Chicanitos,” he said, wiping away tears. “The idea of losing this is emotional.”

At a recent news conference, Mr. Horne took pains to describe his attack on Tucson’s Mexican-American studies program as one rooted in good faith. He said he had been studying Spanish for several years and had learned enough to read Mexican history books in Spanish and to give interviews on Univision and Telemundo, two Spanish-language broadcasters.

Asked whether he felt he was being likened to Bull Connor, the Alabama police commissioner who became a symbol of bigotry in the 1960s, Mr. Horne described how he had participated in the March on Washington in 1963 as a young high school graduate. He said of his critics: “They are the ‘Bull Connors.’ They are the ones resegregating.”

Mr. Horne’s battle with Tucson over ethnic studies dates to 2007, when Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers, told high school students there in a speech that Republicans hated Latinos. Mr. Horne, a Republican, sent a top aide, Margaret Garcia Dugan, to the school to present a different perspective. He was infuriated when some students turned their backs and raised their fists in the air.

The Arizona law warns school districts that they stand to lose 10 percent of their state education funds if their ethnic-studies programs are found not to comply with new state standards. Programs that promote the overthrow of the United States government are explicitly banned, and that includes the suggestion that portions of the Southwest that were once part of Mexico should be returned to that country.

Also prohibited is any promotion of resentment toward a race. Programs that are primarily for one race or that advocate ethnic solidarity instead of individuality are also outlawed.

11 Tucson teachers sue Arizona over new 'anti-Hispanic' schools law

Not in their name! These teachers are courageous classroom leaders. In spite of all the hate, inspiration and care still happens!

-Patricia

By Michael Martinez and Thelma Gutierrez, CNN
October 19, 2010

Tucson, Arizona (CNN) -- Eleven Tucson, Arizona, educators sued the state board of education and superintendent this week for what the teachers consider an "anti-Hispanic" ban looming on Mexican-American studies.

The suit comes in a state already roiled by a controversial immigration law that is being challenged in court.

On Tuesday, state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne defended the new law, which will go into effect December 31. The law authorizes the superintendent to stop any ethnic studies classes that "promote the overthrow of the United States government ... promote resentment toward a race or class of people ... (or) advocate ethnic solidarity instead of treatment of pupils as individuals."

Horne said he would seek the first-ever ban in Tucson for its "raza studies" program, now called Mexican-American studies. Raza means "the race" in Spanish.

The law allows the state to withhold 10 percent of monthly aid -- which would amount to $3 million a month for Tucson Unified School District No. 1.

Horne has objected to the Tucson program partly because the district uses the textbook "Occupied America: A History of Chicanos" by Rodolfo F. Acuna, a professor of Chicanao Studies at California State University at Northridge, according to the lawsuit filed Monday. Students learn how the American Southwest once belonged to Mexico, but Horne objects to the use of the word "occupied."

"In the lawsuit, they claimed that this legislation constituted discrimination," Horne said. "It's exactly backwards. The idea behind the legislation is that students need to treat each other as individuals ... and not what race they were born into."

Horne, whose eight-year term limit will force him to step down next January 3, takes credit for the new law's passage. Horne is now running as a Republican for attorney general in November's elections, facing Democrat Felecia Rotellini, and he is a prominent supporter of the state's controversial immigration crackdown that's also being challenged in federal court on constitutional grounds.

The 11 educators in Tucson's Mexican-American Studies Department are asking a federal judge to stay the new schools law, passed last April, because it violates free speech, equal protection and due process, the suit contends

The program, created in 1998 and initially called "Mexican American/Raza Studies," has been effective in reducing dropout rates among Latino students, discipline problems, poor attendance and failure rates, the educators say.

The instructor likened the curriculum to university departments devoted to African-American or Middle Eastern studies.

The Tucson district renamed the program Mexican-American Studies last October because of "Horne's constant criticism and disparaging comments about the word 'raza,' " the lawsuit said.

The new law, however, doesn't prohibit courses required under federal law for Native American pupils or the instruction about the Holocaust or other genocides or historical oppression against a group of people based on ethnicity, race or class.

In their lawsuit, the teachers contend the law "was enacted by the legislature of the state of Arizona and signed into law by (Gov. Jan) Brewer as a result of racial bias and anti-Hispanic beliefs and sentiments."

While Horne said he doesn't oppose history lessons about how Southwestern states such as Arizona and California were originally part of Mexico, he claimed the Tucson district was teaching that history in an objectionable manner.

"They teach them that this is occupied territory that should be given back," Horne said.

But on a recent day at Pueblo High School in Tucson, a reporter asked the mostly Latino students in an American history class -- part of the ethnic studies program -- whether anyone believed the Southwest should be returned to Mexico.

No one raised a hand.

When asked if the region belonged in the United States, all students raised their hands.

Teacher Sally Rusk said she never taught that the Southwest should return to Mexico. "No, absolutely not," she said. "This is the U.S. Do any of the textbooks advocate that? No! No!"

While the law targets courses that "are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group," one African-American student in the class, senior Olivia Payne, took exception with that description of the program.

"I get really emotional because this class helped me a lot," she said, becoming tearful. "We're a family. We're one, and it's teaching us we can make a difference in this country. I don't want this class to be taken away."