Hold on to your hats, because the State of Arizona is at it yet again!
After making international headlines and causing general havoc and threats of boycotts for a new law on illegal immigrants, the Arizona Legislature passed a brand new controversial law. The bill is to ban ethnic studies programs within the state, believing such classes promote separatism and racial preferences. It passed 32-26 in the state House and has now gone to Gov. Jan Brewer for her signature.
The new bill would make it illegal for a school district to teach any courses designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group, such as African-American or Hispanic studies. However, the bill would allow classes to be taught for Native American pupils in compliance with federal law and does not prohibit the teaching of the Holocaust or other cases of genocide. Any school failing to abide by the law would have state funds withheld.
State Superintendent for Public Instruction Tom Horne called passage in the state House a victory for the principle that education should unite, not divide students of differing backgrounds. “Traditionally, the American public school system has brought together students from different backgrounds and taught them to be Americans and to treat each other as individuals, and not on the basis of their ethnic backgrounds,” Horne said. “This is consistent with the fundamental American value that we are all individuals, not exemplars of whatever ethnic groups we were born into. Ethnic studies programs teach the opposite, and are designed to promote ethnic chauvinism.”
After a crippling 1980’s national boycott when it was the lone state to oppose making Martin Luther King Day a national holiday, one would think Arizona had learned its lesson. But with the recent passage of a new “birther” bill, requiring President Obama or anyone wanting to be on the ballot to prove their citizenship to that one state’s satisfaction, along with last weeks immigration bill which gives unprecedented power to police to detain assumed illegal (Hispanic) immigrants, Arizona still just doesn’t seem to “get it.”
"JESUS TAKE THE WHEEL!!!"