Gianni DiCrosta / Roundup
On April 29, Arizona governor Jan Brewer passed a bill that bans all ethnic studies in the Tucson Unified School District.
Allow me to rephrase that.
On April 29, Arizona governor Jan Brewer passed a blatant display of ethnic intolerance in the Tucson Unified School District.
For those that don’t know, Brewer has already signed a controversial bill that allows police officers in the state of Arizona to question people on the street about their citizenship status.
The Los Angeles City Council recently went on record boycotting the entire state of Arizona, cutting many future contracts and air travel with the state.
Representatives from the Los Angeles Community College District have also expressed their disapproval of the bill.
The new bill, first introduced by the Arizona Department of Education’s superintendent Tom Horne, will ban classes including African-American studies, Mexican-American studies and Native American studies.
In an official statement, Horne wrote “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.”
Now, I’m no linguistic scholar in any sense of the term, but I see a bit of inconsistency in this statement. So, I’d like to run through it piece by piece.
Yes, the American public school system has brought together students from different backgrounds.
Has it “taught” them to be Americans? That’s questionable. What exactly is “American?”
Well, we do learn American history, so in a sense that educates everybody in the public school system about America.
I’m still not sure if that makes somebody whose family didn’t come to this country on the Mayflower an “American.” I think it just makes you a well-educated individual.
I don’t think the school system has anything to do with citizens of this country being American. I think simply living here makes us nominally American.
Then comes the kicker.
“Treat each other as individuals, and not on the basis of their ethnic backgrounds.”
So, allow me to clarify, Mr. Horne. You want us to recognize our individualities, but disregard our cultural heritages?
Horne claims that cultural studies in school are “designed to promote ethnic chauvinism.”
So, since I learned about early America and the “American culture” in high school, does that make me a bigot who hates all other ethnicities? I don’t believe so.
I remember listening to my Italian grandfather tell stories about his country’s history, and learning its national anthem. So if Horne’s theory is correct, does that make me a chauvinist?
I was just interested in my own heritage. I was different from my neighbors, and I wanted to welcome that, not ignore it. It didn’t mean I wanted to learn about my culture and disregard everybody else’s.
Ethnic studies simply promote the embracement and education of a particular culture. We’re not talking about Nazi propaganda.
The truth is, America is a country populated by people from hundreds of ethnicities. For lack of a better cliché, we are the world’s melting pot.
It is important that we further America’s history without forgetting the histories of our countries passed, and ending cultural studies in schools is a step in the opposite direction.
