Arizona gov. signs bill targeting ethnic studies

Catz Part Deux said:

This is a naive perspective. My kids are racially separated every single day by the fact that they are part of a tiny minority in their school. They look different. Their parents look different. My kids have been asked hundreds of times: "Are you chinese? Are you Latino? Are you Mexican? Are you Japanese?"

When was the last time your kids had to field those kinds of questions? My kids are half white and half Filipino. Both sides of them are equally important.

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I didn't say they weren't important. Knowledge of racial history and individual ancestry is very important and should be embraced.

These questions that your kids peers direct to them are of result of racial separatism which continues because of segregationists masquerading as civil right activists. There are huge society negatives with holding classes about "here is what really happened to our race that the white man doesn't want you to know about".

I grew up in the ghetto of Long Beach and was one of three "white kids" in my class. I know full well what it's like to be picked on and attacked for grudges or opinions kids are bred to hold.

Hatuey said:

Arizona gov. signs bill targeting ethnic studies - Yahoo! News



Another bill targeting Hispanics and other minorities in Arizona with vague language. Who gets to decide whether a class 'promotes resentment'? If they learn about American support for the dictatorial PRI who killed hundreds of young students days before the Mexico City Olympics, does that promote 'resentment'? Thoughts?

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No, it doesn't simply target Hispanics. It targets any group or curriculm that decides to teach that 1 race of people is better or to resent another race of people.

It mainly came from this episode from 1 of the classes:

AZ gov. signs bill targeting ethnic classes | HeraldTribune.com

"...Horne, a Republican running for attorney general, said the program promotes "ethnic chauvinism" and racial resentment toward whites while segregating students by race. He's been trying to restrict it ever since he learned that Hispanic civil rights activist Dolores Huerta told students in 2006 that "Republicans hate Latinos..."

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That is where the bill's roots are, and on those grounds, the bill is justified.

Even the district officials see nothing wrong with it:

"...District officials said the program doesn't promote resentment, and they believe it would comply with the new law.

The measure doesn't prohibit classes that teach about the history of a particular ethnic group, as long as the course is open to all students and doesn't promote ethnic solidarity or resentment..."

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...such as the Dolores Huerta comments during a class back in 2006. It is prohibiting that kind of trash, which I would think, everybody out there would be behind.

Hatuey said:

Another bill targeting Hispanics and other minorities in Arizona with vague language. Who gets to decide whether a class 'promotes resentment'? If they learn about American support for the dictatorial PRI who killed hundreds of young students days before the Mexico City Olympics, does that promote 'resentment'? Thoughts?

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I think all American history should be taught as American history and that's that. No African American history, no Hispanic American history...just history from an American perspective.

I also agree that we should not be funding classes that promote racial resentment or ethnic solidarity. The only problem I see is in defining those terms and what's over the line and what isn't.

But good job, Arizona, for at least trying to move in the right direction.

jallman said:

I think all American history should be taught as American history and that's that. No African American history, no Hispanic American history...just history from an American perspective.

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There is no "American" history. There is history that benefits American nationalism; cheering WWII and WWI as just wars and how it was American power that won the war, although it seems much more likely that the USSR is more responsible for winning WWII than the US; submitting that the Civil War was a necessary war to rid the United States of slavery; paint the American Revolutionaries as martyrs and heroes and downplaying the mob like mentality that was the catalyst for the nation-wide revolution; have the systematic native american extermination resemble a necessary evil, or numb it altogether.

We have to face it that history is specific to region, in regards to how a subject should be discussed. The northern teachers I had throughout my middle and high school courses would never call the civil war the "War of Northern Aggression" but outside of their classes it was how our region talked about that period in history.

I also agree that we should not be funding classes that promote racial resentment or ethnic solidarity. The only problem I see is in defining those terms and what's over the line and what isn't.

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How do you teach the subject of Native American extermination to a Cherokee descendent with a disregard to "promoting racial resentment"?
How do you teach the civil rights movement in Birmingham Alabama and how lynchings in the south were a common spectacle and not promote racial resentment?
How do you teach a Japanese-American WWII? Do you brush over the parts about the illegal arresting of Japanese-American because the public shat a brick whenever they saw any person of Asian decent?

It sounds almost as foolish and ill-defined as laws that seek to impose additional criminal penalties on people who do bad things as a result of "hate."

Erod said:

All of which I can agree with you on. But don't create seperate classes; rather, teach it within the context of the whole.

This is how racism breeds, getting a teacher to teach the history (and agenda) of a particular GROUP as seperate from other Americans.

My kids are half white, half Hispanic, so I can relate to you. They have the advantages of an affluent life, but we don't talk about our family as "mixed", we just talk about it as a family. Mom's ethnicity is Hispanic, and she's fluent in Spanish. So what, that's really cool.

I don't want my kids associating or empathizing with any "movement" or "cause" built around their ethnicity. I want them to concentrate on who they are as our kids, their teacher's students, their coach's athletes, their friends' friends, and their community's citizens, and nothing more.

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I like what you say here, but my nephew is half Korean and was called (and I quote) a "stupid Asian Chinc" by one of his teachers in high school. But because only two other students overheard the comment, the school refused to believe him and chose to believe the teacher instead.

Where I grew up, there was one black student, one Indian student, one Native American student, and one Japanese student + three foreign exchange students.

Indeed, one of those foreign exchange students was from Finland and lived with my family and the one class we had together was taught by the teacher who called by nephew a racial epithet. He also told Petri that he was a Communist. And when Petri said Finland wasn't a Communist nation, the teacher said, "well, you don't understand the facts of your own nation."

Of course, this could turn into how bad public education is (and my school was rated one of the finest in the state of Indiana at the time) and I'm not wanting to turn it into that; but history should be taught from all perspectives - not just the White American perspective.

The teaching of ethnic studies courses is a response to traditional academia telling everything from a single perspective.

Until THAT is changed, I see no problem with ethnic studies courses. I, myself, minored in African-American studies and loved every minute of it and learned a lot that I didn't learn from more mainstream courses. It didn't develop a "separatist" perspective at all. It developed understanding between people.

Unless the law address the way history is taught in general, to ban ethnic studies courses is nothing but yet another political ploy by a bunch of politicians who are worried about a bunch of pissed off white folks who are really (and legitimately) angry and don't know what to do with their anger.

"Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it."

I came here and assimilated. I am as American as hip-hop music.

RightinNYC said:

It sounds almost as foolish and ill-defined as laws that seek to impose additional criminal penalties on people who do bad things as a result of "hate."

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I oppose those too.

Arch Enemy said:

There is no "American" history.

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Bull****. American history starts in 1492. It really gets interesting around 1760 or so.

There is history that benefits American nationalism; cheering WWII and WWI as just wars and how it was American power that won the war, although it seems much more likely that the USSR is more responsible for winning WWII than the US;

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Good. That's something to talk about in AMERICAN history even if your view is misguided.

submitting that the Civil War was a necessary war to rid the United States of slavery;

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It was a necessary war to keep Lincoln's tariff's in place and protect thriving Northern industry.

paint the American Revolutionaries as martyrs and heroes and downplaying the mob like mentality that was the catalyst for the nation-wide revolution; have the systematic native american extermination resemble a necessary evil, or numb it altogether.

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Well if you don't even see those who spilled their blood for your freedom as heroes, I don't know what to tell you. As for the Native American problem, I think that should be covered under evolutionary biology rather than history.

We have to face it that history is specific to region, in regards to how a subject should be discussed. The northern teachers I had throughout my middle and high school courses would never call the civil war the "War of Northern Aggression" but outside of their classes it was how our region talked about that period in history.

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That in no way alleviates the issue of classes teaching Americans to be divided over our history. No student sitting in a classroom today suffered slavery or the civil war. The subjects need to be taught from an academic, factual perspective without all the editorializing input of race activists.

How do you teach the subject of Native American extermination to a Cherokee descendent with a disregard to "promoting racial resentment"?

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You say:

This is what happened. This is the result. This is where things stand today. Any questions?

How do you teach the civil rights movement in Birmingham Alabama and how lynchings in the south were a common spectacle and not promote racial resentment?

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You say:

This is what happened. This is the result. This is where things stand today. Any questions?

How do you teach a Japanese-American WWII? Do you brush over the parts about the illegal arresting of Japanese-American because the public shat a brick whenever they saw any person of Asian decent?

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This is what happened. This was the result. This is where things stand today. Any questions?

jallman said:

Bull****. American history starts in 1492. It really gets interesting around 1760 or so.

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You still don't believe 1492 was the year America was discovered do you?
I thought that was tied with all the other mythologies that people typically sift through during their adolescence like "Columbus sought to prove the Earth was round" and "Magellan was the first to circumnavigate the globe".

Progeny calls the colonists Americans. Yet people have lived in America for some 40,000 years.

Good. That's something to talk about in AMERICAN history even if your view is misguided.

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Care to back that claim up?

It was a necessary war to keep Lincoln's tariff's in place and protect thriving Northern industry.

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You see it as such. I see it as a war to keep the South in the Union and as an underdeveloped exporter of raw materials to the benefit of the North.

Same information, effectively.

Well if you don't even see those who spilled their blood for your freedom as heroes, I don't know what to tell you. As for the Native American problem, I think that should be covered under evolutionary biology rather than history.

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Billions and billions of people have shed their blood to keep my genetic identity intact. It is not rare. Had I been alive in the 40's would I have fought in the War to keep my progeny safe? You betcha, but I would do it only under the flag that draws around my family. Had my family been in the Soviet Union I would have fought as a Russian soldier, in Japan as a Japanese solider. I'm glad to be American, but only because America is to the benefit of my family.

That in no way alleviates the issue of classes teaching Americans to be divided over our history. No student sitting in a classroom today suffered slavery or the civil war. The subjects need to be taught from an academic, factual perspective without all the editorializing input of race activists.

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I agree which is why you deal with the professors.

Arch Enemy said:

We have to face it that history is specific to region, in regards to how a subject should be discussed. The northern teachers I had throughout my middle and high school courses would never call the civil war the "War of Northern Aggression" but outside of their classes it was how our region talked about that period in history.

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Ahh, great point, this actually makes me want to ask a question.

To all those in this thread going "This is wrong, they should be able to have a Hispanic-American focused class" and other such sentiment, I have a question for you.

Would you have any issue with a school in Georgia having a "Southern-American focused" History class that taught about the War of Northern Aggression, had weeks where they highlighted the lives of people like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall jackson, had a week decrying the war criminal General Sherman, examining Southern Culture during the time, explaining how the war was about States Rights and Lincoln's unconstitutional war, highlighting how the war damaged the southern states for the immediete time after the war and the lingering after effects, and highlighting famous southern figures from the time of the civil war onward.

Would that be fine since I mean, every region should be able to cater specifically to the culture and history of the people that inhabit it and its okay if schools teach information that paints the United States as traditionally known in a bad light.

So you all would have no issue with the above class I take it?

Arch Enemy said:

You still don't believe 1492 was the year America was discovered do you?

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I don't - given how what is modern day North America was already mapped in some form before Columbus even reached "America."

Zyphlin said:

To all those in this thread going "This is wrong, they should be able to have a Hispanic-American focused class" and other such sentiment, I have a question for you.

Would you have any issue with a school in Georgia having a "Southern-American focused" History class that taught about the War of Northern Aggression, had weeks where they highlighted the lives of people like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall jackson, had a week decrying the war criminal General Sherman, examining Southern Culture during the time, explaining how the war was about States Rights and Lincoln's unconstitutional war, highlighting how the war damaged the southern states for the immediete time after the war and the lingering after effects, and highlighting famous southern figures from the time of the civil war onward.

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Absolutely.
Southerners should be proud in their heritage. No reason why not to discuss it.

Would that be fine since I mean, every region should be able to cater specifically to the culture and history of the people that inhabit it and its okay if schools teach information that paints the United States as traditionally known in a bad light.

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There is no reason why you cannot have a Federally administrated historical course with an overview of United States history. But we need to realize that the United States is not homogenous demographic. I think it is necessary to teach Southern students what part their region played, the general sentiment of the South in regards to the issues in the Civil War. Do the exact same for the North.

So you all would have no issue with the above class I take it?

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Hell no I'd fully support it.

Arch Enemy said:

You still don't believe 1492 was the year America was discovered do you?

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Did I say that? However, US American history really isn't about a bunch of savages crossing the bering strait.

I thought that was tied with all the other mythologies that people typically sift through during their adolescence like "Columbus sought to prove the Earth was round" and "Magellan was the first to circumnavigate the globe".

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Whatever.

Progeny calls the colonists Americans. Yet people have lived in America for some 40,000 years.

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Yeah and the study of US American history isn't really vested in the study of a bunch of savages. US american history's first important event was the European motivation to seek passage to the West Indies.

Care to back that claim up?

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What? That American history should be talked about in American history? ooookay.

You see it as such. I see it as a war to keep the South in the Union and as an underdeveloped exporter of raw materials to the benefit of the North.


Same information, effectively.

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Pretty much.

Billions and billions of people have shed their blood to keep my genetic identity intact. It is not rare. Had I been alive in the 40's would I have fought in the War to keep my progeny safe? You betcha, but I would do it only under the flag that draws around my family. Had my family been in the Soviet Union I would have fought as a Russian soldier, in Japan as a Japanese solider. I'm glad to be American, but only because America is to the benefit of my family.

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American history isn't about genetic identity. It is about the struggles and victories of a people who came together from all over the world to make a nation.

Your lack of pride in your heritage is a little disappointing.

I agree which is why you deal with the professors.

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You don't think this law is a step in that direction?

Zyphlin said:

Ahh, great point, this actually makes me want to ask a question.

To all those in this thread going "This is wrong, they should be able to have a Hispanic-American focused class" and other such sentiment, I have a question for you.

Would you have any issue with a school in Georgia having a "Southern-American focused" History class that taught about the War of Northern Aggression, had weeks where they highlighted the lives of people like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall jackson, had a week decrying the war criminal General Sherman, examining Southern Culture during the time, explaining how the war was about States Rights and Lincoln's unconstitutional war, highlighting how the war damaged the southern states for the immediete time after the war and the lingering after effects, and highlighting famous southern figures from the time of the civil war onward.

Would that be fine since I mean, every region should be able to cater specifically to the culture and history of the people that inhabit it and its okay if schools teach information that paints the United States as traditionally known in a bad light.

So you all would have no issue with the above class I take it?

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Republican revisionism is always funny.

Hatuey said:

Republican revisionism is always funny.

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How does that even begin to address the point made? Oh and by the way...Lincoln was the Republican in the Civil War conflict. But don't let facts get in the way of you not answering the question.

Thanks Arch, though I'll be honest, I'm very interested to see what (if anything) Disney or Hautey would say

[edit]Damn, I'm Psychic[/edit]

Hatuey said:

Republican revisionism is always funny.

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Umm, that's kind of the point of the example.

Care to actually answer the question and show some intellectual honsety and consistancy based on your earlier stances or just want to try and grab onto a strawman.

Yes, my above suggested class is a very biased interpritation of events...purely and completely through the eyes of a staunch southern. You know, much like the classes being done in Arizona. That's the entire point of my question.

Going to answer, or just going to juke and jive?

jallman said:

How does that even begin to address the point made?

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In that he's equating the Southern revisionism we're all so familiar with and you seem to hold on dearly to with teaching kids that Arizona was actually part of Mexico.

Zyphlin said:

Umm, that's kind of the point of the example.

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Bull****. Your point is to equate revisionist history with ethnic classes. It's a faile(that's not a typo).

Care to actually answer the question and show some intellectual honsety and consistancy based on your earlier stances or just want to try and grab onto a strawman.

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Why don't you try to spell out honesty and consistency with before accusing others of not them? Your 'argument' is a non-sequitur. Unless you can show that these classes are teaching kid revisionist history then there is nothing 'consistent' about your argument.

Yes, my above suggested class is a very biased interpritation of events...purely and completely through the eyes of a staunch southern. You know, much like the classes being done in Arizona. That's the entire point of my question.

Going to answer, or just going to juke and jive?

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Prove this or GTFO. Thanks.

Zyphlin said:

Umm, that's kind of the point of the example.

Care to actually answer the question and show some intellectual honsety and consistancy based on your earlier stances or just want to try and grab onto a strawman.

Yes, my above suggested class is a very biased interpritation of events...purely and completely through the eyes of a staunch southern. You know, much like the classes being done in Arizona. That's the entire point of my question.

Going to answer, or just going to juke and jive?

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I wouldn't support teaching a separate class on the Civil War. But, I agree...it should be taught in a much more nuanced and historically accurate way versus "The South Was Evil so The North Kicked Its Ass" which seems to be the norm.

Hatuey said:

In that he's equating the Southern revisionism we're all so familiar with and you seem to hold on dearly to with teaching kids that Arizona was actually part of Mexico.

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There's nothing revisionist about acknowledging that the Northern states were aggressive about passing legislation and tariffs intended to force movement of raw resources from the south to the North at minimal cost to Northern industry.

Perhaps you would do well to take a history lesson, yourself.

I don't think anyone is attempting to stop teaching kids in Arizona that Arizona was once part of Mexico. If you can demonstrate where, then you might have a point. Otherwise, you're just, as Zyphlin put it, juking and jiving.

jallman said:

How does that even begin to address the point made? Oh and by the way...Lincoln was the Republican in the Civil War conflict. But don't let facts get in the way of you not answering the question.

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I'll explain why I say 'Republican Revisionism'. In the last 40 years, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party have switched voting blocks. While this is for various reasons, the Republican Party has now taken up the role of defending the Republican created myth of 'States Rights'. Disenfranchised poor whites in formerly heavy Democrat areas of the South are now States Rights supporting Republicans of the South.

RNC Chief to Say It Was 'Wrong' to Exploit Racial Conflict for Votes - washingtonpost.com

It was called "the southern strategy," started under Richard M. Nixon in 1968, and described Republican efforts to use race as a wedge issue -- on matters such as desegregation and busing -- to appeal to white southern voters.

Ken Mehlman, the Republican National Committee chairman, this morning will tell the NAACP national convention in Milwaukee that it was "wrong."

"By the '70s and into the '80s and '90s, the Democratic Party solidified its gains in the African American community, and we Republicans did not effectively reach out," Mehlman says in his prepared text. "Some Republicans gave up on winning the African American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization. I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong."

Mehlman, a Baltimore native who managed President Bush's reelection campaign, goes on to discuss current overtures to minorities, calling it "not healthy for the country for our political parties to be so racially polarized." The party lists century-old outreach efforts in a new feature on its Web site, GOP.com, which was relaunched yesterday with new interactive features and a history section called "Lincoln's Legacy."

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[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy]Southern strategy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

From 1948 to 1984 the Southern states, traditionally a stronghold for the Democrats, became key swing states, providing the popular vote margins in the 1960, 1968 and 1976 elections. During this era, several Republican candidates expressed support for states' rights, which some critics claim was "codewords" of opposition to federal enforcement of civil rights for blacks and intervention on their behalf, including passage of legislation to protect the franchise.[4]. This is in spite of any concrete appeals in opposition of civil rights in the course of supporting states' rights.

Analysts such as Richard Johnston and Byron Shafer have argued that this phenomenon had more to do with the economics than it had to do with race. In The End of Southern Exceptionalism, political scientists Johnston of the University of Pennsylvania and Shafer of the University of Wisconsin wrote that the Republicans' gains in the South corresponded to the growth of the upper middle class in that region. They suggested that such individuals believed their economic interests were better served by the Republicans than the Democrats. According to Johnston and Shafer, working-class white voters in the South continued to vote for Democrats for national office until the 1990s. In summary, Shafer told The New York Times, "[whites] voted by their economic preferences, not racial preferences".[5]

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Hatuey said:

Bull****. Your point is to equate revisionist history with ethnic classes. It's a faile(that's not a typo).

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No, its teaching a class about a specific culture from the mindset of that culture rather than teaching a standard american history class, just like their teaching a class in the mindset of a specific culture rather than teachin a standard american history class.

Why don't you try to spell out honesty and consistency with before using themt? Your 'argument' is a non-sequitur. Unless you can show that these classes are teaching kid revisionist history then there is nothing 'consistent' about your argument.

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Want to know the first sign your arguments weak? When you start playing spelling nazi. Yeah, sorry, don't give a **** enough about arguing with you to sit here and run everything through spell check or read read things a dozen times to see if I didn't accidently hit the s key before I hit the e.

There's nothing "revisionist" about what I typed, its simply a different view point. One contrary to what's typically thought of and viewed by American History classes.

Prove this or GTFO. Thanks.

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I'll give you a free be here. You may not want to tell posters to get the **** out, its uncivil and its flaming, figure I'd be kind and say it here since you're doing it to a mod so that another doesn't come from behind and act on it.

But fine, since you want to nit pick and continue to dance around the question...fine, take my exact same question and remove your questionable "revisionist" part. Have it simply a southern heritage class that focuses on the other reasons, ALONG with Slavery, that the south went to war (or are you seriously claiming slavery was the first, second, and ONLY reason). Have it still study Jackson and Lee. Have it look at the Southern Culture of that time. Have it look at what Southerns have contributed to the country since then.

Nothing revisionist there, nothing that can even be claimed to be revionist. So again, how about rather than getting on your little soap box because you can't dare to actually admit you're being amazingly biased and hypocritical, grabbing onto one little line and using it as if nothing else within it existed, and now answer the question truthfully and honestly.