On the heels of legislation which would end affirmative action in the state, the Arizona legislature will once again look at and possibly pass an act which includes amendments to combat diversity and civil rights. Senate bill 1108, originally intended to concern the Homeland Security advisory committee, has now been amended to include language which would ban campus organizations which are "based in whole or in part on race-based criteria" and would remove part of state funding from schools which have courses and materials which "denigrate American values and the teachings of Western civilization" and "overtly encourage dissent" from said values.

To some it might sound good, but the necessity of race based student organizations is lost on many people who do not need them. Campus organizations for students of different racial and ethnic groups often serve as places where students of color and international students can come together in schools where they are in the minority and support one another. You can find an interesting conversation about the necessity of safe spaces for people of color/women/GLBT/etc here.

As for the school curriculum, the language is vague enough to make me worry. What are American values? What are the teachings of Western civilization? Americans are not all products of Western civilization--should the teachings of the backgrounds of non-European students be discarded when they come into conflict with the prevailing attitudes of Europe and (for the most part) European Americans? Is it the place of a public school to teach students any kind of values, or should students be given different perspectives and shown the facts as they stand, and then be allowed to take from those things what they will?

I titled this post the way I did because the author of the amendment has himself admitted the reasons behind the bill--the student group MEChA (Movimiento Estudantial Chicano de Aztlan), and the curriculum of "Raza Studies" in the Tucson public school system. Laura Leighton, a supporter of the bill, said that the books used in the Raza Studies courses showed a "denigration and disparagement of American values and a subversion of our history." Anna Graves, another supporter, goes on:

"If we were to have a group of white citizens teaching white culture only for the white children, it would be totally and absolutely inappropriate in a country that is a country of diversity. I absolute deplore people who come from another country and do not want anything to do with the culture, the language or anything that has to do with the government."

Leighton and Graves seem to be looking out at the world through blinkers, though. Leighton says that the Latino history program "subverts" American history--and perhaps, in some ways, it does paint historical Americans in a negative light. I don't see how it would be possible NOT to in any history of Latino peoples in this country, especially concerning the manner in which they originally came to be Americans and their subsequent maltreatment, which ranged from the theft of Hispanic land immediately after the Southwest came into Anglo rule, the Zoot Suit Riots, in which white sailors took to the streets and beat and killed young Chicanos as well as a few young black men, and the sailors were touted as heroes while the Chicanos were jailed, to the literal slavery of many Bracero workers in the mid 20th century, to the attitude that Latinos are perpetual immigrants, to the state of things today. There is a lot of bad to go with the good, and if one wants to teach students about the various heroes among Latinos in the U.S., then as is the case with many other ethnic histories, many of those heroes will necessarily be fighting AGAINST America at the same time as they are fighting for it, from Cesar Chavez to Malcolm X.

Cesar Chavez. I want to address Graves comment here--Cesar Chavez is the only--the ONLY--Latino American hero that I can think of, and he was never mentioned in any of my classes in school. In fact, and as a person who remembers damn near everything from her history classes, since that's my favorite subject, the only Latino person we learned about in high school was Pancho Villa--and he was one of the bad guys (at least from the perspective that he was taught to us). She says it would be inappropriate to teach white culture, but that's pretty much what we do today. U.S. History--and even World History, in most cases--is made up of White Anglo Saxon Protestant males. That's what we're taught in school, and understandably that can cause many students who don't fit into those groups to tune it out. A few scraps are thrown to women and African-Americans (Martin Luther King, Jr., Harriet Tubman, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and...I got nothin'), but nowhere near enough. Shit, don't get me wrong--I wish people would just teach everybody's history without having to divide it into little groups, but that's not happening right now, which is why things like black history month and Raza Studies (and African American Studies, and Native American Studies, and Pan Asian Studies, www.tusd.k12.az.us ">all of which are taught alongside Raza Studies in the Tucson Unified School District)  are necessary. If it is the case that these courses can only be taught to students in the populations they are about, then that is indeed a problem, because white kids shouldn't be ignorant of Latino American history, and black kids shouldn't be ignorant of Native American history, and Latino kids shouldn't be ignorant of Asian American history, and so on and so on.

In a country where the drop out rate among students of color often far outstrips the drop out rate among white students, the rate of graduation and college attendance has risen drastically among students who take the Raza Studies classes (not sure about the other ethnic studies programs). How can that be wrong? Hell! How can we sacrifice our own kids to the anti-migrant hysteria which is causing these qualms about "anchor babies" and Mexican culture overtaking America?

Latino and American are not exclusive. As the mother of a biracial/biethnic/binational son, I will teach him to be proud of being Mexican AND American, of being white AND indiginous, of being Anglo AND Latino, and I can only hope that by the time he is school age we will have our own programs here in Texas which will teach him of the history of both of his peoples and empower him to know that he can succeed and that not fully conforming to mainstream American society will not (or should not) keep him from that. Anna Graves, up on her Ms. Assimilated high horse says she's sick of people who don't leave their culture and language behind. Well, you know what? I wouldn't have it any other way. Although I am a strictly monocultural and raised monolingual person who doesn't even know what ethnicities she is (although she has sneakily bought a "Kiss me, I'm Irish" shirt before, because no one will know, right?), I can't imagine America without the Irish and the Italians and the Mexicans and the Nigerians and the Chinese and the Indians and the Iranians and, let's not forget, the Cree and the Blackfoot and every other group in this country who manages to function in it  and succeed in it and love it and hate it and live in it and die in it and struggle with it and struggle for it while forgetting where they're from or remembering it strongly, or switching from one identity to another depending on where they are or melding the two identities together or forgetting one or remembering the other, because it's all of the groups apart or together that make this country great, that give it its identity, even if when one thinks of American culture they think of the Anglo mainstream to which all other groups must assimilate. But assimilation is not ideal, and it's not something we should expect from immigrants. Learn English? Hell yeah. Work hard? Damn straight. Follow the law? Whenever it's just. But being American or just living in America should not require one to forget or denounce their roots. This country ain't a melting pot, and it never has been. It's a salad bowl. And that's how it should be.