Blogging Arizona
What happened in AZ was a travesty . . . a hoax, a cruel joke! Of all the anti-intellectual resolutions that have occurred in this country, this one ranks high on the list for its sheer ignorance. It exposed a few white leaders in the corridors of Arizona power capable of pandering to the most grotesque stereotyping imaginable! They themselves showed how prejudiced some people may become who are arrogant and ignorant, closed-minded and deaf.
This educational system of ours, which they seek to undermine, is not new. It has been with us for a very long time: the education of seeking the truth. It has been tried and tested throughout American history and has endured many fiery trials. Commitment to academic honesty and intellectual plurality has won out as necessary, ethical, and vital to the spirit and meaning of our American democracy. We cannot have an honest and ethical society politically if we do not have an honest and ethical system educationally.
Do they not know that George Washington owned slaves? How is it disrespectful to tell the truth?Should we hide such facts from high school students in the hopes of giving them a dishonest view of what patriotism means? The Arizona leaders accuse the Mexican-American Studies program of giving offense to our Founding Fathers! What chutzpah!
As far as is known at this writing, none of the high school students ever bought and sold black people as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson did, or Benjamin Franklin (a name not normally thought of as a slave-owner); there were even slaves “employed” in the White House. What about the offense these Founding Fathers gave to Black people?
So far as I know, these high school students have never even owned one slave, let alone hundreds, as did some of the Founding Fathers. And yet these Arizona leaders want to present the lives of the Founding Fathers in an unblemished manner (free of such criticism) so they can better serve as exemplary models to the high schoolers of today’s America? Which truth is our educational system bound to uphold in good conscience, imaginary or real-life?
Sure, history textbooks might mention in passing that George Washington owned slaves and then gloss over it faster than a person can say Holy Hypocrisy. Unfortunately for this “old school” approach, today’s scholars and teachers have moved us far beyond the “glib once over” to deeper levels of knowledge–at least for those willing to consider a wider truth than this carefully sanitized picture of American “goodness” earlier writers presented in a quite one-sided manner.
The lives of the slaves themselves were barely considered while the writers composed their paeans, songs, and poems of glory to the mighty heroes of ’76. The contradiction between the fight for liberty and the ongoing existence of chattel slavery appeared to overwhelm the intellectual and literary capabilities of America’s earliest historians and scholars. Today, we are free to question more and pursue deeper analytical levels of understanding historical development.
The Founding Fathers were human beings, not gods; they had strengths and weaknesses, virtues and vices. However heroic or eloquent they sometimes were, they are no more exempted from critical analysis than any other historical figures students may study in school.
The Arizona legislators are defending the so-called “traditional” way of teaching American history that itself is so slanted as to be laughable: the “old scholarship” can call George Washington “a great man” and skip over his ownership of slaves! The Arizona legislators are upset by books being used in the Mexican-American Studies program. If any books should be criticized, why not criticize these earlier texts that perpetuated such whitewashed accounts of American history?
Why don’t the Arizona legislators object to those textbooks as teaching half-truths? Oh no! don’t expect that level of critical thinking from these Arizona educators and politicians. They would much rather object to a book because it advances too radical an alternative approach, because it is too “revolutionary”.
Do they forget that “revolution” is not a dirty word for Americans? That the Founding Fathers were themselves revolutionaries? That our country began with a revolution? Our national birth certificate, our Declaration of Independence, is characterized by that idea more than any other: Revolution! America was born in revolution and Americans were not–and are not–fearful of the changes that it implies!!
In 1776 these changes included overthrowing the British monarchy; in the 21st century, these changes included the right of minorities to gain entry to a truthful rendering of American history and to take pride in their own long history of multi-faceted contributions to American society.
They do not need to accept uncritically the perpetuation of negative stereotypes about themselves or other ethnic minorities; they have access to books of excellent scholarship that move well beyond the traditional Euro-centered view of America and the world. They have the right to a deeper, fuller understanding of the social and economic complexities that are an integral part of America’s story.
The Arizona would-be censors want books that praise our freedom and equality but which do not go into detail concerning the lives of millions of Americans who were not full partners in that freedom and equality. They want books that discuss America’s prosperity and not its poverty, but they ignore the fact that millions of Americans have not seen that prosperity and live in poverty.
These “rosy views” are those of the nation’s upper class in church, state, and businesses; they are the platitudes of the politicians who obsequiously represent the interests of the wealthy in order to gain and preserve power for themselves and their patrons. Of course the rich people are going to think of American society as “prosperous” because that’s what it’s been for them!
Of course they are going to peddle this “pie in the sky” dream to ordinary Americans to keep them quiet and complacent, but America is also a democracy where we need to ask ourselves how all Americans are doing and not just the rich! Never mind how some of these rich people accumulated their wealth in the first place which at a minimum must include:
- the brutal enslavement of millions of African-Americans
- the murderous campaigns against Native Americans and the brazen theft of their lands; this process was particularly acute in Arizona where the Apaches and other tribes of the southwest who bravely resisted the loss of their ancestral homelands were hunted down like animals and driven mercilessly toward the point of cultural and physical extinction
- the grievous exploitation of workers both here and abroad.
To think no one got rich from this bloody murderous chains-and-whips rampaging greed is childish naïveté. Believe in fairy tales if you like, as though the rich waved a magic wand and their millions and billions of dollars came a-rollin’ into their pockets out of nowhere and no slaves, minorities, workers, and agricultural laborers ever suffered the twin indignities of virulent racism and the violent merciless exploitation of their labor and their lives!
Censoring books that tell the truth won’t make that truth go away or become any more palatable. Those censoring politicians in the Arizona legislature have twisted and mangled the simplest truths into unrecognizable nonsense; they have made up a new language of double-speak excuses for these punitive new laws that were ill-conceived and poorly drafted; whatever the intent of misdirection and cover-up, what appeared in way of explanation were half-baked rationalizations at best–when not dizzying distortion and outright fabrication at worst.
Such Mexican-American Studies courses are not anti-American: THAT’S A LIE!
Such classes never taught hatred of other groups: THAT’S A SECOND LIE!
Such classes did not and no not promote segregated social groupings: THAT’S A THIRD LIE!
Discrimination has been part of American society for a very long time, but it is no part of modern thinking in any Ethnic Studies classes. There is no advocacy or rationalization of those practices of discrimination and segregation that hampered and hobbled the lives of millions of minorities for so many years and generations. Racial and ethnic minorities simply want their rights as Americans; they want their community, culture, and families respected. They wish to become full and equal members of this country that speaks of equal rights for all.
The Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction, John Huppenthal, had the audacity to call the revolutionary activist Che Guevara a thug: what hubris! Whether these Arizona self-appointed guardians of Allowable Thoughts like it or not, Che Guevara, a medical doctor, inspired many people with his courageous devotion to bettering their lives.
He was willing to risk—and ultimately give—his life so that the poor people of the Americas might have a chance for a better life someday: poor people living in dire poverty due to the unequal relationship between the strong and weak nations of the earth, including the exploitation of their nation’s land and natural resources by the technology-rich industrial nations of the world, including and most especially America.
Our nation exploits the labor and riches of foreign lands to the nth degree until the people are practically forced into rebellion against their own dictators, often serving at the beck and call of foreign control—and then a man like Supt. Huppenthal has the nerve to slander the leaders who emerge as “thugs”!!
The comment leaves the Superintendent standing slightly naked, as it were, exposing the views of the men and women of his social class and revealing much of their real intentions through the use of such a thoughtless and poisonous word. But then, one supposes Washington and Jefferson might be considered ‘thugs” by Huppenthal as well!
And there’s the real nub: the objection to the use of scholarly textbooks which include an occasional footnote from Marx and Engels or the appearance of a poster of Che Guevara in one classroom. The leaders of Arizona’s “Crush All Ethnic Studies Programs” brigade are likely not particularly concerned about the celebration of Hispanic culture and literature as ends in themselves, but they are most certainly gravely concerned about the reappearance of ideas and names they fervently wished to believe were a long-time dead and buried.
They couldn’t come right out and say so directly which means they were forced to take a more roundabout, “discreet”, and hidden approach, for appearances’ sake. ; the resulting excuses they made up for dismantling the Ethnic Studies Program were so hypocritical as to be laughable.
One suspects that some of them must know that the high-sounding rhetoric coming out of their mouths would strike many as false and sound like a bunch of empty words and duplicitous lies. They tried to create good sound bites but they didn’t get very far. Sometimes political prevaricators become so adept at half-truths they become deluded themselves; they begin to believe their own excuses, fibs, and lies.
They even forget they’re merely making stuff up for public consumption, although one gets the distinct feeling that’s not true for all members of this censorship group; they seem to know there’s a deeper game afoot, and proud of it. They know they’re the “chosen ones”, playing for keeps! There’s a class divide to preserve, an endangered “status quo” to protect!
Imagine, believing their world might come to an end because of a high school program that uses a wide variety of literary and scholarly books, including one or two academic texts that included an occasional quote from the nineteenth century writers Marx and Engels? Oh my God, what’s next, these self-appointed censors must have thought to themselves: quotes from Thomas Jefferson and Tom Paine? If memory serves, they too were both uncompromising revolutionaries!
These men are quoted in departments of economics, sociology, and history at the best universities in America and around the world: besides being eminently quotable, sometimes their works are read in their entirety! Should we dismantle these departments, too, and buy tickets back to the Dark Ages?
Should professors from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Berkeley, and UCLA—as well as high school teachers across the country–be well-pleased to learn a few frightened foolish legislators from Arizona decided to start banning books and censoring free academic inquiry because they personally found such books displeasing?
What of it? The revolutionary leaders of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries certainly made enormous contributions to humanity’s struggle for freedom, equality, and justice. One does not need to agree with them to read them. And what if the young people are influenced by them? Is that not the personal right of every American to decide what he or she believes, as a matter of conscience?
That’s Arizona’s real fear, of course! And why would they worry that these students might be so influenced? Could it be because these leaders fully understand that there’s a clear and undeniable connection between racism and exploitation, between skin color and oppression?
Not that these Ethnic Studies classes have made any special commitment to read authors like Marx and Engels; they typically read far more modern authors who are literary figures or academic scholars in their own right regarding Hispanic-American culture and history. These authors in turn have drawn much of their material from dozens of other writers who preceded them, and thus it is that in the fullness of their myriad footnotes one may see the occasional citation from Marx or Engels, among many others!
Exactly which quote so upsets this new breed of Arizona censors? Let them cite the book, the page number and the exact quotation, if they dare! Bring it out in the open and let us judge for ourselves its meaning! Be done with “muddying the waters” by the use of underhanded allegations: come out with it and let us see the passage itself!
The Arizona Book Censors are relying on the techniques of unfounded accusation, half-truths, and insidious slander popularized during the McCarthy Era hysteria of the early 1950’s–which appears to be essentially the same mentality fueling this Arizona craze of “not-too-subtle” censorship we now witness running amuck hither and yon.
In any educational system worthy of the name, students must always be encouraged to search for historical truth, regardless of which sources and viewpoints are to be examined. Where did these Arizona legislators get their education, to not know something so simple?
Every educator recognizes the classroom should be a place of inquiry and discovery, an intellectual forum where multiple viewpoints are welcomed—everyone, that is, except for these Arizona legislators, apparently, who wish to decide what students can and cannot read based on their own personal beliefs and convictions.
When teachers study and share mankind’s vast accumulation of literary and moral knowledge, it is imperative to balance what was traditionally taught with contemporary viewpoints based on the latest research; it is from such comparison that rich new insights can be gained. That is one of the keys to making our educational system inspiring, productive, and successful for all students.
What Arizona Arrogance has done instead is to mock every student’s right to listen, speak, and exchange ideas freely. Arizona’s legislators have made a mockery of their state by imposing their own narrow-minded prejudices upon everyone else, including those of different class, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds who might naturally gravitate toward the new thinking rather than the old.
Arizona is now left open to ridicule by others through these actions: ridicule and repudiation. The state legislators’ draconian actions—where politicians deliberately destroyed a well-constructed, well-managed, and popular Ethnic Studies high school program because of their own foolish fears—have created an invitation to think of Arizona and its so-called leaders as clowns, as buffoons, as ignoramuses, as idiots, as fools, as bigoted and doctrinaire jackasses!
These ignorant-of-history and intolerant-of-diversity leaders insist there is only one way to explore American history and culture and that is to rely heavily on the traditional, heavily sanitized, and deliberately slanted European-American interpretation: their own history, of course! Yet at the same time, they would deny to Hispanic-American high school students the right to learn about their own history with equal interest and pride!
Not everybody in America came from Europe, Mr. Arizona Legislator.
Black people didn’t come over on the Mayflower; why shouldn’t they be allowed to learn about slave ships and Mother Africa? Native Americans didn’t sail here with European adventurers and conquerors; they greeted them on the shore when they arrived.
There is a truly rich Hispanic-American culture and heritage of the Southwest that is quite different from the traditional accounts of the European saga; why shouldn’t Hispanic-American students learn of their unique cultural history and multi-faceted contributions to America? Why shouldn’t they learn there were Spanish-speaking settlements in America long before the first colonists ever landed at Jamestown and Plymouth Rock?
Native Americans have a story going back not just centuries but thousands of years before the first white Europeans ever set foot on this land; why shouldn’t they be taught the cultural and historical truth about their ancestors’ lives?
Women were denied equality with men for many long decades; why shouldn’t women take a special interest and pride in their own story, including their determined fight to achieve full equality?
Racial and ethnic minorities in America have suffered discrimination, poverty, and oppression on a scale unimaginable to the men and women serving in the Arizona legislature. This is real-life history that affected millions of American families but which was conveniently left out of the “traditional” history books–and will be again, if the Arizona legislators have their way.
The relatively new post-Sixties classes in Ethnic Studies—along with revamped classes in history, political science, sociology, and other disciplines—merely desired to include a broader truth about America and not to brainwash students toward a particular ideology. Mexican-American Studies programs preferred not be limited to the one-sided, old-style approach these Arizona legislators prefer. That’s why such departments and programs became necessary in the first place!
If the new ethnic studies courses may seem to have a liberalizing effect, it may be because their commitment to a more in-depth search for truth inevitably leads away from whitewashing and a conservative misrepresentation of facts, toward a more honest reappraisal of American society as actually experienced by racial and ethnic minorities from the start to the present. It is not always the same story both sides see.
The Arizona state politicians for their part appear to favor a distorted narrative that is so narrowly conceived it beggars the imagination; they countenance a false and misleading narrative in order to make palatable the unpalatable. They prefer to substitute the old half-truths for the actual facts of the historical record more carefully and honestly scrutinized than allowed by the biases of previous generations. Apparently, facts themselves have also become subversive!
In choosing this anti-intellectual regression, the Arizona legislators have inadvertently condoned and encouraged the bigotry of the past to live on. They will find in the end they have blundered.
These are good classes making a difference, engaging and motivating students to learn, to study, to pursue knowledge, to continue with their education, and ultimately to succeed as human beings in both career and life. These courses have poured the hot molten steel of ideas into the molds of critical thinking, self-realization, and honest expression . . .
What the bumbling fumbling shameless Arizona lawmakers unintentionally did was to add a new finishing touch not previously present: they have tempered the steel of student independence still further by brazenly revealing the dangerous face of “bigotry”, “censorship”, and “ignorance”.
Against their own intentions, the legislators will soon learn that they helped temper that student steel into a wiser intellectual weapon that will in time be used against all such narrow-minded pedants.
These students will pledge themselves to work even harder by going to college, by achieving all they can dream of academically, by honoring their Ethnic Studies teachers, and by entering careers in which they will serve as role models for the next blossoming generation following them: careers that will involve service to the community and to their nation, and which will remain true to the fundamental democratic precepts upon which this nation was founded.
They will become the future educators who will guide education back toward its true path; they will become state and national leaders who will one day replace the Conservative Chauvinists currently clogging up Arizona’s halls of power. The days of the current crop of Arizona Legislators are numbered; they will become Antiquated Relics who have outlived their time and usefulness.
They are engaged in a hopeless “holding action” trying to prevent the future from changing America in a way where their particular social class no longer has the final say. Their efforts at censorship already reveal a desperation to retard the tide of history and slow the momentum of change; they are fighting a losing battle but have not the brains to realize it.
They fail to see that the whole country is moving forward in a new direction. People everywhere are liberating themselves from the ancient shackles of narrow-minded prejudices and stereotypes—and the phony kind of “intellectualism” that would teach only one kind of self-serving, incomplete, and fatally flawed slanted history.
In time, these Arizona legislators will be remembered disparagingly for their futile effort to block learning and dialogue; they will be castigated for their attempts to urge others to resist change and progress; they will be lampooned for their efforts to beg people to travel not forward in time but rather backwards toward a time of ignorance, mythological cant, and outright racism. This all Americans must refuse to do!
Whether as students in an Ethnic Studies class or just as ordinary people, in school or out, we American protectors of democracy must repudiate the sick, tragic, and craven idiocies of the Arizona state legislators and cry out in unison:
For shame, for shame!! Have you no sense of decency?
You have made a mockery of our educational system, the one institutional blessing of America best able to serve the needs of all our people and, yes, save us from ourselves!
You have attacked the roots of our free and democratic educational system while hiding behind your ignoble and ignorant prejudices in order to maintain your ill-begotten powers of privilege and status a little while longer.
But you have been found out—we see you now and we see you not as defenders of the young but as defenders of America’s inequality and racist past; that is what you now represent.
We are moving forward, with or without you. And, if need be, we will move around, over, or through you toward a new day of social justice and freedom!!
