Don't Mess with Texas (and Arizona)

You may think that you know what this is about - Arizona has just passed the most hideous legislation that encourages the profiling of Latinos and other folks of color. And while there are certainly many blog posts about that enormous issue (who knew that I would be such a fan of the responses of Steve Nash, Amare Stoudamire, Alvin Gentry and the Phoenix Suns? And I had no idea that 1 in 4 players in major league baseball is Latino - heck yeah, move the All Star Baseball game - the players may not make it to the game!), this is not a blog about that.

While in Oakland for a training, I did what I normally do - watch cable TV at the hotel. And watched the elected Superintendent of Arizona Public Schools Tom Horne on CNN talk about his new push to ban ethnic studies courses in Arizona public high schools. Arizona currently has 22 courses offered in Tucson public high schools in history, government, and literature. If schools or charter schools decide to offer ethnic studies courses, they can expect to have 10% of their state funds per month eliminated. 

Meanwhile, in Texas, Christian evangelists and social conservatives have joined forces to take over the state's education board and are introducing sweeping new measures to address so called liberal bias in Texas schools. One of their many proposals includes dropping references to the slave trade in favor of calling it the more innocuous "Atlantic triangular trade" as well as a host of other changes to text books. Given that Texas is such a market for text book purchasing, many education activists fear that other states will end up importing the changes the next time they purchase new books.

Aside from seriously considering progressive homeschooling for my kid, this is a new twist for me in social conservatives strategy. Usually focused on creationism and banning books they see as questionable from school libraries--this new assault on K-12 education is fundamentally about race and how race and issues of racial justice get taught in classrooms. They can't do anything about the fact that classrooms are getting more diverse across the country, so instead they'll go back to attacking what gets taught--targeting courses that teach the forgotten or ignored histories of communities of color.

White-washing our nation's history is a great place to start in revising the story of America.