Dead White Males

"History is written by the victors." - Winston Churchill
This quote comes, ironically from an historical victor, but it seems to describe yet another exciting development in what is becoming an increasingly arcane situation in the Grand Canyon State. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer has signed a bill targeting the Tucson school district's ethnic studies program. State schools chief Tom Horne, who has pushed the bill for years, said he believes the Tucson school district's Mexican-American studies program teaches Latino students that they are oppressed by white people. Ignoring for a moment the great white elephant sitting in the room called Arizona's new crackdown on illegal immigration, just what do they hope to achieve with this legislation?
The measure prohibits classes that advocate ethnic solidarity, that are designed primarily for students of a particular race or that promote resentment toward a certain ethnic group. Here comes the part where I get nostalgic: In the fifth grade, when I read about the massacre at Sand Creek in my native Colorado, I became resentful of white people. When I read "The Diary of Anne Frank" later that year, I became resentful of Nazis. They were white, too. I did a lot of reading that year, and I built up a lot of resentment for white people. That kind of self-loathing in an eleven-year-old is sometimes hard to navigate, but it helped to have parents and some teachers who were willing to show me the other side of the coin: Abraham Lincoln, Jacques Cousteau, John Lennon, Helen Keller, Amelia Earheart.
Meanwhile, back in Arizona, this new 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. The Tucson Unified School District says their program is resentment-free, and plan to go ahead with business as usual. Back at the state house, Governor Brewer's spokesman Paul Senseman said, "The governor believes ... public school students should be taught to treat and value each other as individuals and not be taught to resent or hate other races or classes of people." Now can we talk about that big white elephant?