In Arizona—where Confederate monuments continue to be on public display despite pleas from residents to have them removed—a trial over whether state Republicans intentionally discriminated against Latino students by ending a Mexican-American studies program in public schools started last week. Commemorating history is fine so long as it’s white history, apparently:
The Arizona trial strikes at the issue of how to teach students about race and social injustice in public schools that often exemplify the country’s inequality. After Arizona conservatives moved to eliminate the classes, Hispanic educators and activists have come to Tucson to champion the battle over ethnic studies as one of the country’s most pressing and under-the-radar civil rights issues.
“This was an innovative program, your honor,” Jim Quinn, a lawyer representing Tucson students, told Judge Tashmina. “It was snuffed out for all the wrong reasons.”
The program’s proponents have argued that the course was instrumental in boosting both grades and self-worth of Latino students, with research showing “the program’s students graduated at higher rates and performed better on state tests.” But Republican state legislators, seeking a safe space from brown people, were having none of that, in 2010 “passing a law prohibiting classes that encouraged the overthrow of the U.S. government; encouraged racial resentment; treated students as members of a group rather than individuals; or were aimed at a specific ethnicity.”
When then-superintendent John Huppenthal, who helped pass the law as a state senator, commissioned an audit of classes, he ignored findings that the program was in compliance of the law and called for an end to it. Facing possible funding cuts, the Tucson school board did just that in 2012. Teachers and students sued in response.
What the trial has for certain confirmed is Huppenthal’s racist history, who eventually lost re-election for superintendent and cried like a baby in 2014 when his anti-Latino internet history got exposed.
But they were crocodile tears, with Huffington Post reporter Roque Planas reporting from Phoenix that Huppenthal “stood by” the “string of anonymous and racially charged blog comments” during trial proceedings last week:
In comments posted under two pseudonyms from 2010 to 2013, Huppenthal likened Mexican-American studies teachers to the Ku Klux Klan and accused them of “having an orgasm over the claim that their book was banned.”
Huppenthal’s brash language appeared to offer ammunition to the students’ lawyers Tuesday. Using the names Thucydides and Falcon 9, Huppenthal pressed his case against the program online while serving as superintendent. “Mexican American Studies classes use the exact same technique that Hitler used in his rise to power,” he said in one comment. In another, he wrote, “No spanish radio stations, no spanish billboards, no spanish tv stations, no spanish newspapers. This is America speak English.” He offered an exception, however: “I don’t mind them selling Mexican food as long as the menus are mostly in English.”
What is also confirmed is that these kinds of programs have proved beneficial to students of color:
The classes began when a group of mostly Mexican-American teachers came together in the late 1990s to create courses to try to close the wide achievement gap between the district’s Hispanic and white students. They sought out works written by Mexican-American authors and other writers of color that rarely appeared in traditional classes.
“Many of my students would say it was the first time they saw themselves in the material,” said Curtis Acosta, one of the program’s founders and the first witness to testify. “For many of them, it was the first time they read a book at all.”
At least for now, it appears Arizona’s mission to erase brown history hasn’t appeared to spread:
In California, several districts now offer high school ethnic studies courses, and the state assembly passed a law last year ordering the creation of a model ethnic studies curriculum that all districts can draw from. Educators across the state of Texas have begun offering Mexican-American studies classes in public schools. And Indiana passed a state law last month requiring public high schools to offer an elective ethnic studies course at least once a year.
“This un-American, discriminatory law was supposed to destroy our community,” said author and Lone Star College professor Tony Diaz, who co-founded Librotraficantes. “We found out about it and united in time to keep it from spreading the way Arizona’s anti-immigrant law spread.”
It’s worth noting that the law that Huppenthal and others pushed was also passed in the same year as SB1070, the infamous “show me your papers” law. There’s some definite animus in the air there, but it’s certainly not from the students who are just trying to get an education.