Arizona Outlaws Ethnic Studies

Because they're racist against white people
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted May 12, 2010 7:46 AM CDT
Arizona Outlaws Ethnic Studies
In this Monday, April 20, 2009 file photo, Republican Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer listens to a question as she testifies during a Senate meeting on violence along the US-Mexico border.   (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, file)

Well, this should quiet down all the racial tension in Arizona: Gov. Jan Brewer has signed a bill designed to outlaw the Tucson school district's ethnic studies program—just hours after UN human rights experts issued a report condemning that very law. The measure is the brainchild of Arizona schools chief Tom Horne, who believes that the Mexican-American studies classes taught in Tucson high schools teach Latino students to resent white people.

“It's just like the old South, and it's long past time we prohibited it,” Horne, a Republican running for Attorney General, tells the AP. He's pushed for the law since 2006, when he heard that a Hispanic activist had told a class that “Republicans hate Latinos.” The law bans any classes designed to promote solidarity among a particular ethnic group. Tucson's schools offer Mexican-American, African-American and Native-American studies programs, but district officials say they think all are in compliance with the law. (More Arizona stories.)

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