by David Safier
Nicholas B. Lundholm, a J.D. Candidate at University of Arizona's James E. Rogers College of Law, has published a 40 page discussion paper on the Ethnic Studies program, "Cutting Class: Why Arizona’s Ethnic Studies Ban Won’t Ban Ethnic Studies." You can download the paper by going to this page and clicking "Download" under the paper's title near the bottom of the page.
The paper is long and complex, and it goes over a lot of ground I'm familiar with. Truth be told, I only skimmed it. But one thing I picked up on was Lundholm's discussion of the four prohibitions in § 15-112. The law states, any class which violates any of the prohibitions cannot be taught in an Arizona public school. I'm not going to try and recreate Lundholm's logic directly. Instead, here is what his ideas suggest to me.
One of the prohibitions is that you can't:
"Advocate ethnic solidarity instead of treatment of pupils as individuals."
Why is advocating ethnic solidarity antithetical to treating pupils as individuals? Doesn't patriotism, which we teach aplenty in school and promote every morning with the Pledge of Allegiance, promote national solidarity? Unless advocating national solidarity (We are Americans and proud of it!) is contrary to treating pupils as individuals, advocating ethnic solidarity isn't either. It's a false dichotomy.
Another prohibition is that you can't:
"Promote resentment toward a race or class of people."
Does this refer to resentment towards groups in the present or in the past? Lots of history lessons promote resentment toward a class or a race (whatever "race" means) of people — slave owners, for instance, or whites in America in general who were prejudiced against blacks and Hispanics in the past, not to mention Germans during World War II — based on behavior at earlier times, and teaching about those historical periods appears to be acceptable. Unless the curriculum of Ethnic Studies teaches that its students should resent whites as a race today, teaching the history of a time when Hispanics were overtly and generally oppressed in this country is simply teaching history. Just as I always felt waves of anger and resentment as a Jew when I was taught about the Inquisition or the Holocaust, I would expect students learning about mistreatment of earlier members of their ethnic group to feel anger and resentment toward those who mistreated them.
Another prohibition is that you can't:
"Promote the overthrow of the United States government."
That's so ridiculous as a description of Mexican American Studies, it barely deserves comment. The only people today who are actively promoting the overthrow of the U.S. government are members of the extreme right wing, including those Republican politicians who agree with them and/or pander to them.
The final prohibition is against classes that:
"Are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group."
I would ask, if a high school had a course titled, "History of France," "History of China" or "European Literature," would classes like that have to be prohibited as well because they would probably be more attractive to French-Americans or Chinese-Americans or Euro-Americans? I doubt if anyone would raise an eyebrow if any of those classes were offered. Unless non-Hispanic students are discouraged or prohibited from taking Mexican American Studies courses, the fact that Hispanics are more attracted to those courses than people of other ethnicities is irrelevant.
We'll see how the legal battle over § 15-112 plays out. I think a fair-minded judge should come to the conclusion that Mexican American Studies courses don't violate any of the law's prohibitions. The judge could even rule the law itself is too vague to stand and should be wiped off the books.