A view of the MAS controversy from across the pond

by David Safier

There's a wonderful column by Gary Younge in the UK Guardian about the MAS controversy. It's worth reading the whole thing, but I'm going to jump around the column as I include a few excerpts in this post.

First, the head/subhead:

Whitewashing Black History Month
Arizona's suppression of Mexican American studies fits a pattern of making history serve an exclusionary nationalist mythology

Younge explains the connection between Black History Month and getting rid of MAS courses at the end of the column.

In short, these measures [making the MAS courses illegal] seek not to teach history but to preach nationalist mythology, aimed at raising not so much open-minded critical thinkers as blind patriots. We have been here before.

"One is astonished in the study of history at the recurrence of the idea that evil must be forgotten, distorted or skimmed over," argued African American civil rights champion and intellectual WEB Dubois.

"We must not remember that Daniel Webster got drunk but only that he was a splendid constitutional lawyer. We must forget that George Washington was a slave owner … and simply remember the things we regard as creditable and inspiring. The difficulty, of course, with this philosophy is that history loses its value as an incentive and example; it paints perfect men and noble nations, but it does not tell us the truth."

I have not heard the point made any better than that.

About Huppenthal's charge that MAS courses foster resentment:

Whether teachers are fostering resentment is impossible to prove, although Latino youth in Tucson do not appear any more resentful than anywhere else. Not that there isn't plenty to be resentful about. Latino children in Arizona are more than twice as likely to grow up in poverty as whites, almost twice as likely to be incarcerated and far less likely to graduate from high school. There is, however, plenty of evidence that Huppenthal has being doing his best to make sure Latino youth have as worse a tomorrow as is possible.

Talk about teaching lessons out of school! Talk about making history! The MAS students and everyone else watching as the events unfold are getting a living history lesson about the treatment of minorities in the U.S. The story of the war on MAS courses by Huppenthal, Horne and their confederates should be required reading in any MAS class anywhere.