The Latest News on our Continuing Coverage: A “Final Blow” to the Law that Banned the Arizona Ethnic Studies Curriculum

For several years, we have been covering the ban of the Mexican American curriculum in Tucson, Arizona both on our blog and in our journal.  In addition to four articles, readers can also view our videos of interviews with authors as well as our public forums.  For our most recent analysis of this continuing court decision, see the post below by authors Leslie Locke andAnn Blankenship who provided our readers with an in-depth analysis of the decision.

Today, we have learned the U.S. District Court judge has now permanently blocked the Arizona ethnic studies ban that he had found to be racially motivated and a violation of students’ First and Fourteenth Amendment Rights.

 Read the latest on this decision:

“Judge blocks Arizona ethnic studiesban he found was racist,” Washington Post, December 28, 2017

An Analysis of the Court Decision that Found the Banning of the Mexican American Curriculum Unconstitutional

Editor: We invited authors, Leslie Locke and Ann Blankenship, to provide our readers with an analysis of the recent court decision finding the banning of the Mexican American curriculum in Tucson, Arizona to be unconstitutional.   Their earlier publication in Volume 10 of our journal was titled, “Keeping the Flames at Bay:The Interplay between Federal Oversight and State Politics in Tucson’s MexicanAmerican Studies Program.”  Their article was part of a series of articles that this journal has published on this issue. Others included:“The Hypocrisy of Racism: Arizona's Movement towards State-Sanctioned Apartheid” by Augustine F. Romero, “Dangerous Minds In Tucson: The Banning of Mexican American Studies and Critical Thinking In Arizona” by Curtis Acosta, and “Precious Knowledge: An Interview with Film Director, Ari Palos, on April 15, 2013” by Celina Meza.  We are pleased to provide our readers with the latest update on this vital issue, and thank Leslie and Ann for their in-depth analysis of this decade-long litigation .

Good News about Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican American Studies Program from the United States District Court District of Arizona!

 

By Leslie A. Locke and Ann E. Blankenship

 

 

  

It’s been a long road. But, the court finally, after years of political struggle and legal debate, supported what MAS students, parents, and teachers have always known--that the attempts at squashing the program was backed by racism and white fragility (DiAngelo, 2011) for political gain.  The court said as much in their August 2017 decision, where they noted the deconstruction of MAS was “motivated by a desire to advance a political agenda by capitalizing on race-based fears” (p. 42), and had little to zero basis in fact.  

 

The Mexican American studies program (MAS) in TUSD had been instituted as a response to a federal desegregation plan in effect in TUSD since 1978.  The MAS program, like its counterparts such as African American Studies and Asian American Studies, was an educational program that while open to any student, was centered on the Mexican American experience and history in order to forge a connection between students and the curriculum.  The MAS program was successful as evidenced by student achievement and outcomes.

 

However, a series of unfortunate events, based on illogical, as well as thin and one-sided evidence, started their course in 2006.  We won’t go into great detail here in retelling these events as much as been written about them (e.g., Acosta, 2013a/2013b; Cabrera et al., 2014; Cammarota, 2009/2012/2014; Palos et al., 2011; Romero, 2010).  In short, conservative politicians in Arizona (ironically the State Superintendents of Instruction--those elected to best serve all students in the state) dug their heels and set in with a laser focus on eliminating the MAS program by making fantastical connections between it and communism, ethnic chauvinism, rudeness, hate speech, and anti-Americanism, among other things.  

 

Here is a summary of some of the legal history that guides us to the most recent decision.

 

In 2010, the Arizona legislature passed HB 2281 (codified into statute as Arizona Revised Statutes (ARS) §§ 15-111 and 15-112) prohibiting a school district or charter school from including in its program of instruction any courses or classes that “(1) Promote the overthrow of the Unites States Government, (2) Promote resentment toward a race or class of people, (3) Are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group, or (4) Advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.” ARS § 15-112(a). In his last days in office as State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Horne, concluded that the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) Mexican-American Studies program (MAS) violated ARS § 15-112 and ordered TUSD to either eliminate the program or lose 10% of its state funding. Shortly thereafter, John Huppenthal replaced Horne as State Superintendent.  Huppenthal, claiming that he wanted all the facts before enforcing Horne’s decision, hired Cambium Learning, Inc. to conduct an investigation of MAS.  Despite Cambium’s conclusion that MAS did not violate ARS § 15-112, Huppenthal conducted an independent investigation, determining that MAS did in fact violate the law.  Facing a 10% reduction in state funding, which is essentially all of the district’s liquidity, TUSD eliminated MAS.

 

In October 2010, teachers and students of TUSD filed suit against Huppenthal as Superintendent of Public Instruction claiming that ARS § 15-112 as enacted and enforced violated their constitutional rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.  The case was tried and appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals who ruled that ARS § 15-112 was not unconstitutional on its face but left the door open for subsequent challenges, noting “Even if § 15-112 is not facially discriminatory, however, the statute and/or its subsequent enforcement against the MAS program would still be unconstitutional if its enactment or the manner in which it was enforces were motivated by a discriminatory purpose” (Arce v. Douglas, 793 F.3d 968, 977 (9^th Cir. 2015)).

 

That brings us to the federal court’s most recent review of the Arizona legislation and subsequent elimination of the TUSD MAS program.  On August 22, 2017, the United States District Court (District of Arizona) issued its decision in González v. Douglas.  The action, brought by students and their parents against Diane Douglas, the current Superintendent for Public Instruction for the State of Arizona, alleged that Arizona’s enactment and enforcement of Arizona Revised Statute §§ 15-111 and 15-112, eliminating the Tucson Unified School District Mexican-American Studies program (MAS), violated students’ First and Fourteenth Amendment Rights.  After an exhaustive recounting of the facts of the case, the District Court broke its conclusion of law down by counts, first focusing on the Fourteenth Amendment claim then the First Amendment Claim.

 

            In considering the Fourteenth Amendment claims, that the enactment and enforcement of ARS § 15-112 was motivated by discriminatory purpose, the court noted that the plaintiff’s had to prove that discrimination was one but not the only purpose of enactment and enforcement.  To determine whether an unconstitutional discriminatory purpose was a motivating factor in the enactment and enforcement of the legislation, the court looked at direct and circumstantial evidence of intent, including: (1) the impact of the official action and whether it bears more heavily on one race than another; (2) the historical background of the decision; (3) the specific sequence of events leadings to the challenged action; (4) the defendant’s departures from normal procedures or substantive conclusions; and (5) the relevant legislative or administrative history (González v. Douglas, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 141671, *39).

 

            Relying largely on public comments made by Horne, blog comments Huppenthal made under a pseudonym, and comments from other Arizona legislators, the court concluded that Arizona’s enactment and enforcement of ARS § 15-112 were motivated by discriminatory intent.  The court really focused on the intent of Horne and Huppenthal as key players in the efforts to get ARS § 15-112 enacted and enforced.  The court’s review of Huppenthal’s public and private statements regarding MAS left little doubt of his intent to discriminate.  The court included dozens of Huppenthal’s quotes in opinion.  Some of the most egregious include statements Huppenthal made on his blog under a pseudonym, which the court thought were most revealing of his true state of mind:

 

No Spanish radio stations, no Spanish billboards, no Spanish TV stations, no Spanish newspapers.  This is America, speak English.

I don’t mind them selling Mexican food as long as the menus are mostly in English.

MAS = KKK in a different color.

The rejection of American values and embracement of the values of Mexico in La Raza classrooms is the rejection of success and embracement of failure.

The Mexican-American Studies classes use the same technique that Hitler used in his rise to power.  In Hitler’s case it was the Sudetenland.  In Mexican-American Studies case, it’s Aztlán (internal citations omitted). (González, p. 26)

 

            In addition to the intent of Huppenthal et al., the court concluded that MAS’s enforcement bore more heavily on Latinx students who were already the subject of historic discrimination in Tucson (as evidenced by its desegregation court order still in effect today), that the sequence of events were out of the ordinary, and that there was an illogical departure from normal procedures.  Of particular interest here was Huppenthal’s conclusion that MAS violated ARS § 15-112 despite the Cambium report to the contrary, despite his having no first hand information about the actual curriculum taught in MAS classes.  Overall, the court found sufficient evidence of racial animus against Latinx student in the enactment and enforcement of ARS § 15-112 by Horne, Huppenthal, and others, noting:

 

The sequence of events included no attempt to conduct a good faith, objective evaluation of the MAS program’s teachings and efficacy, other than the Cambium audit, which is rejected out of hand.  Instead, in enacting the statute, the legislature, Horne, and Huppenthal relied on and presented biased accounts of the MAS program that were based on limited evidence and laced with terms fairly understood to refer negatively to perceived traits of Mexican Americans. (González, p. 28).

 

Given the total weight of the evidence presented, the court further concluded that Horne and Huppenthal did not testify credibly regarding their own motivations at enactment and enforcement of ARS § 15-112.

 

            Relying on the same body of evidence, the court ruled that the enactment and enforcement of ARS § 15-112 also constituted a violation of the students’ First Amendment right to receive information because the elimination of MAS was not reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns, but instead racial animus.  The court concluded that Horne and Huppenthal’s were motivated by political gain, capitalizing on voter’s race-based fears, rather than pedagogical concern.

 

            The court will determine an appropriate remedy after parties have an opportunity to file briefs and replies, hopefully by the end of the calendar year.

 

            One of the many unsettling aspects of this strange, and sad but true story, is that it was sparked and supported by those who were elected to serve in the best interests of all students in TUSD.  Horne, Huppenthal, and their political allies have shown a complete lack of interest in the welfare of students in TUSD.  Moreover, they outrightly targeted Latinx students.  Importantly, while the original MAS program has been successfully suppressed and marginalized since 2010, thousands of students have been denied the opportunity to take advantage of a highly successful educational program tailored to the Mexican American experience and history.  They were denied all the benefits those classes were known to provide--including increased achievement and positive impacts on graduation. Horne and Huppenthal failed to make any efforts to understand the curriculum (the court confirmed that they indeed never visited a MAS class, reviewed the program curriculum, and rather cherry picked texts and presented them out of context).  These politicians’ willingness to deny students, not just those who would have been in MAS program, but all the students of TUSD, access to proven successful educational programming and opportunities to achieve, should not be disregarded or forgotten.  They openly and unabashedly misused their political power.  And they so hypocritically called MAS students “rude.”

 

Congratulations to the plaintiffs and to all who fought this fight and endured this long and often absurd road.  You have been heard, finally.  We look forward to reading about how the excellent MAS teachers will use this immediate experience to study and explore institutional racism, systemic bias, the political process, white supremacy, and white fragility.  While it was an unfortunate series of events, we image they will make great curriculum exhibits.

 

 

References

Acosta, C. (2013a). Dangerous minds in Tucson: The banning of Mexican American Studies and critical thinking in Arizona. Journal of Educational Controversy, 8(1), 1-18.  Retrieved from

http://cedar.wwu.edu/jec/vol8/iss1/9/

Acosta, C. (2013b, October 17). Interview with Curtis Acosta. [Video File]. Bellingham, WA: Western Washington University. Retrieved from  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBhpQ7eqA_Y

Blankenship, A.E. & Locke, L.A. (2015).  Culturally conscious curriculum: The fight between state and federal policies in Tucson.  Journal of Cases in Educational Leadership, 18(4), 338-349.

Cabrera, N. L., Milem, J. F., Jaquette, O., & Marx, R. W. (2014). Missing the (student achievement) forest for all the (political) trees: Empiricism and the Mexican American Studies

controversy in Tucson. American Educational Research Journal, 51, 1084-1118.

Cammarota, J. (2009). The generational battle for curriculum: Figuring race and culture on the border. Transforming Anthropology, 17, 117-130.

Cammarota, J. (2012). TUSD MAS ban: Educational sovereignty in the wake of state repression. Journal of Reading Education, 37(2), 5-6.

Cammarota, J. (2014). Challenging colorblindness in Arizona: Latina/o students’ counter-narratives of race and racism. Multicultural Perspectives, 16, 79-85.

DiAngelo, R. (2011). White fragility. The International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, 3(3), 54-70.

Locke, L. & Blankenship, A. (2016).  Keeping the flames at bay: The interplay between federal oversight and state politics in Tucson’s Mexican American Studies program.  Journal of Educational Controversy, 10(1).  Retrieved from http://cedar.wwu.edu/jec/vol10/iss1/2  

Palos, A.L., McGinnis, E., Fifer, S.J., Bricca, J., & Amor, N. (Producers). (2011). Precious knowledge [DVD]. Dos Vatos Productions.

Romero, A.F. (2010). At war with the state in order to save the lives of our children: The battle to save ethnic studies in Arizona. [Special issue: Defending ethnic studies in Arizona].  The Black Scholar, 40(4), 7-15.

READERS CAN READ THE ENTIRE DECISION HERE.

 

Federal Court Rules that Arizona’s Banning of the Mexican American Studies Program was Discriminatory and Motivated by Racial Animas

A U.S. District Court has ruled that the banning of the Mexican American Curriculum in Tucson, Arizona was discriminatory and motivated by racial animus.

READERS CAN READ THE ENTIRE DECISION HERE.

We have been following the events following the banning of the Mexican American Studies Program in the Tucson Unified School District in Arizona in our journal, on our blog and in several panels and forums that were videotaped and made available to our readers.  See “The Hypocrisy of Racism: Arizona's Movement towards State-SanctionedApartheid” by Augustine F. Romero, “Dangerous Minds In Tucson: The Banning of Mexican American Studies andCritical Thinking In Arizona” by Curtis Acosta, “Precious Knowledge: An Interview with Film Director, Ari Palos, on April15, 2013” by Celina Meza, and “Keeping the Flames at Bay: The Interplay between Federal Oversight andState Politics in Tucson’s Mexican American Studies Program,” by Leslie A. Locke and Ann E. Blankenship.

We will provide an extensive analysis of the court decision in a future post on this blog. Check back.

How do you react to this AP headline: “Ex-school official: Radicals taught Mexican-American program”

The article, “Ex-school official: Radicals taught Mexican-American program,” written by Astrid Galvan of the Associated Press appeared in a number of newspapers today including the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Of course, the headline is true in so far as the idea that radicals taught the Mexican-American program in the schools of Tucson was claimed by an ex-school official, but might be misleading if you don’t question the truth of the assertion by the former school official.  The Journal of Educational Controversy has published a number of articles on the banning of the Mexican American curriculum in Tucson, Arizona.  After reading the articles in the Washington Post or the New York Times, take a look at one of our journal’s articles on what actually occurred inside one of those classrooms.  You can find the article, “Dangerous Minds inTucson: The Banning of Mexican American Studies and Critical Thinking in Arizona,” by Curtis Acosta, a former teacher in the school district, in our 2014 Volume 8 issue.  The theme for that issue was, “WhoDefines the Public in Public Education.”

Trial Date Set: Latest Action on the Banning of Mexican American Studies in Tucson, Arizona

Editor: We have been following the events following the banning of the Mexican American Studies Program in the Tucson Unified School District in Arizona in our journal, on our blog and in several panels and forums that were videotaped and made available to our readers.  See “The Hypocrisy of Racism: Arizona's Movement towards State-Sanctioned Apartheid” by Augustine F. Romero, “DangerousMinds In Tucson: The Banning of Mexican American Studies and Critical ThinkingIn Arizona” by Curtis Acosta, “Precious Knowledge: An Interview with Film Director,Ari Palos, on April 15, 2013” by Celina Meza, and “Keeping the Flames at Bay:The Interplay between Federal Oversight and State Politics in Tucson’s MexicanAmerican Studies Program,” by Leslie A. Locke and Ann E. Blankenship.

A trial date has now been set to challenge the constitutionality of these actions.  Below is an e-mail that we received that will bring our readers up to date on events.  

FROM RECENT E-MAIL:

April 13, 2017

Mexican American Studies Trial

Tucson, Arizona

The legal challenge to the constitutionality of the State of Arizona's banning of Mexican American Studies in the Tucson Unified School District has been scheduled for trial in Tucson, Arizona. Trial will be held on June 26-30, 2017 and continue on July 17-21, 2017.

The MAS case contends that the actions of the State of Arizona violated the Equal Protection and First Amendment rights of the school districts Mexican American students. This includes the enactment of the statute HB 2281 and the subsequent enforcement of the law compelling TUSD to eliminate the MAS department, all classes, curriculum and course material.

The anti-MAS law was passed and signed into law shortly after Arizona's infamous SB1070 anti-immigrant law was passed. Both are products of the anti-Mexican sentiments that have been rampant throughout the state. The MAS case was filed October 18, 2010. In the initial proceeding the district court found one of the four provisions in the statute unconstitutional. After a successful appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the case was remanded for trial on the Equal Protection and First Amendment claims.

Trial will be held in Tucson before the Hon. Judge Tashima and is scheduled to last two weeks. It is open to the public and supporters of Mexican American Studies, Ethnic and Gender studies are invited to attend.

For more information about the trial and attending please contact tucsonmastrial@gmail.com.

MAS Trial -Tucson  

Anita Fernández-Information Coordinator

Where is Curtis Acosta Now?

Editor:  We have been following the events on the banning of the Mexican-American Studies Program in Tucson, Arizona both in this blog as well as in our journal.  One of the key players is Curtis Acosta, a teacher of the curriculum when it flourished in the school district and a participant in the federal court case that may determine its future.   Curtis will be a keynote speaker at the Northwest Teaching for Social Justice Conference on October 19, 2013 in Seattle.  He will be visiting Western Washington University at that time to give a talk and to appear on our new, upcoming television program (more about that later).  We will have a special section on the events in the Tucson Unified School District in our next issue of the Journal of Educational Controversy on the topic: "Who Defines the Public in Public Education?"  We will include an article by Curtis along with an interview with the director of Precious Knowledge, a film in which Curtis' teaching is featured.  The director, Ari Palos, has also given us permission to insert a section of the film in the journal.  Below are the latest happenings in Curtis' life that he shared on the Education Liberation Listserv.

From Curtis Acosto to his Friends and Supporters 

As many of you may have heard, I have decided to take a leave of absence from Tucson Unified School District. It was with a heavy heart that I made this decision but in order to maintain the integrity of my work with youth it could no longer be in a district that banned my curriculum, pedagogy, and boxed our books. For more details, I invite you to read my open letter on the Rethinking Schools blog.

http://rethinkingschoolsblog.wordpress.com/2013/06/05/1333/

For the foreseeable future, I will continue teaching Chican@ Literature to high school students for college credit, as well as completing my dissertation at the University of Arizona.

I have also started my own education consultation firm, the Acosta Latino Learning Partnership, where I hope my years in the classroom can be of service to teachers, schools, districts, and educational organizations throughout the country.

http://latinolearning.com
 
In the meantime, I cannot wait to see everyone in Chicago at Free Minds, Free People July 11-14. I am excited for Radical PD this year since we have an amazing collection of teachers and youth lined up, as well as our first Ethnic Studies National Assembly on Sunday the 14th.

http://www.fmfp.org/program/radical-professional-development/

The fire for educational justice burns as bright as ever in Tucson thanks to the amazing national support we received from you all, and the unbreakable resolve of this community. Mil gracias!

In Lak Ech,

Curtis Acosta
Watch a press conference with Curtis Acosta on You Tube.

Federal Court Decision on Tucson, Arizona’s Ban of Mexican-American Studies to be Appealed to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals

Here is the latest word on the recent court decision on the banning of the Tucson, Arizona Mexican-American program. The fight will continue. Supporters of the program have announced that they will appeal the decision to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

While the case continues on in the courts, interest in multicultural literature is reported to be soaring. Censorship appears to have drawn students across the nation to ethnic studies. Even the young students who watched the books being packed in boxes and taken away in their Tucson, Arizona high school classrooms have been given the opportunity to be taught outside the confines of the school district. Their teacher, Curtis Acosta, teaches a Chicano literature class at John Valenzuela Youth Center in South Tucson on Sundays. Moreover, Prescott College is now offering the students college credit for their study, ironically, the same study that was deemed too dangerous by the State of Arizona.

This raises an interesting and disturbing question. It seems that in a class-based society, only those privileged to continue on to college will have an opportunity to critically explore these deeper questions and assumptions underlying the power relations in our society. But all citizens in a democracy need this type of inquiry if they are to engage in the body politic. Given that many students will end their studies at the high school door, what are the implications for the kind of society we are forming?

We will be exploring the politics of education in the journal’s next issue on “Who Defines the Public in Public Education?”

The Latest on the Federal Court Decision on the Banning of the Mexican-American Studies Program in Tucson, Arizona

Editor:  Readers will remember our article titled, "The Hypocrisy of Racism: Arizona's Movement towards State-Sanctioned Apartheid," by Augustine F. Romero, from our Fall 2011/Winter 2012 issue of the journal. Since its publication, we have tried to keep readers updated on the events in Arizona that resulted in the banning of the Mexican-American Studies Program in the schools of Tucson, Arizona.  A decision from the federal courts has just come down on March 8th.  Here is a link to the decision, Acosta v. Huppenthal .  Essentially, the law, HB 2281, was upheld except for one provision that barred courses "designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group."    The court upheld other provisions of the law that bar courses promoting the overthrow of the U.S. government, promote racial or class resentment, and those that advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals. 

 We provide both a press release from the Save Ethnic Studies website about a possible appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and a statement from the Office of the Attorney General.

Statement from Save Ethnic Studies Website:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Monday, March 11, 2013

Contact:

Law Offices of Richard M. Martinez

(520) 327-47-97

SES Statement on Tashima Ruling: The Path Forward

Late in the afternoon of March 8, 2013 Judge Tashima issued the long anticipated ruling concerning the pending motions for summary judgment. The motions were initially submitted in 2011 and argued in March of 2012.

The plaintiffs' motion sought to invalidate HB 2281 (A.R.S. § 15-111 and 112) as unconstitutional because it is impermissibly vague and overbroad, precluding speech and infringing students' "right to receive" under the First Amendment. Although Judge Tashima recognized that the students' First Amendment rights in the classroom were at stake, and found one provision of the statute unconstitutional, A.R.S. § 15-112(a)(3) - "classes designed primarily for pupils of a particular group ethnic group", the decision left intact the remainder of the law that was used to prohibit the teaching of Mexican American Studies in the Tucson Unified School District.

The Acosta/Arce case is not over. The immediate task is to decide what is the next step: seek reconsideration of the decision or file an appeal to the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. That decision will be made within the next few days. It was always understood that this case would end up before the Ninth Circuit, and we have been preparing for this inevitable step for the past year. We have assembled a legal team that includes professors from the Seattle University Law School and the Bingham McCutchen law firm. Their contributions to the appellate process will be invaluable.

Once an appeal is filed, briefing will be submitted by both sides and a hearing will occur. This step will likely take about 18 to 24 months. The legal process is never as quick as we all hope for. This is especially true when important constitutional rights are at stake.

The effort to invalidate HB 2281 will continue. Too much is at stake. The right of every student to learn and teacher to teach the history, literature and culture of Latinos in Arizona is currently prohibited. Mexican American Studies proved to be a valuable educational program that instilled students with a positive academic identity. Much better academic skills, grades, graduation rates along with increased matriculation to college consistently occurred in every year the program was offered.

The mandate to successfully educate every student irrespective color, gender, culture or economic status is in crisis. As a nation we have failed miserably to reach this goal. We can and must do better. Ethnic studies provide a critical curricular option that must be available to every school district to consider, implement and maintain.

HB 2281 is the product of fear and a profound misunderstanding of the role of culture, language and history. These are areas of learning that do not divide us as a nation but provide a vehicle to promote understanding, respect and success. We cannot allow this fear to spread to other jurisdictions and eliminate important programs that already exist or the development of new programs.

The American dream has always included the universal hope that our children do better than we did. Irrespective of color, gender, culture or language every student must have the right to know who she is and how she fits into our complex and challenging society.

The path to obtain and maintain our civil liberties is continuous. In this lucha we all move forward. Your support is vital. Stand with us united in our common effort to be make our nation "a more perfect union".

The educators, students and community of Save Ethnic Studies.


Statement from the Office of the Attorney General:

Attorney General Tom Horne Wins Federal District Court Case Against Tucson Ethnic Studies Program


Phoenix (Monday, March 11) – Arizona’s law prohibiting courses that teach ethnic solidarity, rather than treating other students as individuals, was upheld as constitutional in a Federal District Court ruling issued Friday. The law was held to be constitutional, with one minor exception, Section (A)(3). The case was personally argued by Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne in Federal District Court in Tucson.

In a statement Horne said, “This is a victory for ensuring that public education is not held captive to radical, political elements and that students treat each other as individuals - not on the basis of the race they were born into.”

Enforcement of the law resulted in cancellation of Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican-American Studies Program after an independent Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) found that the program presented material in a “biased, political, and emotionally charged manner.” The ALJ also stated: “Teaching in such a manner promotes social or political activism against the white people, promotes racial resentment, and advocates ethnic solidarity instead of treating peoples as individuals.”

The State law prohibits courses if they violate any one of four prohibitions, including “promote resentment toward a race or a class of people”, “are designed primarily for peoples of a particular ethnic group”, or “advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of peoples as individuals.” The Court found only “designed primarily for peoples of a particular ethnic group” to be unconstitutionally vague, and upheld the other standards under which Tucson’s Mexican-American Studies Program was eliminated.

The Statute was challenged on numerous grounds, including violation of free speech, and unconstitutional vagueness – they were denied. The Court held that the State’s legitimate concern here was to reduce racism, as set forth in the declaration of policy in the statute that states: “The legislature finds and declares that public school pupils should be taught to treat and value each other as individuals and not to be taught to resent or hate other races or classes of people.” The Court found that the prohibitions in the statute are reasonably related to the goal of reducing racism at the schools.

In a related action, another Federal Law Judge had issued a ruling in the Tucson desegregation case calling for the development of culturally relevant courses, an Order that has been appealed by Attorney General Horne. However, that Order also stated: “The State is free to enforce its laws as it did in 2011 when it took action against TUSD for Mexican-American Studies courses, if it believes any culturally relevant courses developed and implemented in TUSD violate state law.”

Office of the Arizona Attorney General

Ten Commitments of a Multicultural Educator

Editor:  After posting a number of articles on this blog about the external forces against various multicultural movements in the schools, we want to share an article today about the dangers of internal forces and misunderstandings.  In the post below, Paul Gorski shares his thoughts about the kinds of concerns and commitments that progressive educators in multicultural education need to rethink. We thank the author for his permission to reprint his article here and invite our readership to respond.

Equity and social justice from the inside-out: Ten commitments of a multicultural educator

by
Paul C. Gorski

George Mason University

Reprinted with permission of the author from the FEDCAN Blog

of the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences -- May 20, 2011

History teaches us that many progressive initiatives, if not nurtured carefully, risk growing to reflect the very ideologies against which they were formed. This is a risk faced by multicultural education. So certainly we need to organize ourselves against attempts to discredit the value of multicultural education by those who are most invested in maintaining the status quo. To dismiss multicultural education is, after all, to dismiss ideals of equity and social justice.


To be sure, discrediting voices always will exist. And they will crescendo as we make advances toward greater equity and justice in schools and society. As a long-time board member of the National Association for Multicultural Education, I found cause for celebration when I learned that conservative organizations were infiltrating our conferences. The threat of progress inspires organizations hostile to multicultural education to unleash the shouters and naysayers. We must be at the ready to respond.


Troubling the Multicultural Education Choir


There is, however, an even more insidious threat to multicultural education and the ideals of educational equity and justice. I often hear people who care about equity concerns say, “We’re preaching to the choir.” In my experience, when it comes to multicultural education and advancing equity and social justice, the most dangerous threat comes from within the so-called “choir.”


Allow me to explain: Even those of us who fancy ourselves as ‘progressives,’ somewhere on a continuum between liberal and radical, are subject to the influence of dominant ideologies. How conscious we are of this influence, and how we respond to it, matters. There are, for example, a number of my multicultural education colleagues in the United States who criticize high-stakes testing regimens as “culturally biased” or “unjust” and then proceed to comply with the neoliberal thrust behind these regimens by obsessing in their scholarship or practice over a so-called “achievement gap.” Paradoxically, they tend to describe this gap exclusively in terms of standardized test scores.


I have observed, as well, that, although many of us who would reject the notion that we can assume anything about a student’s needs or aspirations or challenges or talents based on a single identity dimension, many buy into grossly simplified paradigms, like the “culture of poverty” myth or models that suggest there are “female” and “male” learning styles. The “culture of poverty” approach was dismissed in the social sciences forty years ago. Nonetheless, this form of deficit thinking still seems to drive conversations about class, poverty, and education in the United States and, increasingly, in Canada.



Celebrating Diversity Is Not Enough


So when I consider the future of multicultural education, my fear is hastened less by resistance from naysayers than by misdirection by multiculturalists. My worst fear is that a vast majority of the initiatives, practices, and policies enacted in the name of diversity or multiculturalism appear, at closer look, to resemble, at best, cultural fluffery and, at worst, cultural imperialism.


I’ve traveled around the world studying this phenomenon: a “multiculturalism” which has been whittled down so far that its equity and social justice roots no longer are evident in practice. Particularly in the colonized lands of the Americas, multiculturalism seems to be heavy, and getting heavier, on Taco Nights, intercultural dialogues, and multicultural festivals, and light, and getting lighter, on economic justice, racial equity, anti-sexism, and queer rights. And to whose benefit? Who or what are we protecting?


Don’t get me wrong. Festivals and dialogues have their places in multicultural initiatives. But when efforts for racial harmony replace movements for racial justice; when we find ourselves learning about stereotyped class “cultures” rather than examining economic injustice (or at least inequities in access to quality schooling); when we come to believe that cross-group dialogue is transformative in and of itself rather than what prepares us to be transformative: this is when we, as multiculturalists, turn our backs on inequity and injustice and do the bidding of the powerful in the name of “multiculturalism.”


•Listen to Paul C. Gorski, “Celebrating Diversity in not Enough: Finding Authentic Pathways to Equity.”

•Read: Paul C. Gorski’s “What we’re teaching our teachers.”

How, then, might we work to ensure that we are not undermining our own commitments to multicultural education? How might we ensure that we are working against oppressive ideologies rather than replicating them in the name of multiculturalism?


Ten Commitments of a Multicultural Educator


I propose the following “Ten Commitments of a Multicultural Educator” as a place to start. I offer these commitments not in a spirit of judgment nor with any illusion that I have reached any appreciable level of proficiency with them. Rather, I offer them as somebody who struggles each day to embody them. I offer this challenge to my colleagues, but no more so than I offer it to myself.


(1) I commit to working at intersections. Too often, those of us doing equity and justice work become so focused on a single identity or oppression – I have been focused largely on class and economic justice lately – that we fail to consider how identities and oppressions are intersectional. I cannot do anti-racism if I am not doing anti-heterosexism, anti-sexism, and so on. I commit to understanding more fully how issue-specific organizations are forced, even if implicitly, to compete for whatever little piece of pie (e.g., financial resources, media attention) we are afforded, perhaps in order to ensure that we do not organize ourselves and insist, instead, on a bigger piece of pie.


(2) I commit to understanding the “sociopolitical context” of schooling. What Sonia Nieto calls the “sociopolitical context” of schooling requires me to see the bigger picture, to understand multicultural work in the context of neoliberalism, corporatization, consumer culture, the other conditions which inform dominant ideologies regarding social and educational access and opportunity.


(3) I commit to refusing the master’s paradigms. I will not endorse neoliberal or corporate-centric principles by incorporating them, even if implicitly, into my multicultural work. I will not minimize educational inequity to test scores; refer to people as “at-risk” or families as “broken”; or discuss multicultural competencies as essential to “preparing us to compete in the global marketplace.” I will not call something an achievement gap when it more precisely can be described as an opportunity gap.


(4) I commit to never reducing multiculturalism to cultural activities or celebrations. I will transcend the “4 Ds” (dress, dance, diet and dialect). Although multicultural festivals and food fairs can be part of a bigger initiative toward multiculturalism, they do not, in and of themselves, make any school or organization or community more equitable and just. In fact, they more likely will strengthen stereotypes than unravel them.


(5) I commit to never confusing multiculturalism with universal validation. Multiculturalism is not about valuing every perspective equally. For example, multiculturalism does not value heteronormativity or male supremacy even when one explains that these views are grounded in her or his religion. A multicultural space – a school or classroom, for instance – cannot be both multicultural and hegemonic.


(6) I commit to resisting simple solutions to complex problems. While simple and practical solutions may be tempting they are a distraction from what needs to be done to resolve complex social problems and conditions. I commit to resisting the temptation to buy into models and paradigms that over-simplify complexities, regardless of how popular they are. That the town or school district next door endorses a person or an approach to multiculturalism is not enough; in fact, it might be the best evidence that the person or approach fits snugly into the status quo.

(7) I commit to being informed. I will do the work to find strategies for bolstering equity and social justice which are based on evidence of what works. I will look at this evidence in light of what I know about my own community. Moreover, I will not limit “evidence” to quantitative studies; I will seek the voices of local communities and stakeholders in the sorts of deep and narrative ways that cannot be captured in a quantitative survey.

(8) I commit to working with and in service to disenfranchised communities. I must practice the ethic of ‘working with’ rather than working on disenfranchised communities or on their behalf, particularly when I am in a position of privilege relative to them. I will apply my commitment to equity and social justice, not just in the content of my multicultural work, but also in my processes for doing that work.


(9) I commit to rejecting deficit ideology. I will refuse to identify the source of social problems and conditions by looking down rather than up power hierarchies. I reject the notion that people are disenfranchised due to their own “deficiencies.” I commit to challenging any suggestion that the way to fix an inequity is to fix the people most disenfranchised by it rather than by redressing the conditions which disenfranchise them.


(10) I commit to putting justice ahead of peace. Although conflict resolution and peer mediation programs can be useful in the face of some forms of conflict, they should not replace efforts to redress an injustice. Never, under any circumstance, should equity concerns be handled through processes which assume that parties occupy similar spaces along the privilege-oppression continuum. And in the end, peace without justice renders the privileged more privileged and the oppressed further oppressed; a condition which might be understood as the exact opposite of authentic multiculturalism.


At the heart of the ‘Ten Commitments of a Multicultural Educator,” is a commitment to self-reflexivity, and to asking myself – to never stop asking myself – how the work I do in the name of multicultural education is making a school or community or society more just. When I find that I am unable to answer that question, or that I have become so comfortable with what is that I fail to consider, in as deep a way as possible, what could be, and then I commit to doing something else.

Paul C. Gorski is an assistant professor in Integrative Studies at George Mason University in Washington, DC, and the founder of EdChange and Multicultural Pavilion.



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