By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — Just after Christmas, a federal judge slammed down his gavel against civility, a too-familiar pounding by an unaccountable judiciary that fancies itself wiser and purer than what it views as the citizen rabble.
Reacting to the ruling by Judge A. Wallace Tashima, Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Diane Douglas said in part in a December 29 statement:
“I am supportive of teaching history and cultural studies, but I don’t understand why the judge felt he needed to strike down the entire law. The provisions that prevent taxpayer dollars being used for classes that promote the overthrow of the United States government, or promote resentment towards a race or class of people, just sound like common sense to me. Those should stay.”
At issue was an inflammatory program in the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) that The Wanderer first reported on in 2011, “Mexican-American Studies” (MAS). It became a hot issue after one of its instructors went public to reveal it wasn’t a mere history course but a tool to fire up ethnic grievances and tell Mexican-American students they’re victims of white racism who intentionally are held down by their oppressors.
They were told the U.S. Southwest is the mythical “bronze” Latino kingdom of Aztlan that had been stolen from their forebears by Europeans. The MAS program cast scorn on capitalism and on enforcing the U.S. border with Mexico, and looked favorably on reclaiming the Southwest for Aztlan.
In a strange anthropological twist, they were told their ancestors hadn’t arrived on this continent from across the Bering Strait but actually originated here — a ploy to reinforce the idea this land was theirs from the very beginning.
After it was exposed, MAS was found to be in violation of Arizona law against promoting “resentment towards a race or class of people,” or advocating “ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.”
Unless the program was reformed, TUSD would have lost 10 percent of its apportionment of state aid. The TUSD board suspended the program on January 10, 2012.
Tucson’s Arizona Daily Star reported back then, “The board also agreed to create a significant, comprehensive social-studies program that covers additional ethnic groups to replace Mexican-American Studies.”
However, as often has proved to be the case, leftists don’t give up but keep hoping for an accommodating judge to deliver the goods for them.
Thus, on December 26 Federal Judge Tashima, who had been nominated to his position by President Bill Clinton, finalized his judgment there was a very different sort of racism involved. Not the leftist racism of MAS, but the bad Arizona society’s that had passed the law that hindered MAS.
Tashima declared that Arizona had violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution with its law, “for an invidious discriminatory racial purpose and a politically partisan purpose.”
Issuing a permanent injunction, he forbade the superintendent of public instruction from investigating the content of the course or withholding any funding from TUSD in this situation for at least seven years.
In her December 29 statement, Arizona education superintendent Douglas also said, “I am disappointed with the judge’s ruling in this case. I am looking forward to a scheduled meeting with legislative leadership next week. My first item on the agenda will be to see if we can find a legislative remedy to the judge’s ruling.”
Douglas’ media spokesman Stefan Swiat told The Wanderer on January 9 that she had held a meeting with these leaders, and would continue discussing a remedy.
“The superintendent has met with legislative leadership, and they will continue their discussion,” Swiat said. “. . . . It’s going to be an ongoing discussion.”
Pointing to complaints against the earlier MAS program, The Wanderer asked a media spokeswoman for TUSD about the nature of a MAS program that would be taught there now.
Michelle Valenzuela replied on January 9 that the Tucson district’s superintendent, “Dr. Gabriel Trujillo, has no comment at this time.” She added that “the ruling happened when the district was closed for winter break, and we just returned yesterday.”
Ann Howard, a longtime resident of Tucson, retired attorney and fourth-generation Arizonan, suggested to The Wanderer that a more comprehensive course on the subject matter would be useful.
“From the history of the MAS curriculum I am familiar with, the content of some of the readings required or allowed appear to be revisionist history, with strong suggestions that the acquisition of the lands originally belonging to Mexico by the United States was illegal and that they were ‘stolen’,” Howard said.
“Perhaps some remedy for such inaccurate opinions could be found if Arizona schools were required to teach the whole truth about Mexican-American history,” she said. “The curriculum needs to teach the fact that the Mexican-American War was begun by President Santa Anna, that Mexico was defeated and the war won by the United States, which paid $50 million in gold as part of the treaty.
“The history of the Gadsden Purchase should also be required,” she added.
That purchase involved the acquisition by the U.S. of what now is southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico, concluded through a treaty with Mexico, ratified in 1854.
Howard continued: “Texas has so far refused to approve a MAS course. The advocate in both the Arizona case and in Texas is Tony Diaz, whose textbook submitted to the Texas Board of Education was denied in November on the basis of the fact that it contained grammatical and historical errors.
“If a legislative remedy can be found, the truth, as seen by more than just advocates for a revisionist history, must be taught in Arizona schools,” Howard said. “Perhaps the legislature could pass laws wherein the MAS programs would be required to allow controverting information to be taught to MAS students by outside speakers. Perhaps that should be the requirement in all classes in Arizona schools.”
In a November 7, 2017, article, Breitbart Texas News reported that in 2012 MAS advocate Tony Diaz “smuggled banned books into Phoenix to raise funds for Occupied America, one of the inflammatory books that was part of the incendiary MAS curriculum in the Tucson Unified School District, which the Arizona Department of Education shut down.
“The (Mexican-American Studies) ‘Toolkit’…politicizes the Tucson MAS program repeatedly, all part of the author’s struggle for ethnic studies,” Breitbart said.
Details Omitted
The Phoenix-based Arizona Republic, the state’s largest daily paper, displayed its leftist style in a staff writer’s opinion column lauding Tashima’s ruling.
Omitting details of the inflammatory, racist MAS program, the columnist posted on December 29 that the judge rebuked Arizona politicians who had gone after “the Tucson district for teaching kids about their ancestors.”
The closest she came to spilling the beans was when she said some people will use stereotypes about bandits or tequila-drinkers or, um, “Marxists, Communists and Socialists who won’t rest until parts of the southwestern United States belong to Mexico again.”
Never informing readers of the column what actually was at issue, she concluded that “we should agree that government officials have no business telling local school districts what to do just because they don’t understand or don’t appreciate the struggles of Mexican-Americans or Chicanos.”
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress