Arizona’s Governor Signs Bill To Target a School District's Ethnic Studies Program

This past Wednesday, May 12, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer embroiled herself in yet another controversy, this time it concerns her approval of a bill that aims to target a school district’s ethnic studies program. The program, which is a part of The Tucson Unified School District, offers courses in African-American, Mexican-American and Native-American studies that focus on history and literature and include information about the influence of a particular ethnic group. However, there are some people who believe that this program encourages the resentment of whites and the grouping of students by race, a notable believer of this is the State schools chief Tom Horne, who has pushed for the bill for years, (Horne is a Republican also running for attorney general). The bill signed May 11, even after United Nation human rights experts condemned it because they say everyone has a right to learn about their heritage, looks to prohibit, on the basis that the program offered by the Tucson school district promotes resentment toward whites, “classes that advocate ethnic solidarity, that are designed primarily for students of a particular race or that promote resentment toward a certain ethnic group“. Still, officials of The Tucson Unified School District continue to argue that their program doesn’t promote resentment and is actually very engaging. The signing of this bill is really drastic action because considering that it is supposed to encourage students not to resent other races or classes of people, it does not consider how the students in the program feel about the restrictions placed on their education about their culture and furthermore if the governor also feels that the program is not open for student of all races why not just change that aspect of the program and encourage students of other races to join the program. This incident is important because Jan Brewers approval for the Arizona immigration law has brought controversy because it could promote racial profiling and the fact that she choose to target a school district for its ethnic program will no doubt further rile up individuals.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100512/ap_on_re_us/us_arizona_ethnic_studies