Arizona passed a law against chauvinistic ethnic studies programs that can balkanize and promote a politics of grievance and victimization that blames western civilization and America for all the ills in the world.
And unlike the federal government with its immigration laws, it actually enforced the law banning such ethnic studies in one school district.
For that, Arizona again got criticized by mainstream media outlets such as The New York Times.
The law, which took effect on December 31 in Arizona, states that “the legislature finds and declares that the public school pupils should be taught to treat and value each other as individuals and not be taught to resent or hate other races or classes of people.”
And it bans courses that 1) “promote the overthrow of the United 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.”
Arizona’s Attorney General Tom Horne enforced the law by declaring that a “Mexican-American ethnic studies program in the Tucson Unified School District” was illegal under the Arizona “ethnic studies” statute.
Promptly, The Times opined that there is an Arizona “where its state government all too often promotes discord and intolerance” and that “it is painfully clear in a new education law that injects nativist fears directly into the public school classroom.”
They criticized Horne and attempted to tie Horne and Arizona, in general, to Arizona’s initial refusal to declare “Martin Luther King’s birthday a holiday,” obviously trying to get the point across at the Times believes this was yet another pattern of Arizona doing things that were racist.
What mainstream organizations like The Times do not realize is that such chauvinistic ethnic studies courses are actually what divides, balkanizes, cleaves groups of people and discourages “melting pot” assimilation and encourages and promotes “salad bowl” separatism.
Ronald Reagan once foresaw such dangers.
He once said that Americans needed “an informed patriotism.” He asked “And are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world?”
Reagan then reminisced that “Those of us who are over 35 or so years of age grew up in a different America. We were taught, very directly, what it means to be an American. And we absorbed, almost in the air, a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions. If you didn't get these things from your family, you got them from the neighborhood ... Or you could get a sense of patriotism from school. And if all else failed, you could get a sense of patriotism from popular culture. The movies celebrated democratic values and implicitly reinforced the idea that America was special. TV was like that, too, through the mid-'60s.”
Reagan said that American exceptionalism, particularly how precious the freedom associated with it is, needed to be passed down because “it’s fragile; it needs protection.”
Mainstream media outlets are quick to point those like Horne as racist nativists when in fact they are motivated more by a love for American ideals than a hatred for other cultures and ethnicities.
HUMAN EVENTS will counter the bias in the mainstream media by interviewing figures like Horne in the days ahead, allowing them to explain some of the most egregious examples of “ethnic studies” run amok and why such ethnic studies programs do more harm than good and potentially threaten the Republic.
